Buy a boat for the future, now?

[lustyd]

I am looking for a boat with all the toys to make my life easier. I can indeed retro fit them to the right boat at the right price. But hopefully there is one out there that has it all

Fairly unlikely, and even worse I tried to sell my SO36.2 last year and was told those upgrades don't attract a better price in any way. As such pretty much every boat we've looked at lacked spinnaker gear, solar, Lithium, and all but one had obsolete electronics for which charts were no longer available, and without exception the ropes were too stiff to operate.

I was going to mention this further up when someone was comparing the boat cost and mooring costs. If you buy twice you may well upgrade everything twice so the higher mooring might be the cheaper optioin overall.

 

[mrming]

Second hand boats with modern equipment are out there, but they're rarer as @lustyd says. Either a wealthy seller who is trading up, or someone who has fitted out for the dream and had their circumstances change.

In all my years racing and cruising I've only sailed on two boats where the owners did basic maintenance but upgraded nothing. Every other owner is / was always adding new stuff. That's the reality of owning a used boat I think, there will usually be an ongoing program of maintenance and upgrades, and as others have said, you might as well do it to a boat you're going to keep for a while.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

But I have never had a boat with in mast furling, is it any good?

IMO ... indispensable for a casual single-hander ... make sure the sails are kept in good condition though, once they lose their stiffness and stretch a bit they can jam up the furler - otherwise they are fine. My anecdotal experience, I've only ever had in-mast furling on my own boats, and never had a problem with the Selden system in going on 15 years. Wouldn't buy a boat without it.

I have chartered boats with stack-packs, the most recent a SO40 in Thailand. The battens kept getting stuck in the lazy-jacks, and the boom was so high I was unable to reach the head of the sail to secure the halyard when the sail was down - forget being able to zip up the lazy bag.

On the furling front, we did have a problem with a chartered Beneteau 46 once, with a saggy mainsail, which kept jamming as the stretched sail didn't roll up without creating large folds inside the mast - these folds then got pulled out the slot when unfurling and jammed the system. Very poor sail condition was the culprit - letting the sail out on starboard tack solved the problem as the wind on the sail effectively closed the slot and prevented the folds from exiting. We spent a week only letting the sail out on starboard tack and didn't have any further problems.

I don't want to start a war over roller reefing vs slab with stack-pack, but there are a bunch of talking points. There is a lot of negative press about roller reefing as it doesn't appeal to the purists, and those that race, know more about performance sailing than those that cruise, so they tend to assume their preferences are universal.

With a furling system, the sails will not set as well as a stack-pack, and you sacrifice sail area. This is true, a horizontally battened main will have a better shape and and a larger surface area. This is the ONLY compromise you must accept with roller reefing mains.

Weight up high on the mast - this is a left-over from retrofitted furling systems in days gone by, where the additional weight was never taken into account when the boat was designed (and boats were generally smaller) - Today it is, so it is a non-issue.

Talk about reliability is a red herring - there are thousands of yachts sailing with both systems and if there was a significant issue with one or the other, then this argument would not still be raging - there are anecdotal stories on both sides of the reliability fence with no clear winner.

Advantages of a decent furling system:

You are not constrained to 3 or 4 choices of sail size, reefing options are pretty much infinite so balancing genny and main is easy at all wind strengths.
You don't have multiple reefing lines running the length of the boom to snag and flail around as you take reefs in or shake them out.
No lazy-jacks to snag the battens.
No sail bag with a zip - also running the length of the boom (which on most modern cruisers is out of reach above the spray hood and bimini.)
No folded sail on the boom to collect rain water.
Roller reefing can be reefed from the cockpit while remaining on the same course, you almost never have to motor into the wind and waves to change the sail size.

My opinion, unless you are a racer or derive a great part of your enjoyment from well set sails and extracting the ultimate performance from your boat, then furling is a non-issue - folding props, a clean bottom, and performance oriented sail controls (like a mainsheet at the rear of the boom etc.) will also make a big difference - so on an average, modern, cruising boat, arguing for only one aspect of overall performance, while accepting the compromises of the rest is a bit of a moot point IMO. If performance matters to you, don't buy a cruising boat, buy a racer.

 

[lustyd]

Every other owner is / was always adding new stuff

One boat we tried to buy the owner had replaced the saloon cushions at great expense as well as spending a fortune on new AGM house batteries but there were rusty seacocks, maintenance issues gallore and nothing charging those batteries, which at a year old couldn't even turn on the wind instruments. We decided not to proceed!

 

[doug748]

"One thing I did consider was if in mast furling is a good idea. Obviously for me it will mean not having to go on deck.
A few of the SO's I have looked at online have this. "

If you do want a boat, as you say, for coastal pottering in familiar waters, can cope with the look of them and don't mind the performance hit, they are fine. They will help you cope with a larger boat and most unlikely to cause real difficulties inshore.

