Princes 45 with Cat Engines, any good ?

Thanks for all the great advise, this is the best forum by far. We are nervous of why it was brought back via truck, so would defo get a good survey done and as I work in the oil Industry I could get our lab to analise the oil sample, and I agree with thye post saying £130,000 seems to be the ball park figure, so it does seem a bargain.

On another forum a guy was after advise on a live aboard and someone suggested a Broom, we have had a look so will look at a Broom as well before we take the plunge, thats unless someone can throw another spanner in the works and suggest another boat/model?

We are after something to play with in the med and to live aboard, my wife really likes the flybridge style so thats what we are after
Cheers
D and G
 
D and G said:
On another forum a guy was after advise on a live aboard and someone suggested a Broom, we have had a look so will look at a Broom as well before we take the plunge, thats unless someone can throw another spanner in the works and suggest another boat/model?

We are after something to play with in the med and to live aboard, my wife really likes the flybridge style so thats what we are after
Cheers
D and G
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A Broom was advised for the other poster because he wanted to start in the UK and go through the canals to the Med. The sportboat he was considering was not other people's first choice!

The wide variety of boats on offer reflects the widely differing requirements of people. The boats you are looking at are not "liveaboards" in the sense of giving up ones existing way of life and living and travelling on a boat across Europe or the Med. They are far too expensive to buy and run.

Most are bought by wealthy people as an escape from their busy high powered lives and live in marinas in the western Med. Often visited regularly for hoildays and jaunts along the coast - biut not serious voyaging.

If that is what you want they are great - but hugely expensive to own and operate.

Bit of a generalisation, but sufficiently accurate to help you get a fix on what you can expect.
 
Hi again,
Well to throw the cat in with the pigeons what we want to do is cruise the whole of the med over the next 10 years or so, so it will be plush marinas and nice wine one week and may be just travelling out at sea to reach our new destination, we are open to suggestions as to what boat would suit us best for this kind of work, but it has to be a motor boat and swmbo does like the flybridge style, so over to you knowledgeable peeps
 
I did something similar in a Camargue 47. Not a flybridge, but all mod cons and very comfortable. I prefer an open boat, especially in the Med. Left the boat in different places for the winter, SoF, Sicily, even trucked it back to UK one winter.

CATS were very reliable. Fuel consumption about 1 mpg, whatever we did. I would expect yours to be sort of similar. If you want a piccie of a failing intercooler flange, I can probably dig one out (not from my boat!).

Don't read anything into the fact that it was trucked back. Trucking is much faster and cheaper and I would always do it that way.
 
D and G said:
, and I agree with thye post saying £130,000 seems to be the ball park figure, so it does seem a bargain.
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No no no, £130,000 seems to be the ball park asking price. That doesn't make £109,000 "a bargain".

An awful lot of people are still asking prices that were being made five years ago. We're in a different time now.

You need to be very careful about what you pay as the difference between this and what you ultimately sell for is potentially your biggest expense of the whole project, especially if you get it wrong.

Don't be lulled into thinking asking prices reflect market value, as many are finding out that's not necessarily the case anymore.
 
Don't agree. Good boats are still fetching good money.

The issue here is 20 year old boats where there can be much greater variation, reflecting wide differences in condition and risk.
 
Nigh on twenty year old motorboats are not worth what they were when they were five years old, yet optimistic asking prices are often within that range. asking being the operative word there.

In 1989 a Princess 45 was only £144,000 list price brand new!
 
Hi Ari,
Thanks yet again for the pricing info, I never knew they where that new and even at 109,000 that still seems expensive. Think with the financial hardship at the mo, it should be a buyers market, so will sit on our hands for the right boat.
Thanks all for the input, what a great website
 
Agreed (and you're welcome :) ). Older smaller engined P45's were dipping under £100K in the boom years. The boat you mention is one of the later ones with the biggest engines they fitted, and that has real value, but non the less it's a few years on and a different economy.

Bear in mind also that these boats will be comparatively expensive to run (moorings, fuel, everything really is a consequence of size, weight, power and age) compared to lots of £100K boats.

I haven't explained that very well, what I mean is that for many with a total purchasing budget of £100K, these will seem a very expensive running cost option.
 
I should point out, I'm not trying to talk you out of it, the Princess 45 is a fabulous boat, but you need to be aware of the potential cost pitfalls.

Best of luck.
 
deep pockets dept.

About 20-25gph total (ie both engines, not each). ......Ari
Fuel consumption about 1 mpg, whatever we did.........Fatlady.

With fuel at 4.5 euros per gallon say £80 an hour ? at cruise about the same as my mates T47 no wonder he refused to say how much it would cost him to move the boat the 300 miles from Cala d Or to Nice....... 200 gallons....gulp.
 
Exactly.

And that's why some of these old boats eventually become hard to shift, because they fall into a price bracket whereby the purchase price:running cost ratio gets out of balance.

In other words, if you can afford to run it you can afford something more expensive (newer, more modern, whatever). And if you can't afford anything more expensive then you're probably going to struggle to run it.

As prices drop it's possible a few boats will fall into this category and become very hard to shift.

Big twin engined petrol boats fall into this category often. They become very cheap, but suffer from the fact that if that's all you can afford to spend on a boat you can't afford the fuel. And if you can afford more then you buy something similar with diesels and avoid the horrendous fuel costs in the first place.

Having said all of that, the P45 is something of a classic and may appeal to someone who could afford a more expensive boat but simply likes the P45, so can also afford to run it.

Going to be some interesting dynamics in the marketplace now prices have fallen (despite the fact that you sometimes wouldn't know it from what a lot of people are still optimistically asking).
 
