test, apologies...

--
"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you are
quite alone on a great, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as self-sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought, and one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin
"Skip Gundlach" wrote in
message ink.net...
"Rich Hampel" wrote in message
...
Consider upgrading and refitting a Robert Perry design: Tayana37,
Valiant 40, etc. These older designs (although heavyweight by todays
standards) have dominated passagemaking and voyaging for the past 30+
years. Depending on where you are located the best prices are in
Florida/Gulf Coast. Prices for older still useable/rebuildable (with
alluminum masts) should be in the neighborhood of $65K-100K These
boats are built like Sherman Tanks and usually are quite sound
structurally (overbuilt ).
If you have to refit, figure a 20% added to your purchase price -- and
that may be true for ANY used boat you buy.

Everyone's got their own metrics, but for me, from the start, knowing I
was
going to be in the 20-30 year old boat range, I wanted a reserve of 50% of
the purchase price for upgrades and the inevitable surprises that the
surveyor missed, or the weather demanded, or whatever else.

For whatever it may be worth, the supposedly bristol, mega-equipped boat
we're trying to buy isn't any different. It would benefit you to go to
the
surveyor's site - David Pascoe - where there's a discussion on surveys,
and
how you might react to a less-than-stellar one. I took/take that
position,
and as such, am expecting to do my/our best to make this deal work - but
it
will be at a significantly higher end cost than the originally agreed-upon
price, because, I've found, the more times you go to a boat, the more you
see that isn't just right, and this one's no different.

My points a

First, try to get educated about the boat type (make, model) you want, in
order to know where the bodies are buried. Once you have, know that most
likely all the boats in that type will have similar problems, and leaving
one boat (due to survey problems) to go to another probably won't provide
you with a meaningfully different experience.

Second, and you may have already come to that decision, if you're thinking
in terms of a purchase price of 80, I'd not be comfortable without a
reserve
of 40 behind that. At that (if you've discovered by googling post of mine
here you probably already know), we started at 30-40' and 60k and wound up
at significantly more volume (in our case, 45' hull) and double the
budget.
However, that budget initially, and now, included a reserve of 50%...

You've got a while to look, which is great. It's a marvelous experience.
Presumably, you don't have the challenges we do, which makes your choices
far broader. In the course of our initial looking, there were many boats
which fit your criteria that I could even fit on - but which Lydia
detested,
and so were immediately scrubbed. Your tastes, inferred from your
piloting,
likely will be more practical than emotional :{)) - which will increase
your
available potential successful candidates.

I'd have to say, in conclusion, though, that this experience is similar to
my initial looking in real estate investing. There was what the seminars
called the 'hundred house rule' - look at a hundred houses (metaphorically
speaking - it might only be 30, or it might take you 150), and you'll know
what works for you. It was that experience that let me be on and off the
vast majority of the last hundred boats I went aboard in less than a
minute
or two - brokers loved me for that. They probably didn't have the
offsetting appreciation for how specific I was about what worked (and the
demand that I get it before moving forward), though!

Good luck in your searching - and go aboard as many as you can as a
sailor.
Life below and above decks is different on the water!

L8R

Skip


--
"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you are
quite alone on a great, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as
self-sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought, and
one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin