Refitting an Old Boat . . . Costs ?

[toddsgirl]

Hi everyone!

My hubby and I settled on a nice new 50'....and then he decided he'd rather buy a 20 year old boat and refit it. he thinks he can do this for $20,000!!!!! Now I am no carpenter, but I know that figure is ridiculous--looking through boat classifieds, I saw someone who spent $300,000 on a similar size boat refit.

He wants to do this because he doesn't like the wood look at all. He sees no point in buying a boat he doesn't like the look of, and they just aren't modern enough. I swear he wants to paint or restain all the wood black (or paint white) and add chrome and grey touches.

Anyway, I know we have no time for this work, we own a busy company which means hiring a crew (better anyway, as we have no knowledge anyhow) but I am concerned with the time factor, as well as ballooning expenses. I don't want it to cost more than a brand new boat would, and i want it to look and SMELL brand new.

Any thoughts on what professionally refitting a 50' would cost? (butting the whole interior!)

Thanks!!!

[btrayfors]

Assuming your post isn't a spoof....and there's lots in it to suggest it is....your husband might consider the following:

$20,000 might be enough to renew the rigging on a 20-year old 50 footer.

A refit/retrofit/equipping -- taking into account the things you said -- might cost upwards of $150K - $300K, or even more, depending on details of work to be done and present condition of the boat.

If you don't like wood, why not buy a new plastic boat? There are plenty of them out there which look like apartments, are equipped like apartments, and have nary a splinter of wood to be seen. A tour of the boats at the next Boat Show might be in order :-)

Bill

[daddle]

Yeah, closer to the $300,000 to have a skilled professional do it. Impossible to say how much, but $20,000 is way off for boat work unless it's DIY.

[Christian Van H]

It would be cheaper to COMMISSION a brand new boat from a builder. You will get a brand new boat, and he will get the interior he wants. All white and chrome interiors are cheaper than all that nasty teak and oak anyway...

[BlueSeas]

I am going to end up spending $5000 on a 22 foot trailer sailboat, doing it myself. That has no electronics or plumbing to speak of....

[daddle]

$5000 x 50feet/22feet cubed = $58,696

Boat cost magic!

[rebel heart]

Depends on how much work it needs, and what your definition of "done" is. There's a lot of distance between "safe and seaworthy" and "bristol". Also depends on how much he/you plan on doing yourself. At $50/hour, I figure I save about $50,000 a year in labor since I spend about ~20 hours a week "refitting" our 36 year old boat.

[toddsgirl]

Thanks for all the tips! No, this isn't a spoof...its a serious post! I knew 20,000 was way off base, I will have to share this info with him. Alas, some people are so picky. We don't have time to do any of the work ourselves, so we would have to hire out. and he really did mean gut the thing, down to bones.

I have never seen or heard of these plastic boats, but it honestly doens't sound that appealing. I don't mind all the teak and oak mysalf...I just want clean, pretty and no smells...

Not too much to ask for...oh, and no lines all over the place, they are a tripping hazard for kids. I like that newer boats have nice little spots for every line to run through.

As you can probably tell, I know almost nothing about sailing or its terminology!

[CharlieCobra]

You can retrofit the line organizers and clutches to older boat too. 300K to refit an older 50' boat? C'mon. I can completely rebuild a wooden 50 footer for a third of that. I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-80K depending on the scope.

[rebel heart]

For whatever it's worth, farming out all or even most of your boat work will cost you absurd amounts of money. You can easily shell out 50-100k a year in labor alone doing a modest refit. Then factor in materials.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by toddsgirl

... I have never seen or heard of these plastic boats, but it honestly doens't sound that appealing ...

In this case; plastic = fibreglass; from which most modern production boats are constructed.

[skipgundlach]

Originally Posted by CharlieCobra

You can retrofit the line organizers and clutches to older boat too. 300K to refit an older 50' boat? C'mon. I can completely rebuild a wooden 50 footer for a third of that. I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-80K depending on the scope.

