Hypothetically speaking - new or 10-20 year-old prod boat for blue water sailing?

[sailorboy1]

[QUOTE=JPA Cate;3847790

It is good that SB1 has had no such problems with his boat. [/QUOTE]

I come across 100s of real cruisers a year and most are now on "production:

I am not alone with not having a problem.

[Kd9truck]

The best thing you can do for yourself is to get educated on the construction and design qualities of sailboats. Only you can know what’s best for you. Lots of opinions here from a lot of people from around the world.
The best answers are the ones you solve your self. The best mistakes, the ones you don’t forget are the ones you make your self.I humbly offer, asking this forum such a broad question is like asking the meaning of life.

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Kd9truck

asking this forum such a broad question is like asking the meaning of life.

.... 42

[Kd9truck]

My vessel is in my bio, a production vessel that spent its first 2 years in charter in the BVI. It was in partnership with SunSail. The owner died and it was sold to another who took it up the east coast. The second owner was a concert pianist, and taught music as a professor in a college. He was very protective of his hands I am assuming because he did absolutely no work to the boat. After three years he listed it, it was when I found it 2 years on the hard. I bought it after digging in to compartments all over it like I was the surveyor. I found that it was a great vessel for me. It was the most boat for the cheapest price I could find in the best condition. I had looked aggressively for 1 year. Looking and then researching every vessel I had seen.
There are some really good production vessels and some not so good ones, some are bad because of owners, som are bad because of builders. Due diligence is key.
I would stay away from vessels that have the bilge support grids glued down. Mine has a performance hull its grid support system is glassed in with Kevlar from the factory. Not sure if this is because of its “performance” status or if all Jeanneau’s of 2010 have that but it is definitely a level above what’s being done today with many prod builders. I took a Yanmar class and the mechanic instructor said that all new motors are harder to work on because of all the new EPA restrictions. The marina I keep my boat in has four launches with the same motor that I have Yanmar 4jh5e, there’s a motor on its 4th rebuild, they rebuild every 10k miles.
Read up in owners forums on FB, sailboatdata, look up PRF. ratings, look at the polars if you can find them for the boat you are looking at. cross reference prices in brokerage sites and FSBO like sailboatlistings.com,… go hunting for a gem,… dig through the ones you get on board for, you will learn a lot about the condition when doing so, be your own surveyor…..Trust your gut if your good at making decisions….on price alone I would start at the 10 yr mark. There’s more history to reference.

Cheers

[Kd9truck]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

.... 42

***** I thought it was 24

[Blue Swede]

Hanse 5 series, best bang for buck imo. I might be biased as an owner of a 2014 Hanse 575.

[HC Sailing]

… and there I go still in favour of a Hans Christian 33 from 30+ years ago for the same thing.
But then, my budget is smaller 🙃

[Island Time O25]

My personal knowledge is somewhat limited to ownership of about 5 boats in the past 17 years and coastal sailing in the past 25 years. However, a very good friend of mine was a boat builder/naval architect in the old country and personally built over 300 boats from dinghies to 40 footers. So I believe his opinion is valuable.

According to him, and I alluded to some of his musings earlier in this thread, the very latest modern, i.e. post 70s, production methods and QC as well as quality of the production staff are very short of ideal. Sometimes they produce a good boat (design, construction and QC) and sometimes (more often) they do not.

All boats are a mix of compromises. On the totem pole of importance some are way at the bottom but some are way on the top. As an example. Then practically new Bavaria 36 in service of a local sailing club in Boston. After a day sail by a crew of 3 they came back to complain about the head. The then club maintenance manager (another friend of mine) goes in to see what the problem was. Turned out the issue was simple - a 6gal waste water tank. 6gal, not 36gal, not 26 not even 16 but 6!

And to top it off it was a liner tank meaning there was no room and no way to replace it with the larger sized one! Now, we can discuss that this is not an issue for a bluewater cruiser, etc. Until it comes to port with no discharge zone and spotty pump out service. How do you fix this inherent design/build flaw? You can't. So you end up with a brand new, somewhat pretty boat with a totally useless head. On the plus side - at the time those Bavaria 36 were going for under $200K.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

According to him, and I alluded to some of his musings earlier in this thread, the very latest modern, i.e. post 70s, production methods and QC as well as quality of the production staff are very short of ideal.

