Why wouldn't you?

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Networks

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Why wouldn't you buy a 50ft boat for living aboard?
The arguments I have heard so far are:
Cost of haul out / maintenance
Cost of winter berths, although it seems more marina's are calculating charges on area now rather than the step in prices on LOA
Handling the heavier sails etc as you get older

Who can give me more reasons?
 
For how many people? It is a matter of space, I would have thought. If you like the space of a large boat and can afford it then why not. Certainly if you intend to sail anywhere one of the greatest contributers to performance and safety is size. You can get electric winches to help with the hard pulling. A large boat has trouble getting into shallow anchorages or close to shore so perhaps a good dinghy and outboard would be required. The other thing is that large boats often have high freeboard so a good boarding ladder and care in handling are important.
 
Networks said:
Why wouldn't you buy a 50ft boat for living aboard?
The arguments I have heard so far are:
1. Cost of haul out / maintenance
2. Cost of winter berths, although it seems more marina's are calculating charges on area now rather than the step in prices on LOA
3. Handling the heavier sails etc as you get older

Who can give me more reasons?
Click to expand...

Plenty of people do have 50 foot liveaboards, and certainly their average length has increased over the years.
To take your points:
1. Maintenance is the biggie, everything from size of engine to size of sails. I've often heard it said that the cost rises as the square of boat length, which wouldn't be far wrong.
2. Cost of berths whether winter or any other time. Pricing on area is commonplace here in Turkey, but I'm not sure it makes a great deal of difference: beam tends to rise with length; and again, you're on a square law scale of increasing costs.
3. My strategy was not to get older, until I learnt that instant death is the only method. But, yes, you only have to look around to see it is an issue as one gets more feeble. Electric winches and furlers go some way to helping, at a price, but plenty of other tasks need to be done the old-fashioned way.

I would add that length, as the actress said, isn't everything. Much will depend on layout. On many boats extra length mainly offers extra cabins, and you can only sleep in one at a time (and many of those friends you thought might visit, probably won't). Our 13.25m boat works perfectly for us, having a big master cabin aft and a smaller one forward for guests (and a great galley, bigger than on most boats 3m longer, according to She Who Knows). But of course I wouldn't say no to an extra cabin to use as a workshop...
 
Cost of everything will be much higher than a smaller boat, and skills in parking will need to be better (although the slowness of movement will help if you get it right).

Our next is planned to be about that size, even though we generally just sail with two of us, but we may never get around to buying it as we need to balance a bigger, better boat against more time working to pay for it.
 
Manoeuvrability in tight spaces and strong winds. No doubt she will have a bow-thruster, but it will probably be underpowered and liable to failure just when you most need it. Lots of Greek marinas are small with limited turning room (like the one I'm in on Crete) and trying to get a 50ft boat turned into a tight berth in a strong cross-wind is tricky, even with a working thruster. Lots of windage there. We sometimes struggle on our 45ft yacht (with no thruster) and we've seen countless bumps and bangs by other (sometimes bigger) boats manoeuvring in string winds.
 
50 ft is fine if you have two reasonably strong people on board. Lots of jobs will be beyond the strength of the average person working on their own.

Sure you can add power winches and multiple tackles but sometimes you have breakdown or an electron shortage and it comes down to people power.

I sail a 44 ft cutter as a liveaboard and at 68 am starting to find stuff tougher. I would not like to have a 50 ft boat.
 
50ft may be ok with two, but imagine what you would do were one of the pair to be incapacitated, even if only for a short while! It opened our eyes on a 42ft yacht. Perhaps you could think of the implications on a larger boat when one of the pair was physically the weaker.
Just a thought.
 
Mine is 50 foot.

Works fine with one, and better with two. There are undoubtedly things that could go wrong with one or two that would be a right pita! For example man handling the main in any circumstances is a serious job potentially fraught with problems because I can barely lift it by myself. So for what ever reason you dont want to find yourself in a situation of having to remove it at sea for any reason.

I chose 50 foot because for two it really is like a small apartment - you have enough room for living aboard in comfort and can add all the kit if you wish. You also have room for friends to stay. At sea it has the weight and inertia to take on most seas and you notice how much more comfortable a passage you experience, and of course inevitably average speeds are signifcantly higher. I think it is a very good size.

Of course having all the toys helps - bow thruster, power winches etc all make the handling a breeze - well until you misjudge and then inevitably you realise there is a lot more inertia and realise early on to tell the nice people helping you come alongside to please not try and hold the mooring rope in their hands but use the cleats!
 
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When we were looking at buying a boat to live on, the advice we were given by my uncle, a long term live aboard, was to buy the biggest boat we could afford with the caveat that it should also be comfortable with handling her in all conditions. We went for a 12m boat which was as big as we felt comfortable with at the time.

After six years, I think we got the compromise about right. We can handle just about anything that happens, she's easy to drive in close confines whilst providing enough space for comfortable living.

Frankly, I'd be more concerned with the below decks layout than the overall length of the boat. One example; one of our criteria was to have three cabins to accommodate family visits. Hasn't happened and we'd have been better off with a two cabin layout.
 
I wouldn't buy a 50 footer because my 42 footer is proving to be plenty big enough (for two of us plus occasional guests). In fact the more time we spend on it the more spacious it seems to get.

I am a firm believer in the adage that you should buy the smallest boat that meets your needs not the largest you can afford.

I pretty much agree with all the other posts too!
 
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