Canados 23 or San Lorenzo 70 - would you buy either of these?

A

Andrew72

Member
Joined
27 Mar 2012
Messages
26
Location
London
Visit site
Hello everyone,

A few months ago I had a crazy idea to buy a boat and live on it (as you can see in my previous thread here)

Despite some very sensible advice telling me to start with a smaller boat, I'm still interested in buying a big boat and living on it - albeit part time. I'm planning to spend a few days each week on the boat while it's moored in London so it's convenient for work. The mooring is already arranged :)

I've seen a few big boats recently including this San Lorenzo 70 for 260k euro and this Canados 23 for 300k euro.

I know they're huge boats to start my boating dream on but I'll be combining living costs with boating costs. Hopefully, the boat won't seem as much of a money pit that way.

I'm under no illusions that this is going to be a cheap dream though!

I thought I'd check with you all on your thoughts on these 2 boats. They're both GRP hulls - so I'm at least taking on some of the advice given to me in my previous thread :)

SAN LORENZO 70


.....

8024813334


More photos here ..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8788882@N08/sets/72157631623813658/

PROs

- All GRP boat
- 2 double bedrooms
- Engine room access is via full sized door inside boat - or is this negative? Will the noise / engine room smell be a problem for the adjacent cabin? It seemed ok when I looked at it.
- New anodes AUG 2012
- New wooden floors throughout
- New windlass
- No broker fees
- New window covers
- New fly canopy


CONs (they don't seem that bad though)

- Slight water ingress on right helm window
- Engine room is slightly smaller than Canados
- Bad bathroom decor - very dated - it's this weird marble "effect" plastic that looks like it's from a Travelodge that hasn't been updated yet! :)
- Crew cabin needs updating
- Less flexibility on price - probably 10% off max
- Faded / milky lacquer on wood surfaces near windows
- Faded / milky lacquer on wooden navigation table near helm
- No tender included in price
- Small gelcoat / paint cracks on blue section outside near galley door
- Old fashioned / box-like stern and transom
- Light wood interior looks a bit dated. It's not bad but very 90s.


CANADOS 23

8024652911


More photos here ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8788882@N08/sets/72157631623933689/

PROs

- The lines of the boat are nicer than the SL70. The stern / transom looks a lot more modern.
- Interior wood is in excellent condition
- Bathroom cherry wood decor is very good and looks luxurious / timeless
- New windlass
- Mechanically / structurally "seems" very sound (to my untrained eye)
- Should be able to get a good deal - maybe 200k or less?
- New batteries
- Fly / deck teak in very good condition


CONs (Some big, some small)

- Smells of smoke - this may have been more noticeable because the owner was smoking an enormous cigar on the aft deck and his wife was smoking inside the main lounge. Yuck! :(

I don't remember the smell of smoke down in the cabins too much though.

Would replacing the carpet / curtains and giving everything (including the headlining) a deep clean get rid of that stale smoke smell? I hate cigarette smoke and it concerns me that I'd be buying a giant, floating ash tray.

- Patches of rotten wood on gunwhale. You can see the video of it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcM6jU-Z8nc

- Superstructure needs repaint. Short term it's ok but not sure how long it will last in UK climate? 1 winter before a total repaint is needed?
- Hull needs clean / polish / re-paint. Clean and polish may be enough
- Handrail needs refurbishing
- Carpet needs replacing - it's OK short term though
- Old furnishings - new upholstery needed
- old equipment (Nav, etc) but it's all working though.
- Some spotlights missing on aft deck (shown in video link above)
- No bimini or flybridge canopy

Would the cost of repairing the gunwhale and repainting the (wooden) superstructure offset any potential savings on the purchase price?

On the face of it, the San Lorenzo seems the better purchase, even if it costs more to buy than the Canados.

I'm quite sure I'd be happy to sail away in the San Lorenzo straight away. The Canados is the nicer boat though IMHO.

Or should I forget both of these and continue searching for something better?

