On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:04:41 GMT, "Roger Long"
wrote:


The fresh water factor even shows up in the woodwork. Salt gets
everywhere and the residue holds moisture. I've seen five year old
boats that were not as fresh and clean in out of the way corners as
our 1980.

This is very true. My '73 sloop still has, amazingly, a "new
fibreglass smell" and even look in parts of the boat far from the
"action", such as the forepeak and in the second of two quarterberth
storage bins going down to the hull.

That's why even though I know I'll find more "ocean cruisers" in other
markets, there's enough of the aforementioned dreamers and builders on
the Great Lakes who never quite made it to provide a small but
realistic market for passagemaker-level boats.

I recently looked at a steel boat started here in '88 and finished in
'93 and that has never seen salt. The corrosion on all parts of the
hull I could see (and I saw at least 50% that wasn't tank tops) was
minimal and was of the type that could be dealt with via a piece of 60
grit and a babyjar of Tremclad and a one-inch-wide paintbrush.

I saw a beautifully made 1988 French steel boat that had been a
liveaboard in Mexico in 2004 that was a higher-performance design than
the above boat, but its frames and stringers were a mess. I would have
had to dissemble the interior and sandblast the lot and recoat and
refoam....no thanks.

A compromise is finding a finished hull of a proven design with a
missing or basic interior. Sometimes a home builder of reasonable
skill will make a great boat with top-end tankage, engine and rigging,
but the interior looks like a treehouse with park benches.

Such a boat will come heavily discounted, and it's no hardship to
chainsaw out the bits you don't want and pay a carpenter to rebuild
the interior to one's own specs. As I don't like from a safety and
stowage point of view most "ocean-capable" boats today, this may be
the way I go. Better the money I save getting a decent
hull/deck/systems with a barbaric interior goes to a custom cabin
build than buying an "acres of teak" boat that is nice to look at but
hard to live in.

Skip G. can probably back me up here, as a lot of his refit efforts
have gone into altering a stock interior to suit his needs and
requirements.

It is hard to find a broker interested in helping you source a
"well-built wreck" at any price. They are used to selling conventional
boats to conventional customers, hence the large number of Hunters,
Catalinas and Beneteaus in the world.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. G

R.