Hello . . . Info About Privilege

[lifeislife]

Hi there. Even if this is my first post, it's quite some time that i read this great forum.
So, yes....i'm another dreamer that want to make his dream come true and it's a few years that i'm looking around the market to have an idea about prices and what to get, waiting the right moment to pull the trigger.
After a lot of search i think that the right cat for me is a 37/39 privilege of mid '90 to 00. I always read about very good opinions about this cats, but, and here comes my question, how is it possible that since a few years, there are still the same cats in the market? Particularly there are 2 37' that i remember are in sale since very long time. Is it possible that these boats have issues? In both of them i noticed some humidity spots in the woods....is it a known problem of the privilege 37? I also noticede a big $$ difference between some cats of the same mode/year.....do you think that there is a justification for that?
Here is what i'm talking about:
1996 Jeantot / Privilege EZ`sail 37 Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com
1996 Privilege 36 Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com
View Boat Photos - YachtWorld.com (humidity very noticeable in pic 22)

Check the humidity under hatches normally.

Thanx alot
cheers

PS: is the 37 a good liveaboard cat for 2+kid?

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, lifeislife.

[maxingout]

I sailed around the world on an eleven year trip on my Privilege 39. It is a well constructed and robust catamaran. I would go anywhere in it. I plan to sail back to Australia in Exit Only.

Checkout SAILING OFFSHORE IN A PRIVILEGE 39 CATAMARAN AROUND THE WORLD.* CAPTAIN DAVE.

[timbenner]

lifeislife,

Maxingout is living proof of the Privilege cat's credibility. His boat has some great modifications for blue water cruising. Look at the SS bow eyelets added.

Regarding the price difference of the two cats, with links above. The more expensive one has all new rigging, new engine, water maker, etc, and might be an owner boat rather than a charter boat. Charter boats are usually high engine hours and stripped of extra's, so that the charter guest has less stuff to destroy. Consequently they are obviously cheeper. The cost (not to speak of the hassle) to bring a charter boat up to an Owner's Boat or live aboard should not be underestimated. Assuming that that is what you want.

I'll use my boat for an example. You could buy an older Lagoon 380, say 2000 through 2004 charter boat for roughly $200,000 OR the same year Owner Boat for roughly $250,000. The difference would typically be thousands of hours on the engines, and over $100,000 (cost new) of stuff you'll need, not including installation hassle, for live aboard. For example: A/C, generator, extra freezer, more and better electronics, SSB, Sat Phone, extra anchors and rodes, water toys, SPARE PARTS, tools, extra sails, and on and on. Typically when buying a used Owner's boat, you can get $100,000+ worth of extras, for less than half of what the stuff cost new, not to speak of all of the hassle it took to install it. However, watch out for sloppy, inexperienced installations of all that stuff. I would much rather have stuff like A/C, generator, SSB installed professionally, than by a first time boat owner.

What is right for you depends on your intentions. Live aboard, charter, weekend toy, etc. My advise is to look at as many different models of cats as you can and unless you're an expert, stay away from one off boats. Go with the higher production Toyota, Honda, BMW, Ford brands, so you know that you have some level of quality and engineering competence. I consider the Lagoon 380 a Toyota, reasonably priced, over 650 in the water, time proven, easy to work on and get parts for, for example. Privilege is also time proven, with quite a few boats produced.

Hope this helps your efforts to get the best boat to fulfill your needs. At least you're past the monohull / cat decision.

[Privleoplag]

Those two privileges Need a ton of work. But I know of a 96 or 97 Privlege 37 in Thailand that I suspect is still as excellent as when we saw her a few years ago.
May still be for sale... Named Cankata. Never mind... I just googled her and the owners took her off the market, she sure is nice though.

[lifeislife]

Thanx a lot for the welcome, the opinion and the ideas.
One of the reasons i shortlisted the privilege it's also because it's not, at least for what i saw, a cat used in charters. In any case, i supposed that these 2 cats should have some important issues to stick unsold during all this time.
My idea is a long term liveaboard and cruising mostly in the caribbean so, of course, i need most of the items that timbenner pointed.
An alternative to the privilege is an early 90' 38 lagoon that have a design/layout/price that i like.

@privleoplag: did you personally see this 2 privilege or somebody told you about the conditions?

Thanx again
cheers

[Privleoplag]

No, but for two years of searching there were posts on these two boats from people who did... And I visited with broker on the both of them and they confirmed. The st. Martin boat sounded the better of the two. It was a lot of searching and homework to find info on them, but it is out there. Sorry, I'm not going to try to find the posts/threads again where I took my information from but if you do your homework, you can find it also.
We were on the one in Thailand, it was the one that got us started on our search for boats. Was not for sale at the time, but saw recently that it did come up for sale. The owners could have told us at the time it was a 6month old boat, and we never would have known... That was the condition of used, older boats we started looking for...they just are not out there, so we bought new instead.

[Privleoplag]

Also, was going to mention... There are quite a few privileges in charter, but mostly on the Europe side.

[Sand crab]

I see that one of these is an EZcruise. Could someone please tell me exactly what this is and if this is an option and how much extra it would have cost back then and are they still doing it. It has been touched on before in other threads but no one has ever fully explained it. I went to their website and found nothing on this. Thanks BOB