HR 312 advice please

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yelbis

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Sorry for the re-thread.. Any advice on the HR312 regarding sail performance and quirks/bad points greatly received.

Very interested in purchasing one but strangely the owner is reluctant on giving a sea trial?
 
yelbis said:
Afloat, it is on the same pontoon as mine. the owner being 80 i think is a little scared he will never berth it again. He is an old boy, says that he has owned 9 yachts and never sea trialed any!!

http://marinedirectory.ybw.com/boat/new/boat_details1.jsp?id=47037&curr_id=1#

Been told that she may be too lame as I have a Bav 32 at the moment, and therefore completely different creatures.
Click to expand...

Not withstanding the fact that I have sea trialled more boats than I could purchase in 10 lifetimes, I would not even consider a boat I could trial first.

A bit like buying a used car sight unseen.

Perhaps you can convince him by offering to pilot the boat yourself and taking responsibility for your actions and he is welcome to be aboard or have any person he cares to nominate attend.

Provide him with some information on what you plan do, like the limited area you will sail, engine use and sailing / weather conditions; also note that the boat will be cleaned when returned to the berth etc. It may be that he is only concerned about things he has to do if you don't purchase.

Good luck.
 
Have offered a RYA instructor/Skipper and her experienced boyfried that he is moored 5 boats from. He will not budge.

Very frustrating, i love the boat and am willing to take a loss on mine to buy her, I can not understand it unless there is something very wrong with her.
 
sea trial

Hi
You can do everything in the berth you would on a sea trial except guage the performance which compared to your bav will be slow and not twitchy in lower wind speeds and easier no twitch and direct and smoother in high winds.

Test on the berth and do it all all morning not 5 mins
1) Turn hose on it see if it leaks
2)tst everything electrical, loo, sea cocks, heating etc etc
3) turn wheel/rudder violently side to side
4) start engine put in gear leave runniung for hour interspersed by gear changes
5) put up and down sails

get in every orifice look for leaks oil anything not normal

If satisfied with above get a survey
 
yelbis said:
Afloat, it is on the same pontoon as mine. the owner being 80 i think is a little scared he will never berth it again. He is an old boy, says that he has owned 9 yachts and never sea trialed any!!

http://marinedirectory.ybw.com/boat/new/boat_details1.jsp?id=47037&curr_id=1#

Been told that she may be too lame as I have a Bav 32 at the moment, and therefore completely different creatures.
Click to expand...

I've got a HR 31 (so not quite the same but not a million miles away) and a mate of mine has a Bav 34. If my experience is anything to go by you will find the switch from a Bav 32 quite significant.

My friend's Bav' leaves us standing in light to moderate airs but then, when it begins to cut up a bit, we arrive in carpet slippers & smoking jackets sipping G&T's whilst he looks like he's been put through a washing machine. Other than that, prepare to become obsessed with woodwork (outside and in).

You pays your money...

Cheers

Mark
 
I really appreciate the replies. It is the fact that he will not take her out to sea and this rings alarm bells, The skipper i suggested that accompany the trial was greeted with 'In NO way will i allow .......'.

I have read a detailed survey that was undertaken in 2008 and it reads OK. It turns out that the yacht had been repaired due to a collision however, the surveyor was happy with the repairs and the additional suggested maintenance within the survey has been 70% completed.

I understand that most things can be tested at the mooring, but things like standing rigging under load, concentric prop rotation at high revs, gearbox and gears, water ingress under way etc. More importantly I simply may not like the boat.

I have no idea how they sail andthere is very little information available on the net.
 
Reeks to me of someone who doesn't actually want to sell the boat. "I've got her on the market, dear, but no one is making a reasonable offer."

After all he's never gonna sell it without a sea trial, at least not without putting it on at a knock-down price.

(edit)

One way forward MIGHT be to offer a low price without a sea trial, and a considerably higher price with a satisfactory sea trial?
 
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I was once in love with a HR312 but eventually didn't buy due to cash flow problems. One negative point - to me - was the sail drive, just couldn't get my old-fashioned head around having that great big hole in the bottom of the boat. Of course, there are standard transmission versions around.

Eventually I have ended up with a HR94 - well, us old farts tend to gravitate to motor sailors and mine is the only one HR made. she's perfect for what I need and I love her.

But, and it's a big 'but', while a long way from being a 312, she shares that damned teak deck - I should have walked away on that ground alone - they are a ticking time-bomb of worry and expense. Be very sure she has no more than a few years since installation and that it is in perfect condition.
 
yelbis said:
Afloat, it is on the same pontoon as mine. the owner being 80 i think is a little scared he will never berth it again. He is an old boy, says that he has owned 9 yachts and never sea trialed any!!

http://marinedirectory.ybw.com/boat/new/boat_details1.jsp?id=47037&curr_id=1#

Been told that she may be too lame as I have a Bav 32 at the moment, and therefore completely different creatures.
Click to expand...
Being an "old boy" myself, I have been watching this blog with interest and I am minded to make the following comments which may be of some help to the one 'yelbis'.
1. Perhaps the owner thinks that you are a 'cheeky boy' who throws his toys out of the pram if he can't get his own way.
2. Perhaps you just haven't got the money and should stop making silly offers.
3, Perhaps the owner is not prepared to give you a bill of sale for a promisory note to pay up when you have wishfully and finally sold your Bav.
 