Thanks in advance for any advice :)
 
Just bringing this back up to the top

Both potentially lovely boats, and potential nightmares in the wrong hands. BartW bought the same Canados a couple of years ago and has refitted it and made a fantastic boat. But, and please don't take this the wrong way, he is a smart hands on guy who knows boats and engineering concepts well and he has deep enough pockets for the project. With both these boats you need to be dedicated and hands on and be happy to get surprise buills fo £25k per pop, several times, or you can be hands off but happy to pay £50k surprise bills.

Getting either of these to London is a €45k budget task, and when you have done that the boat is worth €45k less becuase the only market to sell these boats is Med so any future buyer will knock off the €45k transport cost.

So what I'm really saying is look and think very carefully before you buy one - sorry to lecture but i don't "know you" on this forum hence the warnings

(The Canados woud look better if the suoperstructure black/grey patches were reinstated to original factory spec, btw)

Bonne chance!
 
Hmm,
Having read the OP,s link to his original post,and looked at these two boats with a view to renting a birth at St Kats , coupled with little experiance , I would say do not do it.
Put the € 300000 into a property in docklands ( use the DLR ) to get to work
Use your " rent" money to fund or part fund a mortgage and factor in the saving in birthing fees , poss to add to this ? Or fund a fraction ownership scheeme in boat somewhere else from London .Or----
Buy something ( boat) small to start with to get sea miles etc
Within a few years you will be £ ££ in as they say
Should you lose your job you could let/ sell the flat
Separate leisure from serious investment decisions you are trying , and I can see why to combine the two.It will not work
Play the London property MKt and with bit of luck in few years retire early sell up / downsize and realise the " dream" with one of these babies in a sunny clime
Sorry I have not chosen one I can not differentiate .
 
What a great project, well worth reading through bartw's posts.

Current boat at the top of my shopping list is a SL72. €3.6 plus tax so gives an idea of depreciation :-)

As said above, more suited to the med ad save 2 x €45k shipping costs.
 
Big hull windows are now an option Great from the inside but does loose some of the exterior line.
 
Portofino said:
I would say do not do it.
Put the € 300000 into a property in docklands...
Click to expand...
Sensible suggestion, but since when boats have anything to see with rationality...? :)

Fwiw - if the OP wants to go for that in spite of more sensible views - at that age of boats I'd rather look for Canados than SL (AOTBE), but both of them are definitely good choices.
Considering the type of usage, I'd surely look also for other types of boats, as Hatteras and the likes, for instance.
If nothing else, 'cause many of them were built with stabilisers, which are impossible to find on old(ish) planing boats, and are tricky to retrofit.

Good luck anyway!
 
Last edited:
MRC said:
Big hull windows are now an option
Click to expand...
Wow, I wasn't aware of that.
Tough times for every builder, I suppose.
They must have included them because some client was considering it a deal breaker... :)
 
The Canados wins in terms of handling, the 23 is the latest version like Bart 70S with some changes to aft.
San Lorenzo wins in higher quality of fitting.
The San Lorenzo 70 was available with a modern nice sloop stern like modern SLs in its fall 1994 - 96 built versions. She was first model along with the old 62 to have this stern and we had in Malta named Catari. I think she was sold in South of France in like 2002. The 70 is a very wet ride indeed, especially with small -1100hp engines. They top about 25-28 knots, but have a COG which is too much forard IMO. They will ride better to a Canados only in following seas due to deep Vee the San Lorenzo has.
http://www.mondialbroker.it/detail.taf?B=305793&K=BPS Please note that this broker is quoting it as 72 somethng entirely false. The bathing platform of this one has also been extended in length.
The 70 is recognized versus the 72 by the following;
- slimmer hull
- window profiles and flybridge being somewhat looking longer
- central aerlion (mast) radar arch
- flash side decks (no step) the 72 has a step in the middle of side deck if I remember well
 
Thanks for everyone's comments so far.

