Selling Your Boat

[roboandkate]

I know there are regular threads on this site asking how much below the asking price you should offer etc, I just thought I would let you know my experiences of buying and selling in the last couple of months.

We decided to upgrade earlier in the year and having looked at most of the Heavenly Twins in the south we found one through the internet, advertised privately and put in an offer that we felt was fair for the boat concerned and not that far from the asking price. This was accepted and deal was complete in 3 weeks.

Selling our Contessa 26 I paid for webspace on myboatdetails.com, £34.99 and linked the webpage to all the sites I could find for free. The webpage in total had 1,355 hits and this generated about a dozen enquiries. The first person to see it made a sensible offer which I accepted straight away and the deal was completed within the month.

The whole experience has been pleasureable.

It just goes to show with reasonable people a win-win situation is possible.

Good luck to anyone else going through the process.

 

[Otter]

Another HT convert - we only got ours last year, but it changes 90% of your sailing for the better. Which model did you get?

 

[roboandkate]

I think she is 1977, a mark II/III built by Aquarius with an outboard, which model have you got?

 

[Otter]

Sounds like you have a IIa which has the upgraded cabin design. We have a 27 from '91, single aft cabin and outboard like yours. Happy sailing!

 

[Talbot]

Worth having a HT discussion with Dogwatch, who has done a lot of work on his boat

 

[ShipsWoofy]

And still going.....

Are you twins chaps staying with the outboard option or do you have any plans for twin props?

After watching boatyard and seeing that chap fitting the electric motor to his river boat and how well it worked, doing it again I might have considered a diesel electric set up. The size of the motors would mean you may not lose the creep throughs. A 3gm would drop into the outboard well, with an added bonus that it would be over the WL and you could suck water from pipes extending down from the nacell pod <sic>. A couple of people I know who bought outboard twins couldn't wait to fit inboards.

 

[Otter]

I'm not a huge fan of the outboard beacuse I don't like carryng petrol and the slow speed manoeverability is...well there isn't much! But it has a few big benefits - cheap and easy to service or repair; the prop can be lifted clear for less drag when sailing; it ways an awful lot less and there are no holes for water inlet. But I am trying to research a diesel electric option thughfor when the Yam 9.9 has finally had enough. Having said that, I like your idea of putting a diesel in the o/b well - I take it it would be connected to a saildrive unit?

 

[Talbot]

Thats why I went for the diesel outboard option! but even that has a downside - lack of electricity generation (10 amp max)
I hated carrying large amounts of petrol.

I reckon the modern electric option has lot going for it for a cat, and much prefer the concept to hydraulic drives. Primarily it allows you to put the diesel somewhere where you can actually get access for maintenance and repairs.

 

[ShipsWoofy]

I take it it would be connected to a saildrive unit?

Not what I was thinking..

If I did it again I would consider a 3GM connected to a generator rather than gearbox. Generating higher voltage, 240v or more to drive a pair of small electric motors in the hulls.

I also thought, if you have no through hulls, you could drop a pipe through the existing outboard well, it would not have to create that much drag. The inlet part is not very well thought out and would not concern me much as I already have through hulls.

I have been told that you loose masses of power with hydraulics and that they are noisy in use, but things have moved on and I have not looked into this. I don't see a time now that I would remove the twin engines, I did not have time to consider all my options when I did mine, just if I was doing it again..