Tender garage opinions please.

[Portugeezer]

Morning all,

I´m looking to buy a 45-50ft sports cruiser and have compiled a shortlist ( well, not very short) and most have a reasonable size tender garage. I can only think of all the advantages of a garage, neat and tidy, keeps the tender out of the sun, little bit of space for other things, frees up the swim platform etc.
However one boat I´m considering has no garage. Would you consider this to be a big negative and has anyone regretted buying a boat without a garage? All opinions welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Switch]

A garage every time for me BUT, if the only engine access is through the garage floor you’ll have to take everything out first which is a real pain. Most boats have a secondary hatch but they tend to quite small. For me, that’s the only disadvantage in having a garage.

 

[Portofino]

Depends on the size node .
Have got a 14/15 M in the Med we prefer none garage as a garage on this size impinges too much on the alternative space usage .
I my case a rear guest cabin + en-suite .
In a 70 ft Pershing then the swing on o meter swings towards garage .

We sit a 2,2 hard base V on a boat with a 4.2 M beam .
This brings me round to tenders and tenders at least with a bathing platform your L choice is not restricted by the garage dims .
We previously had a slats flat bottom 2.4 m .
The paddle SUP board too fits on top when inflated .

But it would fit inside P 82 obviously.

Berthing costs too .A lot of marinas use circa beam 4.2/4.3 as a cut off for the next ( read another €3-4 K ) size up in the Med .
So for me the next size up say my 14.7 M + 4.2 to the Itama 46 means beam goes to 4.4 and Kerchung !
For what to carry a bigger tender ?Pressure is on the designer where a tender G is a must to just widen the beam a tad to get it to fit nicely , side steps etc etc . Another 10 cm so what ? We’ll see your marina tarrif s .

Practically as the Passerelle acts as the crane we just launch it we have a lot of guests aboard easily to get rid of it .
If it’s just the two us because I specced a slightly shorter 2.2 from 2,4 M we do not need to launch it to access the swim ladder .

Sun covers are €30 .
Bit like the CO detector arguments from a safety pov it’s just one tie strap to launch it if the boat sinks and the L raft does not inflate .So we cruise with TWO ways of surviving a sinking .

No body is disturbed when it launched either .


Bathing can be done as walking on / off .




Its easy just to lump it on top of the tender .


But if you can open it without disturbing the Sun pad occupants and it’s not eating up a potential cabin space then it’s better to have a garage…..if it fits a usable tender for the number of pax likely to want go ashore together.Not a problem on a 20 M boat .

So imho there is no right or wrong it’s down to many factors and how you intend to use the boat .

The battle ground is 14-16 M as you are discovering !

Secondarily with under 15/16 M ( or any boat ) engine access to everything is king .
If the tender garage means it needs clearing out to open hatch to dip or check something then basically that something will slide into supervised neglect in a can’t be arsed in the 35 * C mid day Med heat in the marina .= inevitably in a Sod’s law and boats kinda way = A bill .A bigger bill than if you daily did the thing that the tender garage put you off .