Financials of buying an older boat

[Pizzazz]

Newer boats are better in every aspect: more light, better layouts, better engineering. If you do not want to spend the money upfront for a new boat (most prefer not to), you have a few options:

1. Buy a smaller boat than what you need - you end up upgrading at some point or another, losing money in the process but you have had great learning.

2. Buy an older boat - as noted earlier in the thread, you spend the depreciation amount on maintenance and repair. You trade time for money if you do the repairs yourself.

3. Repurpose a boat (e.g. use a coastal design for offshore travels - you trade risk for money)

4. Buy no boat. You lose happiness for not spending money.

Choose your drug.

[TheThunderbird]

Originally Posted by Pizzazz

Newer boats are better in every aspect: more light, better layouts, better engineering. If you do not want to spend the money upfront for a new boat (most prefer not to), you have a few options:

1. Buy a smaller boat than what you need - you end up upgrading at some point or another, losing money in the process but you have had great learning.

2. Buy an older boat - as noted earlier in the thread, you spend the depreciation amount on maintenance and repair. You trade time for money if you do the repairs yourself.

3. Repurpose a boat (e.g. use a coastal design for offshore travels - you trade risk for money)

4. Buy no boat. You lose happiness for not spending money.

Choose your drug.

SIR, addressing you and all those thinking alike, l humbly say HOLD ON!

the belief that a new boat is Well equipped and Completely equipped is as true as pretending that a Van is a Camper (as said by someone l met and who sailed to Antartica on a 12m boat)

there is no chance in Accepting a new-boat concept, if I want a specific Watermaker, heating system, non-propane kitchen stove/hob, leather fittings, decent (lattice) mattresses 8" thick, no plastic for table-ware, only top-quality deck gear, a heavy duty diesel with no f....g! Turbo nor electronic boards, extra robust rigging (not the 9'mm furling sh*** by Reckmann l found as OEM on a 54'er, which l replaced with a 14mm ....) and so on and so forth...

Ah, battery system and filters... Do you expect to find Trojan/Lifeline/Odissey/ROLLS??, or any other **....g! Commercial brand like Vetus, exide, yuasa etc??

Do you expect to have a second power alternator? A Victron multi-plus or mastervolt charger? RACOR FILTERS (or a replica?) and a Generator well installed??
Do you have a 2nd and a 3rd Anchor at delivery?? A second battery charger? (..well, a few Jongerts had it...)

Maybe so, with semi-custom productions like those by Oyster, Wally, or top of range HR or Najad (say US$1m or more boats)....IF you can manage the provisioning yourself or with your personal rigger/NA.

thus, l don't buy into your brand-new-thing concept, unless you add 50+k worth parts of your choices before or soon after delivery (impossible on mass/large production boats), necessarily at the cost of throwing off brand new stuff ??)

Oh yes, l also expect dyneema only ropes, and EVA fenders , at your just-New delivery.

And l better shut up about electronics... A very personal choice indeed :-)

please take it all with a smile, but, yes, with my disbelief and tight lips, as stiff as my 27tonnes boat indeed

Reality is: those who buy brand new must be happy with what they find, pay for a temporary no-hassle period of time, and are basically not-in-need (or , do ignore or don't know..) what's better/best around.


My 30yo boat exudes its time, yet l felt free to get rid of e.g. The tables on cockpit and in the saloon, for my own design of antique inlaid exotic woods l wouldn't find on Steve job's boat. Stupid as l am, l forgot how much l paid for them, and do enjoy them daily.
Yap, those tables are quite older than the boat, some olive tree wood is 400+yo, yet the tables look brand-new!)

[robert sailor]

Sailboats are like many other commodities, they vary in build quality. Many are purpose built for charter use and fill that use very well. Others are built for heavier service and fill that purpose well. Depending on the type of sailing you plan on doing you should take that in consideration when making your buying decision be it new or used. Most of us know that you can row a boat across an ocean or sail a 20 foot lake sailboat across an ocean but we also know that for the average person there are better choices. Boats built for long offshore passages will have much larger capacities for storage,fuel,water etc. than a boat designed for the charter business. Be honest with yourself when making your decisions because while everyone might like to own a purpose built offshore cruising boat if your real purpose is to cruise the Med or Caribbean or Mexico then you can buy a newer and larger more comfortable high production boat that will do the job just fine.

[TheThunderbird]

Robert Sailor, you are perfectly right !

Any tool, its own purpose. There is a wide array of styles, needs, and solutions in life, for everything, yet hardly as many as in 'sailing'

I just read through the ad by Nautor Oy about their new (hideous, to me) Swan65, l deem into the 2m price tag...

They openly admit it being a vacationing cruiser for "light winds" and with much laid out unobtrusive space on deck...

Now, compare it with the glorious Swan 65' which won the first Whitbread... And put it all in perspective.
Money doesn't come anymore with Passion and Knowledge, and they need to Sell (RR refused - Refused - to sell to the non-dignified ones, and some custom-Porsches are still Deliberately not-for-sale to the inapt driver (models959;, 918; GT2)).

The same as Swans is when comparing a Ferrari 275GTC (an auto for the gentleman driver who HAD to be a great pilot too) to a nowadays Ferrari California being sold to the upscale hair saloon owners in California/elsewhere

Then, feel free to be on which side of truth you prefer to be, and where your Spirit (if any...) may find its Comfort Zone and identification (mirroring)

[Ignaz]

Long Boglehead-type response: Varied thoughts to anyone making any big purchase, particularly a dynamic one (like a boat +/- fixer upper):

1). Do you routinely finish life projects? Have you succeeded in devouring completely every venture you've undertaken or is your life full of examples of ventures started and quickly stopped with much money/time lost in you life with such things? If lots of "got tired with it" in ones past, they should invest little money (but unlimited time) for a season or two before investing more.

2). Assuming you routinely complete complex projects, do you have a history of buying less than biggest and best and be happy with it, or can you cite many examples where you upgraded, possibly being less efficient with money because of upgrades/trading up to bigger/better?

The advice "buy the smallest boat you can afford" is the best advice speaking to a large group of people, but it's probably not good advice for people with money to burn and it's very bad advice for those who really get into and maximize all opportunities of their life activities.

In cars, planes, boats, homes, and everywhere else we can find people who have dumped love, time, and money into their endeavors. What frustrates me is that often the folks who have done this start of with a substrate (e.g. clapped out car or boat) that, once shiny and beautiful, is worth a fraction of what the larger version would be worth, had these individuals started with a slightly more expensive "project" to fix up.

Example 1: buy/fix up 20k home in a neighborhood where the home if fixed up is worth 60k

Example 2: buy/fix up 30k home in neighborhood where the home of fixed up is worth 100k

Assume both houses have 2 bedrooms and two bathrooms and 1 kitchen. The cost in time and money to fix each house will be roughly similar. Short of infatuation of some type with the house in the crappy neighborhood, it's not logical to buy the cheaper fixer upper. Same with boats.

Myself I've purchases a vintage plastic boat with excellent pedigree. I bought it for relative peanuts intending to replace everything but the hull, engine, and spars. I don't have a budget but suffice it to say should be complete for around 100k with all new everything ( electric heads, boom furler, radar, water maker, etc), as good/better than any new factory boat with the factory boat costing 5-8x the price of my total investment (importantly with me doing all the work).