Post 70s construction

[CarlF]

None of the "production" boats you mentioned are great for crossing oceans. Sure, many do -- but they are really designed for coastal cruising.

A true blue water boat will have more tankage and storage, heavier construction, and proper sea berths.

[Fore and Aft]

CarlF that's the sort of statement that makes a lot of my clients burst out laughing. I can't even tell you how many stock standard unmodified production boats I have surveyed that have either circumnavigated or done serious offshore voyages. I am not even sure what a proper sea berth looks like, what's the extra storage for or how much extra tankage you need. There's a whole crowd of people who take the production boat they have and just go sailing.
Cheers

[Kd9truck]

...All boats are a mix of compromises. On the totem pole of importance some are way at the bottom but some are way on the top. As an example. Then practically new Bavaria 36 in service of a local sailing club in Boston. After a day sail by a crew of 3 they came back to complain about the head. The then club maintenance manager (another friend of mine) goes in to see what the problem was. Turned out the issue was simple - a 6gal waste water tank. 6gal, not 36gal, not 26 not even 16 but 6!

And to top it off it was a liner tank meaning there was no room and no way to replace it with the larger sized one! Now, we can discuss that this is not an issue for a bluewater cruiser, etc. Until it comes to port with no discharge zone and spotty pump out service. How do you fix this inherent design/build flaw? You can't. So you end up with a brand new, somewhat pretty boat with a totally useless head. On the plus side - at the time those Bavaria 36 were going for under $200K.

Shocking right? At least at first.

All boats are a mix of compromises.

Hi all, while in search of the “next boat” I discovered that not all vessels are built and sold with black water tanks in the Europe market. I was actually shocked that you could buy a vessel without one. My current vessel is a 2010 and it has 3 20 gallon black water tanks (1 for each head) as it was commissioned in charter partnership (seen as “owners version”). A great many things are not stock, they are “options” the choice $$$ of the original commissioning body (including black water tanks) to put simply the first owner chooses what goes in the vessel.
In this sense all production vessels are custom to a point so I am told.

Laws and regulations change,( always adding seemingly never removing ) what your friend may have encountered was an item needed to solve the law but negates functional use. Could be a fiscal choice could be a racing choice.

production boats.
Point of origin is a big thing coupled with the year and sometimes month it was built. Reading into owners forums threads are a good head spinning way to understand what you are getting into.

Cheers

[HuffinPuff]

It really just depends on how well the boat is taken care of. I have a 5 year old boat that came out of charter and it's taken a year to fix all of the issues as a result of being in charter. That said I had a hunter legend that was 20 years old and it was in great shape. It had been owned by three others before me and all of them gave it a great deal of love.

[VikingBlod]

My advice to the OP is to get out on as many passages as you can to experience real extended blue water cruising. It's what I did and my option quickly changed on what I found to be important in a boat. So the question of new vs used will be more about finding a boat that meets your design criteria, layout, storage, tankage, convienences etc..

A boat at the dock is not the same as a boat on passage. This is where you learn how it sails and all the slamming and noises it makes and your ability to handle it, importance of tankage (are you loading the rail up with Jerry Cans), Cooking underway (linear galleys are great at the dock not so much under passage), handholds, storage, movement around cockpit and access to the deck and water. And when the weather is bad are you stuck in a cave or does the boat have good visibility while below.

I was looking for a boat to live on, and like you considered something in the lower 40 ft range. But ended up finding a 7 yr old, 58' modern blue water cruiser that had almost all we were looking for, but it needed a little TLC. The seller was motivated so was able to get it for a price much better than a new or even used production boat in the 40 to 50 ft range. Patience was critical as there were several items identified in the survey the seller resolved as part of the negotiations.

My 2 cents worth of wisdom. Key point is to get the offshore experience as that makes the other decisions easier, once you know how to prioritize.