I think you're overstating the teak deck problem. My friend with a 312 bought his in Holland 2 yrs ago. There were a few plugs missing in the deck and some bits of caulking which were dealt with by the agents and the deck now looks good for another 20 yrs.
 
yelbis said:
It is the fact that he will not take her out to sea and this rings alarm bells,
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It is equally possible you are giving out the wrong signals and he has decided you are a tyre kicker or have you upset the old chap previously with a late night cockpit party? I would be suspicious of a buyer whose prime interest was a trial sail. In my view a serious buyer first spends hours crawling over a boat checking systems or quickly commissions a surveyor.

Then the serious buyer sits down in the cockpits and thinks aloud with the owner saying "this feels right but I am not sure I will be happy with the slower handling...".

You also need to be aware that private sellers can be awful salesmen. Many have a preconceived idea of the right buyer for their yacht, often someone just like them but with more time or better health. This ignores basic maths that yachts pass to younger owners on average, by definition.
 
I am not sure that it always reasonable to expect a sea trial purely to decide if one likes the model/design or not. If the boat is in the water it is reasonable in order to ensure that the boat is working as it should, but many boats are bought from on land and if it were me selling I think I should be expecting a potential buyer to have done his homework on my boat's design before proceeding further - which is what the OP is doing, of course. This is about 2nd-hand boats; of the 4 boats I have owned from new I had sea-trials on 2 of them, but I don't think they told me much.
 
johnalison said:
I think you're overstating the teak deck problem. My friend with a 312 bought his in Holland 2 yrs ago. There were a few plugs missing in the deck and some bits of caulking which were dealt with by the agents and the deck now looks good for another 20 yrs.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought too when I bought my HR (also from Holland but 5 years ago) but the reality turned out to be something else.

Whilst HR built solid,well-crafted boats during the period when the 312 was produced, it was the time when teak decks were screwed down on a silicon bed, just as my HR94 deck was. The principle is absurd, as anyone who has such a deck knows but many fail to acknowledge, citing the cosmetic beauty - a doubtful attribute far outweighed by the many disadvantages, the major one being that it is ponderously heavy and the weight too high for optimal stability. The builder compounded this insanity by drilling holes into a perfectly watertight deck to screw the planks onto it - a time-bomb of rot and leakage ticking away as the silicon inevitably hardens and loses its watertight capability on screws and through-deck fittings at about the same time that the caulking starts to lose its grip on the planking and lets the water through to seep between wood and fibreglass.

As George Cuthbertson, one of the founders of the Canadian design team, C & C, once famously said, teak has no place on a modern yacht and should have stayed where it began its marine application, on a junk.

Here in my Italian marina there is a retired German, a former Rassy employee who was working in the company at the time of the phase-over from wooden boats to fibreglass and was with them when the company became Hallberg-Rassy on moving into the old Hallberg premises at Ellös in 1972 when Harry Hallberg retired. What he told me was that the company had serious problems laying teak decks on fibreglass, eventually deciding that there were no logical grounds for it and, for a short while, produced yachts with non-teak decks. However, every customer demanded that their boat had a teak deck and it became apparent that a boat builder of expensive, quality yachts wasn't going to survive without a teak deck on his boats. HR returned to producing teak-decked yachts as standard. Sheer snobbery from the market reluctantly driving them to produce something they knew was going to eventually cause problems.
 
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My Apologies to Kipling

When I first posted this thread, it was to find out further information of a Yacht that I have seriously thought of purchasing, I however have never sailed upon a long keel yacht and wanted the experience so that I may decide whether I was making the correct decision.

Having sailed upon approximately 20 or so yachts having sailed 4 different designs single handed.

Every person I spoke with with more experience of vessels than myself informed me that the modern design lightweight craft I had sailed were vastly different from the HR312 and it was pointed out that I may not even like sailing such a boat.

It is not a question of making silly offers, although I did offer half now and half when I sold my Bavaria. This was intended also to help the owner as his berthing fees are due shortly. The price of the HR being £49500 i wanted to be sure that it was right for me AND my family. That is in my opinion a sensible approach. To me its a great deal of money!

I wish to take this opportunity to apologise to Kipling as my comments earlier in the thread were written not to offend. I have since met with the owner to further apologise. I would like to add that I was also told of by a fellow berth holder for my behaviour.

I shall now gather all my toys and dissappear quietly.
 
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