Go for it, you may even find it depresses asking prices if already fitted .

.

 

[fredrussell]

I think the dinette seating / linear galley layout in the 34.2 is a bit of an odd choice for a boat that size. Depends how you plan to use the boat of course, but if you like to put your feet up and read a book, there's nowhere to do it down below. With port and starboard settees, two people can stretch out in comfort.

To each their own of course, but I very much agree with Mrming’s post. The first thing I thought looking at the seating arrangement was “where does one recline with a good book?”

 

[Laysula]

I like my Inmast furling. It makes life easy. Our last boat had a self tacking jib, that really made things easy especially single handing.

 

[jwilson]

The biggest question is are you mostly sailing off and back to a swinging mooring? In which case size is no problem. Some marinas though have narrow gaps between pontoons short finger berths, and/or tide running through them. Size becomes a problem there.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

"One thing I did consider was if in mast furling is a good idea. Obviously for me it will mean not having to go on deck.
A few of the SO's I have looked at online have this. "

If you do want a boat, as you say, for coastal pottering in familiar waters, can cope with the look of them and don't mind the performance hit, they are fine. They will help you cope with a larger boat and most unlikely to cause real difficulties inshore.

Go for it, you may even find it depresses asking prices if already fitted .

.

.... and there is no shortage of people who agree with you!

 

[lustyd]

The first thing I thought looking at the seating arrangement was “where does one recline with a good book?”

If it's anything like ours then on the 2 cabin owners version the answer would be the main cabin. Our bed is larger than a superking and very comfortable to recline and read, and there's a little bedside table for a glass/mug of something too. Ours does have a sofa to port and a separate table and seating/sofa to starboard, but I don't tend to sit there much as the bed is more comfortable so the table area is mainly for eating and socialising.

 

[doug748]

.... and there is no shortage of people who agree with you!

View attachment 185622View attachment 185623View attachment 185624

Ho ho.


Choices are best based on facts and your own personal requirements.

There are two, fraternal, silly camps of sailing folk on here; you can phrase their arguments like this:

1) Good old days: New fangled ideas never work, they don't build it/do it like they used to. I will stick with my Offshore 15 Turdstrangler and paraffin engine. Don't give me any of that new crap

2) Things have moved on: It's new, so it is better, why can't you understand simple logic? I don't care if it is designed for specialist use, unnecessary, badly made or a worse idea than what went before. It's new, I will have it, you are a dinosaur.
Don't give me any of that old crap.

Most readers will have rumbled that the two camps are essentially the same. There are advantages to it. If you are not a deep thinker by birth or inclination it has the pleasing economy of requiring no thought at all.

Again. Choices are best based on facts and your own personal requirements. Most bad advice is dished out on forums because it overlooks one or the other.

.

 

[Tranona]

I completely agree with you. This whole thread has provided a wonderful insight into my direction of travel.
I am looking for a boat with all the toys to make my life easier. I can indeed retro fit them to the right boat at the right price. But hopefully there is one out there that has it all

One thing I did consider was if in mast furling is a good idea. Obviously for me it will mean not having to go on deck.
A few of the SO's I have looked at online have this. Every boat I have had with a stack pack, the sail battens get caught on the lazy jacks and I end up flapping around trying to free them. But I have never had a boat with in mast furling, is it any good?

You don't say what your budget is as this has a big influence on how many toys one can expect. My 2015 Bavaria 33 had almost all the toys because that is what I specified when it was built. The only major thing I did not specify was heating, but adding that would have been small beer on a £80k+ boat (which is what they sell for now). The only thing I regret not specifying was the better sails, particularly as I had in mast. After a few years Kemps made me a new one using Vectran which was a massive improvement, as well as adding a furling cruising chute. Furling mains are less common in sub 36' on French boats, largely because they stress the "performance" aspect of boats and partly because they don't generally use Selden which is arguably the best system. For me in mast is a no brainer for coastal cruising, particularly single handed, as is the more recent small foresail fractional rigs such as Hanse and Bavaria have used for some time as have some of the smaller French boats. The larger mainsails are much easier to handle and as Baggywrinkle points out are much more flexible in sail area, something the "oldies" do not seem to appreciate, probably because they have never sailed a modern fractionally rigged boat with in mast!

If you go back a further 10 years and a budget more in the £50-60k than £80k you are likely to find less goodies from new - bow thrusters, windlasses, nav gear which although being state of the art at the time and still functional would be coming up for replacement. Plus the extra years of use (and probably multiple owners) likely means more replacements needed - sails for example. A couple of issues ago PBO reviewed a Bavaria 30 from 2007 that had been bought for sub £40k and the new owner spent £8k on replacement and ugrades. It was a one owner from new "retirement" boat and was well equipped from new and in constant use until the owner decided to sell before he got too old. Quite a lot of new boat purchases , at least in the past, are retirement buys and provided they are still in active use make good used boat buys.