If you're qualified (have the skills and time), the material costs to do a cosmetic refit aren't that bad. We rehabbed following a VERY serious wreck (thanks to the tank of a boat we have, minor water intrusion, some fiberglass and polyester and epoxy resins were the only issues) for under 5K - but did the majority of the work ourselves.

OTOH, what started as just a "new countertops, add some insulation to the reefer, put in some bins in the workshop, extend the bed in the aft to allow queen width" turned into a 3-year refit with at least 150, prolly more like 200K costs, despite my working alongside our contractors for most of it (shoulder surgeries kept me off for a couple of months 2 of the three years).

And that's without gutting, and with relatively inexpensive ($30/hour) labor.

If you've got the funds, definitely go newer to meet your design specs; making a silk purse out of a sow's ear is possible only if you do it yourself, and the vast majority of what is done is labor and not parts/supplies intensive.

Newer has the added advantage of likely having less to go wrong, later, as things inevitably do. And, not least, if you've not got sailing experience, get a lot of it before you take on a 50 footer. Crew for every boat you can find, whether simply as rail meat (offsetting weight on the upwind side), or, later, as you develop the skills, navigation, planning, line handling and the like on longer trips.

Helping out boats which need it yields lots of downstream advantages, too

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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[GordMay]

Originally Posted by skipgundlach

... We rehabbed following a VERY serious wreck (thanks to the tank of a boat we have, minor water intrusion, some fiberglass and polyester and epoxy resins were the only issues) for under 5K - but did the majority of the work ourselves...

IMHO, Skip rehab'd from a minor wreck, that was potentially serious.

My opinion may not be very expert, as I was not there, & never saw the boat.

[skipgundlach]

Originally Posted by GordMay

IMHO, Skip rehab'd from a minor wreck, that was potentially serious.

My opinion may not be very expert, as I was not there, & never saw the boat.

:{)) Like in Airplanes, any landing you can walk away from is a good one, any landing you can use the airplane again is a great one, the view is subjective.

For illustration, one can go to the gallery in my prior sig to see pix of the event and rehab, later (the picture on the home page should be sufficient as to which of the galleries to click).

That the boat survived - and we, too, without a bruise - I guess makes it a minor wreck. However, pounding on a (flat, normally dry at low tide) rock at 60* heel for three days in storm conditions and 8-10' waves (estimated at 3-5000 impacts based on wave interval and storm time), getting a stainless steel basket ride from the coasties at the urging of the TowBoatUS guy who refused to come within several hundred feet of us for fear of ending up in the same place as we at least qualifies as a "wreck" :{))

We bless the Morgan folks repeatedly for making the 2" thick hull solid; delamination is reasonably easily fixed by application of more fiberglass (after first crowbarring off the loose stuff, and then grinding down all the edges), and the dislodged tabbing, while it required some disassembly to get to, was also easily remedied, if tedious. Our surveyor, previously the QC and Service Manager at Morgan during the entire time of the production run of this model, proclaimed our repairs to be at least as good as original for strength and integrity, with epoxy in a secondary bond being at least as strong as a primary bond in polyester.

But, had we contracted out all that labor, we'd have had a few tens of thousands involved. And, amen to the prior relating to new standing rigging - we had over 8k in ours a year ago, albeit with a new roller furling added in - but it was only that little because we helped the rigger and have a single-spreader sloop...

L8R

Skip, thrilled to be out here, "doing it" for the last 40+ months

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by toddsgirl

Hi everyone!

My hubby and I settled on a nice new 50'....and then he decided he'd rather buy a 20 year old boat and refit it. Thanks!!!

He is mad.

We have a very sad meeting tomorrow with the son of a delightful guy who has left his boat and has gone back to work after thinking he would be crusing for the rest of his life.

Reason is his only pile of steaming garbage of a boat that has one of those 'seaworthy' brand names attached to it.

He said to me a few months ago when the tears wouldnt stay in his eyes that if he had bought a new production(bigger than mine) he would be still saining into the sunset. For ever.

So think carefully before you let hubby screw his life over. And your life.





Mark