How to buy a boat!

[chrisrog]

Can any of you 'old sea dogs' give me any advice on choosing the idea boat for us? Is it a better investment to buy new or a previously owned boat? Is it safer to buy from a dealer or an individual?

looking forward to the responces /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[sailorman]

wot area sea or inland no Bio so nothing to go on /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[john_morris_uk]

Sail of power? What sort of money? Give us an idea of your budget and sailing ideas. (Not the sail round the world one day ideas, but the what I want to do this year and next year ideas...!)

 

[sailorman]

He may just want to Troll around a bit /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[chrisrog]

But we do want to sail around the world one day! And maybe we will!
But yes realistically we would prefer comfort to speed, a large livaboard cruiser not too large to be handled short handed with plenty of headroom.
We'll start by travelling to the med, we thought by the french canals but the draft has to be under 1.35m. or by the coast. Then hopefully over to the caribbean maybe futher if we are not too sick of sailling by then (or too old)
Money - we thought £50-80k but could go more if the right boat.
The features we like are: fewer, larger cabins. No wood in the shower, in furling main sail, the sugar scoop stern, the walk through transom, bilge keels and though we have moved on to lifting keels (the new beneteau with double safron looks good, but will be too expensive I'm sure!)

Does that give you more to go on?

 

[maxi77]

OK so you have a basic spec, you now need to look at a lot of boats that meet at least some f your needs, remeber you may not find all you want in the one boat. As you look at boats you will begin to refine your wants/needs to the more practical aspects, and cut down the list of possibles.

Buying a boat is an emotional thing too, early on in the process you may well see 'the boat' and find the prices acceptable, or you may look for some time. It took us over a year of general looking to refine our list to a sensible short list, followed by a couple of months of seeing as many of the short list in the UK as we could.

I am sure the refinement period could be reduced, we had a boat to sell so were not going at it hammer and tongs, but you equally should not rush that bit, especially if you are still working on an early draft of the requirement

Good luck

 

[PetiteFleur]

Go to second hand boat shows where you can look over a lot of boats ina day. Not sure where you are, Clarke & Carter on the East Coast at Suffolk Yacht Harbour(nr Ipswich) have a sale in the autumn, also Tollesbury has one.

 

[Sailfree]

This is not a troll but a a genuine enquiry as I know Chrisrog and suggested they post on here to gain the collective wisdom of the Forum.

I have sailed with them and been as helpful as I can but am aware that each of us have our own bias and prejudices and I want Chrisrog to make their own judgement after listening to all.

Like many newcomers to buying a boat they have some experience of sailing but now want their own boat and hope to live on board and expand their sailing areas with experience.

The problem is basically what can be a good starter boat for the UK that will then go through the midi to the Med and possibly later cross the Atlantic.

Ideally they want to shorten the learning curve and buy the right boat for them first time. As others have said it has taken some 2 years to finalise their requirements but hopefully with the Forums help they can do it quickly.

Last point - knowing these 2 they are not dreamers - they are doers and I do expect we will hear how they got on.

Hopefully others contributions will be useful to others intending to buy their first big boat yet relatively inexperienced.

On a personal note I am interested in any observations regarding buying secondhand or new as I have only bought 3 new boats and each has had its own set of problems that if I was not chartering the boat (no-one asks to hire a 20yr old Cortina!) I would now tend to buy a well cared for secondhand boat.

Has anyone bought both new and secondhand and whats your experience?

 

[Boat44]

When your list gets a little smaller I would strongly recommend you charter similar boats for a week. Money well invested as it will highlight all sorts of things you never thought about and confirm others.

Whilst the big companies have rafts of bavarias etc, there are a number of smaller companies and individuals actively chartering what i would call more interesting boats.

Just remember what ever you get it will be a compromise. You just have to define what that compromise is!!!

If you are buying soon I would suspect there will be some very good deals around, both new and second hand.

 

[Tranona]

The draft requirement to go through the Canal du Midi is the biggest constraint. This limits you to older bilge keel boats such as Westerlys and Moodys, lift keels such as Southerly - you could get an older 115 in that budget. Grehan has one for sale. However most of these will be centre cockpit or not sugar scoop walk through. Modern AWBs with shallow draft are rare. Legends with bilge keels and some of the Bennys and Jennys with lifting keels and rarer French boats such as Feeling and Ovni are possibilities.

But actually if you look at a similar thread a bit earlier, I have the boat that fits almost your requirement as we are doing the same thing going the other way, that is from our current base in Corfu back to UK. We have a shallow draft (1.35m) Bavaria 37. Rare boat but meets all your requirements except as you will see from my contribution to the earlier thread, not a boat of choice for serious ocean sailing, although would be able to do it. In my view, the compromises on a boat to be good at all the things you want to do, are too great, particularly if you factor in the shallow draft. Going through the main canals allows you more draft and this has been very popular over the years. If you can wait until 2012 when we think we will have finished our project you can queue up to buy our Bavaria!

On a more general note, suggest you charter a boat in the Med - we did it for 3 years- before you buy. You learn so much about what makes a good liveaboard or extended cruising boat. I also think it is better to buy a boat already there as it will be better equipped, although of course you miss out on the journey ther. When we bought our boat our main alternative was an older Moody/Westerly, but apart from age they all needed £10k or more to equip for the Med - anchor windlass, fridge, electronics, battery capacity and chargers, biminis etc. For your £50-80k you will get a really well equipped 36-38 footer in Greece.

Happy to provide more information if you PM me.

 

[Tranona]

On the new/secondhand bit, in my experience the choice is determined by the relationship between the budget and the boat requirement. The main thread here is a classic example. A new boat that meets the criteria, fully equipped is at least £100k. If they only have £50-80k they can only buy secondhand.

Being a good accountant I could probably demonstrate that over (say) a 10 year period there would be little difference in cost between a new or second hand boat. A new boat has a greater financial opportunity cost £100k tied up instead of say £60k). Fixed costs such as berthing and to an extent insurance are the same. Replacement and upgrading costs on an annual basis are likely to similar over the 10 years, although timing and type of costs may be different. The capital value of the secondhand boat based on past experience will be probably be the same or a bit lower, and the new boat will have lost anywhere between 25 and 40% of its original cost - although some of the really expensive boats do not tend to lose so much.

One could of course write a book about different ways of running a boat and saving money etc, but these apply to all boats, and I still think the only determinant of which is better is what you can achieve for the budget you have. In my case I only wanted to tie up £50k of my capital in a boat, but I wanted one operational in the Med. My choice was to buy a new boat through a charter management scheme and I have had 7 years of holidays on it and ended up with a good boat for about £45k. However when we considered trading in for a new 33 we were looking at doubling our capital cost ie £90k+. No contest really!

 

[maxi77]

A lot of good points which is why I suggest doing a fair amount of looking and comparing before both finalising the spec and short list. There certainly was a time when doing the Canal du Midi was a high priority, and I must admit I would still like to do it, but other things ended up higher up the spec list. I do think time spent from the initial concept to the implementation stage is important and cannot be rushed. Yes buying in the Med may be a better idea, there was a very well equipped Moody 36 (sorry fin keel 1.5 M draft) in Malta which was all kitted out for long term live aboard. But that does mean sorting the spec etc out before starting to fly around looking at boats.