Going back another 10 years to the late 90s early 2000s the choice widens in both range and number available. These were boom years with the big builders selling collectively over 1000 9-12m boats a year in the UK alone. Inevitably a much more mixed bag, although in terms of basic structures these boats have stood up well condition and levels of equipment tend to be much more variable. A big jump over the previous generation though in terms of levels of standard equipment, particularly electrical systems. There is however a healthy demand so prices have held up - my 2001 Bavaria 37 which I sold in 2015 fetched about 20% more when it changed hands earlier this year, although to be fair it was in better condition because of upgrades and replacements in the intervening 9 years.

 

[winch2]

Was in a similiar position earlier this year. Hadn't sailed/managed/moored a boat for many years and met someone who wanted to get bk on the water so we started looking and very quickly got just a tad scared. Long story short.

Ended up with a much smaller boat which has actually been rather good playing a really important role in re-aquainting ourselves with boating and the sea.... but I'm def ready for something bigger now.

Maybe we should have just taken the plunge and gone large from the outset....It's hard to say as we've had a superb summer in the tiddler and re-learnt a massive amount in all aspects of boating which we can now take forward.

 

[rotrax]

If it's anything like ours then on the 2 cabin owners version the answer would be the main cabin. Our bed is larger than a superking and very comfortable to recline and read, and there's a little bedside table for a glass/mug of something too. Ours does have a sofa to port and a separate table and seating/sofa to starboard, but I don't tend to sit there much as the bed is more comfortable so the table area is mainly for eating and socialising.

Here is a pic of our huge pilothouse. Table can seat 9 around it with two tall stools. One helm seat and the fixed seat allows a 'legs up' recline, as does the rear seating acrossways. Boat is 41 feet, 12 feet beam.

She is for sale. The pilothouse comfort, seating and view will be what we miss most when she is gone.

Sorry, the pic is too large for this site. You might get some idea from the pic that will download.

Comforable reclining in the pilothouse or in the unique front cockpit.

 

[Wansworth]

Definitely in a small cruiser two berths were one can recline or read are essential unfortunately many designs had one side fitted as a kitchen range ….the influence of women on design

 

[RogerJolly]

Fairly unlikely, and even worse I tried to sell my SO36.2 last year and was told those upgrades don't attract a better price in any way. As such pretty much every boat we've looked at lacked spinnaker gear, solar, Lithium, and all but one had obsolete electronics for which charts were no longer available, and without exception the ropes were too stiff to operate.

I was going to mention this further up when someone was comparing the boat cost and mooring costs. If you buy twice you may well upgrade everything twice so the higher mooring might be the cheaper optioin overall.

You don't need all this fancy stuff if you never leave the marina, like most boats don't.

 

[rotrax]

All boats are a compromise. We thought we would keep our present boat for ten years. During that time, averaging 2000 NM's each season, we have bought it up to the spec we needed.

We would not have found one ten years ago with the current spec.

I think the OP has unrealistic expectations. He might be lucky, but not very likely.

 

[lustyd]

We would not have found one ten years ago with the current spec.

No, but if you'd bought a smaller boat 10 years ago you'd have had to upgrade the boat and start the process again on a bigger one.

OP seems to be able to afford either option so depending on the scale of the upgrades it makes sense to do it all once and take the small hit on mooring fees. I've spent probably £20k upgrading and updating mine so it would have been madness to do that twice in order to save £1000/year on mooring.

 

[PaulRainbow]

I think the dinette seating / linear galley layout in the 34.2 is a bit of an odd choice for a boat that size. Depends how you plan to use the boat of course, but if you like to put your feet up and read a book, there's nowhere to do it down below. With port and starboard settees, two people can stretch out in comfort.

Could not agree more. Some friends had a SO with the linear galley, what an uncomfortable thing to try and relax in, they hadn't thought about it when they bought it, but wish they had.

 

[Sea Change]

If it's anything like ours then on the 2 cabin owners version the answer would be the main cabin. Our bed is larger than a superking and very comfortable to recline and read, and there's a little bedside table for a glass/mug of something too. Ours does have a sofa to port and a separate table and seating/sofa to starboard, but I don't tend to sit there much as the bed is more comfortable so the table area is mainly for eating and socialising.

Probably depends on your climate and what you get up to throughout the day, but on our boat the beds are strictly put of bounds for anybody except the freshly showered. Once you get salt in to bed sheets nothing will get it out again except a washing machine.

(Of course a sacrificial sheet/throw would solve this problem slightly cheaper than buying a larger boat )