@JFM - Recently BartW very kindly showed me around his Canados and it's a beautiful boat. You're quite right about him being knowledgeable about boats. I was rather in awe of him. I, on the other hand, am pretty clueless by comparison! :)

He showed me a spreadsheet of his costs for the boat and it was er ... a bit staggering. A good dose of reality for me, that's for sure. Other owners of these older, Italian yachts I've spoken to have said that the buying of the boat was the cheap part.

So you're right to give me a lecture - I need all the advice I can get :)

As for getting the boat to London, I agree it's not the ideal solution. I'd much rather buy a similar sort of boat in the UK, but they're just not available. Even something like this very old, wooden Versilcraft 55 footer in the UK, seems very expensive. Although I suspect it will sell for a lot less than £135k. I'd hope so, anyway.

I have considered the idea of something like a mid 90s Sunseeker Manhattan 62. Do you think the cost of owning that would be similar or less than the Canados?

@Portofino - You're right, I'm probably being very naive with some of my expectations and property (and a smaller boat) would be the more sensible route to take. I'm just being impatient I guess.

That said, I'm not going to make any rash decisions and buy either of these boats in the next few weeks. I'm sure they won't be selling quickly anyway and it's good for me to spend more time considering my options.

@PowerYachtBlog - Thanks for the insight into the specs and handling. With my untrained eye, I couldn't tell too much difference in the quality of fittings on these 2 boats. They both seemed very good quality all round. My preference is the Canados for a few reasons to do with the styling, cherry wood interior, etc.

@MapisM - A couple of Hatteras yachts have caught my eye and I'm going to look at them too. It's worth keeping my options open at this stage.

I'm curious to know if anyone thinks that the potential / inevitable surprise bills on a Sunseeker Manahattan / Hatteras would be in the same region as that of the Canados. Or would they be cheaper to run? I suspect they'd be easier to sell again.

Also, what are your opinions on the smoke smell in the Canados? Is this easily fixed in a boat? It's not like a house where I can just repaint the interior. Would replacing the carpet / curtains / upholstery and giving it a good clean fix this? I realise this isn't the most important question concerning boats like these but I wonder, is it worth avoiding "smokey" boats altogether?

I'm going to look at some more boats in the UK in the near future so will post my findings here as it may help (or put off?) any other novices with similar, crazy ideas.

I don't want to be the boating equivalent of those idiots you see on numerous property shows on TV. You know the ones - they buy a house with absolutely no idea of the real costs involved, underestimate maintenance needed and wonder why they go over budget by 50% and can't afford to keep their home. Oh dear, I'm sure I must seem EXACTLY like that to you guys at the moment :)

Thanks again for all your input. One day I WILL get a boat and hopefully there'll come a time when I can actually give something back to this brilliant forum :)
 
If you have a direct line to Bart, then use it. No one on here knows more about the ups and downs of running a Canados than him on this forum. In terms of smokey aroma's, you probably need to replace all the soft furnishings and carpets. Actually a wooden floor would be nice in this style of oat.
 
The sunseeker 62, if it passed a good survey, would be a "safer" purchaser in terms of being much less at risk of humungous surprise bills. That particular one has no airco and an undersized genset for med use, so its resale market is northern europe only. Hence you need to consider/compare the price carefully and pay £30k less than a med spec boat AOTBE
 
rafiki_ said:
In terms of smokey aroma's, you probably need to replace all the soft furnishings and carpets. Actually a wooden floor would be nice in this style of oat.
Click to expand...

Nah, unless the upholstery is stained yellow, it just needs a good (professional) clean, plenty of fresh air, and some febreeze. The smoke smell would be the least of my worries.
 
No shipping costs with the manhattan 62 either. You could deliver that one yourself. Brighton to London
 
With big old flybridges you almost have to ignore the asking prices. Many have been for sale for ages, and a serious offer, even miles below the asking price, gives the owner a way out of the ongoing bills, maintenance and hassle of ownership, so some will bite.

With that in mind, there are a few boats that fit the bill for sale in the UK, like this 1992 Princess 65. http://www.boatshop24.co.uk/U1NNQ0cwMX5TU01DRzAx=-PRINCESS_65.html#top. At face value, its less boat for the same money as the Italian ones you've identified, and the upholstery needs instant replacement to comply with the laws of good taste, but you don't know how much you could buy it for until you start talking to the seller.
 
