All, Am looking to move up to a bigger boat. Have been sailing a US27
in the Potomac for 8+ years and want a bigger boat. My first boat was a
Catalina 22 and the current favorite is the Catalina 320. I have two
main questions, one on price and the other on hull condition.

In looking at the boats and their sale prices there is quite a bit of
difference between the NADA and BUCS valuation and the asking price.
When I asked a dealer about this his explanation was that they (the
dealers) have a new system as the NADA and BUCS were out of touch and
that they were designed to get people to put more money down as that
would be the maximum they would lend. I find that to be a bit bogus and
just a little self serving for the dealers. Both systems and the prices
track with the same trend. I am inclined to believe the NADA and BUCS
valuations are fair and would be the standard I would look to when I go
to sell this boat to determine the asking price. Am I off base on this?

My second question is that the dealer then went into a long discussion
about me wanting a boat that was in salt water as the salt molecules
would have made the water molecules larger and it would be less likely
to have blistering on the hull. Is hull blistering still a big problem?
Our US27 was made in 1981 when they were still trying to figure out
what was causing blistering, and we have never had a single blister and
our boat has been in fresh and salt water. I know Catalina offers a
5-year blister warranty on their hulls and has a layer of some type of
plastic embedded just under the gel coat. Is this important or just a
feature? My understanding as to the cause of blistering in fiberglass
hulls was that once a builder started making a hull it was important to
keep laying the layers down one after the other until the hull was
completely laid out. Also part of this was to ensure that the previous
layer was still a bit tacky so that the subsequent layer would fuse/mix
with the previous layer for a tighter more impervious bond. When I
mentioned this to the dealer, he did acknowledge this, but I was not
sure if he raised this concern as the boat he was selling had been in
salt water or if he had seen a lot of instances of blistering.

Thanks Ray