Home Built Catamaran

[uniopp]

I’m looking at purchasing a 1994 42’ sailing catamaran. We know who the designer was (Roger Simpson in Australia) but we don’t know who the builder was. I suspect it was home built. Now my question is does it really matter? Provided it passes the survey, should I be worried if it wasn’t professionally built by a know boatbuilder? Does that have an impact on the price I offer now when I buy it and later when I sell it?
As no one knows who built it, how do we know it’s really is a 1994 model?
The HIN indicates unknown builder and build year.
What do you think?

[catsketcher]

Gday Uniopp,

It is hard to know without seeing the boat. It could be a great boat or a bad boat - with custom cats it is hard to tell.

I built my own cat and she is lighter and stronger than any equivalent 38ft cat. She is therefore faster. I think she is well built. My friend, who built his own Schionning, was amazed at the awful build quality of his previous production cat - bits of choppy used to hold mould halves together pushed into voids with a stick. His Schionning would be a great buy, carefully built by a real craftsman. There are others that would be less of a good buy.

Go carefully through the boat. Get into the dark places and check the condition of the structure, looking for black timber showing water damage, or for other problems.

I reckon I can tell in a minute or two whether a boat has been built carefully. It could be something as simple as the edging of the glass tapes on bulkheads, or the way the holes have been drilled for the electrical conduit. Does the epoxy look thick and blemish free? Are the timber edges rounded over consistently? Are there any hairline cracks showing?

I would prefer a nice custom cat to most production cats, because they are lighter and faster for a certain price and room point. But don't put too much emphasis on the electronics, on a 1994 boat, they could all need replacing soon anyway. The bones are the important bits.

[Manateeman]

Lay down under it and ask yourself if it looks like a good boat. If it was not built straight and symmetrical you will see that more easily than topside.
Then run your hands over the whole boat. Get a small hammer and pretend you are a woodpecker. Mark any weird area and then find it inside the hull...two people are a help doing this.
After that, any good book on how to do a survey will help.
Then, hire a real surveyor and point out any odd things you found.
Seen great home built boats and horrible OEM stuff. No telling by the label.
Mark

[thesaltytar]

Originally Posted by Manateeman

Lay down under it and ask yourself if it looks like a good boat.

...of course you would want to get the manatee's eye-view...

[Fore and Aft]

Uniopp if you know anything about glassing then have a good look at the interior layup and see what sort of glass was used and how many bubbles is in it. I recently surveyed a plywood Easy cat that had a large amount of chop strand mat on the inside and was full of air bubbles. Check out the photo below, that is just an awful fiberglass job. They have obviously used epoxy resin as the fiberglass has not wet out properly.
Thesaltytar dugongs offering in water surveys is just killing my surveying business. Apparently they just work for pizza and beer.
Cheers

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Manateeman

. Get a small hammer and pretend you are a woodpecker.

Please don't do that
Saw a "surveyor" do that to a foam Kevlar epoxy build and left dings all over the boat

The end of your finger and an ear works just as well at finding voids and bulkheads on a lightly built boat

I get pissed of when travel lift operators pull out the hammer on ours and she's 2 inch spotted gum
I can find the frames and bulkheads knocking on her like a door with my hand.

[Manateeman]

Well the manatee eye view also gives you an idea of how comfortable you will be when it’s flipped over. Hold on.
The manatee crew.

[catsketcher]

Good point Simi - I tend to knock with my knuckles. It doesn't leave a mark. The light laminates of some larger cats - down to 400gm could certainly ding. I am not sure if Pumpkin eater was not just 10 oz (less than 300gm) cloth each side of about 12mm foam - but she was an all out racer.

The photo from Fore and Aft's Easy survey has me running for the exit - fast. Run away, run away. Anyone who would put choppy inside a ply hull has either total rocks in the head, or is trying to cover something up - using a method that screams "Dodgy here - look at me!" What a stupid thing to do. Epoxy does not usually like choppy - the sizing (the chemical etching on the glass fibres) does not like the epoxy as much as polyester. And you can't use polyester to bond glass to wood because it is so much weaker than epoxy bonding. What was the dodgy builder thinking.

Great pic of the dugong by the way - I wasn't sure what it was at first.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Please don't do that
Saw a "surveyor" do that to a foam Kevlar epoxy build and left dings all over the boat

The end of your finger and an ear works just as well at finding voids and bulkheads on a lightly built boat

I get pissed of when travel lift operators pull out the hammer on ours and she's 2 inch spotted gum
I can find the frames and bulkheads knocking on her like a door with my hand.

I do tap the hull but it is with the plastic back side of a phillips screwdriver. I have also seen a surveyor use a ball peen hammer to sound a hull letting it actually bounce off the hull. If it had been my boat, I know where the ball of that hammer would end up.