Lots of owners who have had both prefer outboards. I have changed many things on my cat but never ever wanted the hassle, weight, drag and expense of diesels. Twin
Honda 20s are are really good setup.
As to the design it looks okayish. Sort of based on a Simpson or Easy style boat. Why mnot buy one of these then. The specs look good. Get someone knowledgeable to
survey it.
A couple of things to look at though
- Are there
lifelines? I can't see them and if the boat had
kids on it I would almost bet on them being there, usually with nets. Seems strange. DON"T go
offshore with your own kids without
lifelines.
- As does the porta potti. No one uses them on
live aboard boats with kids. You would be emptying the thing every two days. Something fishy or silly there. In all the time I have visited
liveaboard boats I have never seen a porta potti. I have one on my
trailer sailer but never would use one on a big boat. Sounds like the
toilet clogs which is a real bugger.
- The
deck stringers, the reinforcing ribs under the
deck seem light. Usual method is to put 40 x 19mm cedar or douglas fir on edge, vertically, every 200 - 250 mm or so. These seem to be flat and spaced at 500mm or so. Check that the deck doesn;t flex. Check for cracks on the deck where it meets vertical
panels.
As for Ken Nicholson - he is not a well known
designer so you will find it harder to sell later on. I haven't heard of him before but I have been out of the loop for a while.
Lastly - check how much stuff the boat has on it when it is sitting with its stern kissing the
water like in the photos. My bet is that it hasn;t got that much weight on it. My 38ft cat goes down 5cm when we go away for two weeks. Even more when we
liveaboard and the tools come too. You can't get around the basic fact that you need volume under the
water to float your stuff.
180litres of water isn't enough for your
family unless you get a
watermaker. We used to carry 400 litres for our family with up to 120 litres of
fuel. Then
food for 4 for up to two months (six
shopping trolleys worth bought at Cairns once) weighs you down some more. Unless your boat has enough volume to take an extra 1000kg of
food, water and fuel then you will be dragging the bum and slapping the underwing. New designers get this wrong all the time so double check that the boat is fully loaded with fuel water and loads of people to get the bum down to the water. The weight of a parachute, extra chain, the kids shell collection, your spares, tools, extra jerry cans, more food,
computers, surf boards etc will be substantial. Once bought the only way to remedy this is to foam up the hulls which is a huge pain and very costly.
Also she looks light on in the
storage department. We got that 6 trolley loads of food stiowed away in lockers within about 30 minutes. Every thing has a place under the floor or in lockers. Our cat has 30 lockers along the
hull side which this design doesn't have. I can't see any under floor
storage although this might be there. I probably have 50 different storage compartments inside our cat. Our family of four used them all, for food and for clothes and other effects. You will need loads of compartments. Again many of ours are unused at the moment but will be filled when we
live aboard again.
My guess is that she isn't heavily laden in the photos. If so I would walk away. It is no good trying to fit a family on a boat that can't take an awful lot of weight. You will need the boat to be floating high BEFORE you buy it. My cat is showing about 12cm of antifoul at the moment. It looks dumb on the
mooring but when we go away she has only a bit showing - and we sail pretty lightly. I have seen people buy cats that are floating low when lightly loaded and expect to take them cruising but you can't beat Archimedes. You need volume above the water to take the weight you will put on.
So in the end I would probably say keep looking
cheers
Phil