But this happens at any time - it is not specific to the current climate, but maybe exaggerated because there are perhaps more "dogs" on the market than good boats. By good boats I mean those that meet buyers' requirements. As you say these big old boats are not generally in demand for the reasons you mention - even if in good condition.

Not sure I would contemplate buying such a boat with a 10 year plan to use it for cruising round the Med. The chances of doing that without at least one bout of major expenditure are pretty slim, and annual running costs will be the same or more than a modern equivalent.

Perhaps that is why less complicated, slower and probably more boring boats are more popular for live aboards!
 
Very interesting discussion, we were in a similar buying dilemma last year. We eventually bought a Fairline 43/45, of similar vintage to the P45 in question, with Volvo 71As. The thoughts about value vs cost to run vs residuals etc are very familiar!

We concluded that the only way we could afford to purchase the space and 'potential' (eg speed, cruising ability etc) that we wanted was to go for an older boat. The relative downsides of greater running costs can be a bit overstated (IMHO). Assuming that the heavy mechanicals have been looked after, and we are talking about basic large engines with little in the way of complex electronics, they should be good for a significant number of years more service. The other 'older boat' areas tend to be soft furnishings and electronics/nav systems. The soft furnishings can be replaced on an as necessary/as desired/when affordable basis, the nav systems can be expensive, but potentially just as likely to need replacing on a newer boat anyway (at about 8 to 10 years old maybe?)

The actual "running" costs are fuel, mooring and maintenance. The mooring is obviously a fixed cost - we justify it by the space the boat gives us (vital with a young family!) The fuel costs are high ish, but totally dependant on use, and sadly we have not been too far a field as yet so have not been an issue. Even on longer trips the relative cost of fuel vs boat purchase price vs mooring etc needs to be considered in relative terms. Maintenance - well do as much as possible ones self, and make sensible decisions about maintain vs repair vs replace.

Overall I cannot see myself being unhappy with the decision we made when and if we decide to sell as I suspect the effect of depreciation if we had bought a newer boat would have more than offset other considerations.....(and I do love the old style Olesinski design!)

Just my thoughts.....
 
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Tranona said:
But this happens at any time - it is not specific to the current climate, but maybe exaggerated because there are perhaps more "dogs" on the market than good boats. By good boats I mean those that meet buyers' requirements. As you say these big old boats are not generally in demand for the reasons you mention - even if in good condition.
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It does happen at any time you're quite right, but with selling (if not asking) prices currently quite depressed it will push the price:running cost ratio lower (ie more boats will fall to a level where people can afford to buy won't be able to afford the running costs, and those that could have afforded it and the running costs when it was dearer will now be able to access newer boats than they could have previously).
 
Which begs the question, what is going to happen to all these "uneconomic" old boats? Unlike the big old wooden boats that became uneconomic when GRP came in they won't just rot away quitely until somebody put a torch to them.

Will we see the nautical equivalent of the government car scrappage scheme?
 
That is a very good question.

I suppose we could look at what happens to old big petrol engined boats, old 34ft Sea Rays with twin V8's in, that kind of thing.

It seems that what tends to happen is that they eventually get so cheap as to overcome the cost element either by being cheap enough to be worth re-powering with diesels, or simply that the purchase price makes it worth the extra running cost (ie so cheap as to be worth paying the running cost premium).

And/or they end up in the Med being used as virtual houseboats, or on a river somewhere where very low speed use masks the potential for big fuel bills.

Maybe that's what will happen with big flybridge stuff. Re-powering obviously won't help as already diesel powered, but maybe they'll end up as floating holiday homes or stuck on a river somewhere (although I suppose then air draft could be an issue).

So far GRP boats have never actually simply become so cheap as to be uneconomical to re-sell. It could happen though I guess and there's no system I'm aware of for disposal if they do.
 
D and G said:
Hi all,
We are considering buying a Princes 45, it is powered by 2 x Cat Diesel V8's putting out 425bhp, we are waiting for the broker to tell us the exact model number, but if any cat specialist could tell us, are these good engines?, I know from my plant fitting days the plane engines are great, last very well and very reliable, but I have no knowledge of their marine diesels, also what is the general feeling on the Princes brand of boats, are there any known problems to look out for, or just the normal boat hassles. It is a 1991 boat, but has been used as more of a holiday home as the engines only have 190 hours on them, while we are on the subject what kind of hours can you expect to get out of the Cat engines if well maintained before a reuild will be in order? Any advise would be great.
Thanks in advance
D & G
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I've had 3 boats with these same engines (exact model no is 3208TA), including a Princess 470, and, in fact, I'm sitting on my current boat now writing this with these same engines underneath me. I've never had a single problem with these engines except for an alternator failure on one. However, 190 hours on a 1991 boat is extremely low hours so it is vital that you get an experienced Cat engineer to do an engine surevey including an oil analysis (but you have to know the number of operating hours that the oil has been in the engines for an oil analysis to be useful). the fatlady is right. There was an issue with the inlet/outlet flanges (called 'top hats') on the sea water/fresh water coolant heat exchanger so check that these have been changed
The Cat 3208 series is a very widely used engine in boats but it has been discontinued now as it can't meet the latest emissions regulations. It has the older style mechanically controlled fuel injection rather than electronically controlled which, in your case, is a good thing as you can probably fix any problems yourself. However, because of that mechanical fuel injection, they are a bit less fuel efficient than modern engines and they're slightly smoky. I would expect that you could get 0.7-0.8mpg @ 20-22knots from the Princess 45 and that 30knots max should be achievable with a clean hull
The Princess 45 is an excellent boat. It has one of the first Olesinski designed hulls and is a very good sea boat. Buy a good one and you won't lose money on it
 
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