First Boat

[Guest]

Yes 50% is a bit excessive I reckon but then our boat is small and quite old and didn't cost much, so even basic stuff is disproportionately expensive compared to the purchase price - replacing the engine would be half the cost of the boat! If I was buying a 30-40k secondhand boat though it's unlikely it would need 15-20k of fixing up (unless it was a real lemon) but you should always allow a good few thousand as a contingency.

Haven't been fortunate enough to consider brand new yet, but hope to in future. This forum is providing plenty of background info in the meantime I guess in extremis mass production hulls will become loss leaders for the profit-making add-ons, on the tried and tested razor and blades principle.

 

[Guest]

Re: Wow

I actually read it in a book on buying secondhand yachts. Funny, I didn't see it until after I'd bought ours (duh!) and in our case it was pretty accurate. As I said to FlyingSpud though it depends where on the yachting food chain you are - down in the protozoan layer where we are (£6.5k 23-footer 20 years old) it's dead easy to spend 50% of the price on bringing her up to date - in fact it will go higher than this. Larger more expensive boats need larger budgets but likely to be a smaller proportion of the purchase price. Damn statistics again.

We could have just sailed ours away too but personal tastes and changes in safety regs/expectations always mean that something will need to be done and should be allowed for.

 

[DavidofMersea]

Re: Think keels & where you want to moor

These are wise words Ian, but what about cat for the east coast? I am looking to buy a big cat later this year, and for several years I have been watching the market, and boats like those from Prout, appricate.

I see there is a Prout Quest 31 on the market now for 35k, which was sold second hand in the late 80's for 25k