Maxprop wrote:
"Frank Boettcher" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:59:18 GMT, "Maxprop"
wrote:


"Frank Boettcher" wrote in message
. ..
On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 21:55:47 GMT, "Maxprop"
wrote:


"DSK" wrote in message
...
Lady Pilot wrote:

has a Hunter 33.5. Is that a "bad boat"?


No such thing as a bad boat.

Not so sure about that. A few of the horrid ferro-cement abortions I've
seen during my life probably qualified.

Max



Hey now, I logged about 500 miles on a 44' custom built ferro-cement,
pilot house ketch, on a delivery crew. Wasn't so bad.


I wasn't impugning ferro-cement, rather just some of the "creations" that
have been fashioned from it. I saw one beautiful f-c boat a few years
back,
but most have been so ugly that they had to sneak up on the ocean to get
wet.

Max

Don't think I would ever trust one if I wasn't present during the
molding process. A continuously wet monolithic and homogeneous mold
operation is an absolute necessity and probably rarely occurs.
However, if done right, I'm led to believe that they get stronger
every year they are in the water.

You have more faith in f-c than I. I'd never go offshore in one, despite
knowing it was built properly and by a pro. I just don't think it's a
reasonable building material, despite what some aficionados claim.

Well, from an engineering POV it's the heaviest commonly encountered
building material for the structural strength. It does work, but IMO
the boat needs to be pretty big & heavy displacement to overcome the
inadequacies of the parent material.

The trap people fell into was the snake oil sales pitch that you'd end
up with a cheap boat. Wrong, you ended up with a cheap hull and only
then if you put a zero dollar price on the labour that went into it.

I might buy one, if the price was right, but my valuation would be the
residual value of the installed equipment minus the cost of hull
disposal.

Funnily enough, a 30 y/o f/c hull with no sign of rust bleed etc is
probably fine for a long time, provided you don't crack the shell & get
water into the wire armature. Friend of mine bought one that had been
pro built some years ago, for coastal sailing, cheap. So far he's had 5
years out of it without problems.

PDW