Certainly.... My boat has had quite a hard life of over 5 years in
bareboat charter. In spite of that the boat is in excellent shape apart from cosmetic issues which I'm now gradually resolving.
When I took
delivery of the boat in 2002 the list of problems was amazingly small when compared to other production boats. The list comprised 3 items that needed resolving, the worst of which was a non-functioning
fuel tank gauge. The others where a small piece of
wood veneer on a handle that needed glueing and a very slight mis-allignment between a jammer and a
mast slot for the
gennaker halyard.
Nearly 7 years on the only criticism I have is that the
gennaker supplied as part of the Easy
Cruise package is a complete pain. Most 435s (and 465s) are Easy
Cruise versions as the package included just about every extra you'd fit to make the boat suitable for
long term cruising...
generator,
watermaker, comprehensive
Raymarine instrumentation, bow sprit and gennaker. As I've already alluded, the
furling gennaker is pretty useless... too small, too lightweight, poor
furling gear. I've just wrecked mine for the 3rd time and won't be repairing it anymore. The other minor design flaw is in the slave
rudder (the one not directly attached to the autohelm) The mechanism on this allows a judder or even knocking when motoring hard as a result of turbulence. This is a minor irritation only and hasn't got any worse over time.
The one thing I would change on the boat is the
saloon table. It is great for seating lots of people but makes the seating area uncomfotable for just lounging around watching tv or whatever. I'm still trying to
work out a way to replace the table in such a way that I can store the existing table for reuse by a future owner .
To sum up... Great cruising boat. Solid and reliable. Still wouldn't choose anything different.
Going back to 465s... I know the boat that Augusto mentions in the
BVI. I think the
price is around $395k. It was owned by a
English couple who cruised for a while and then left it in the BVI with a management company that provided crewed-charter on the boat. Haven't been on it recently but I would think it is a very good buy.