Andrew72 said:
I'm curious to know if anyone thinks that the potential / inevitable surprise bills on a Sunseeker Manahattan / Hatteras would be in the same region as that of the Canados. Or would they be cheaper to run? I suspect they'd be easier to sell again.
Click to expand...
As a general rule of thumb, the bigger and/or older the boat is, the bigger the bills will be unless you find a boat that has had a major refit recently so on that basis the Man 62 is going to cost less to run than the Canados or San Lorenzo. Also as has already been said, you are going to find it very difficult or even impossible to resell the Canados or San Lorenzo in the UK because they're virtually unknown brands here so, again, that makes the Man 62 a safer bet. As to actual running costs, I'm a bit confused as to whether you're going to use this boat for cruising or just parked up in St Kats as a houseboat. If you were to use the Man62 as a cruising boat and put, say, 100hrs a year on her, you could reckon on £30-40k pa in running costs and thats not including any unexpected mega bills that might come along.
Assuming that the boat is going to be parked up most of the time as a houseboat, then I would ask why you need a big planing boat with monster engines that will consume loads of money to maintain and consume loads of fuel on the odd occasion you do take her out. IMHO may be you should be looking at steel hulled displacement boats with relatively small unstressed engines that won't cost a fortune to repair or maintain. Yes sure, you won't be cruising at 20kts, more like 8kts, but then I don't know how much you are going to be using the boat and, in any case, if your cruising area is the Thames in C London, you won't be going anywhere at 20kts. Most of these are made in Holland so taking the boat back there for resale wouldn't be a big deal if you had to. Just a quick trawl of the internet brought up these but there'll be loads more of this type of boat for sale in Holland

http://www.yachtworld.co.uk/core/listing/boatMergedDetails.jsp?boat_id=2289707&checked_boats=2289707&ybw=&units=Meters&currency=GBP&access=Public&listing_id=74441&url=&imc=pg-fs
http://www.yachtworld.co.uk/core/listing/boatMergedDetails.jsp?boat_id=2078540&ybw=&units=Meters&currency=GBP&access=Public&listing_id=75180&url=
http://www.yachtworld.co.uk/core/listing/boatMergedDetails.jsp?boat_id=2344328&ybw=&units=Meters&currency=GBP&access=Public&listing_id=76477&url=

One last point. If you are going to be living aboard, I'm sure you'll find the big aft master cabin on most Dutch steel boats a lot more comfortable than the smaller forward master cabin you'll get on typical grp planing boats of this size
 
Many good observations here above,

I would stay away from that Canados; for many reasons;
- the sigar smell would put me off, I love the smell of my Canados, (I think its the wood) each time when I come again on the boat.
- she's missing a few nice features like mine, ao: Toilet on deck level, nice parket floor in the saloon, finish of the cockpit door, ...

- The wooden super structure; I think that all that rain, and very little hot sunchine to dry her isn't any good for the superstructure.
Moreover, most of these Canados suffer from leaks, We cured a few during the rebuild.
If not treated quickly, this could destroy the furnishing and decoration of boat very fast.

-and then all other reasons posted here above,

many things for you to consider, not sure where your priority's are,
some good sugestions on here aswell,
-full GRP brit made boats,
-Hateras (I've alway's like these but that is taste),
-steel displacement dutch build (I never liked these tbh, but again its taste)

one very important point to consider, how to manage all the technical bits to take care of, even on newer boats..., and the potential costs involved.

on the other hand I really like your idea of having a liveaboard boat in Londen, (I'd sugest even better in the med :-)),

but most important advice, make sure you make the right choice and at the right price,
wouldn't dare to think if after a year you realise you made a wrong choice.
But I know from experience how difficult this is, and consider myself extremely lucky on that point.

typing all this from Blue Angel, in a lovely 25° sunshine, but too much wind to go out today.
from a happy Canados owner :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top