We are looking at a Mariner 35 Seville Express for purchase. It is our understanding that Mariner is or was acquired by Helmsman. It is a beautiful boat but we can’t find much info about it?
Doesn’t appear many were made. Does anyone have any knowledge about these boats? Thanks Ran
You are right about Helmsman being the successor to Mariner. Last year I found a Mariner 35 Seville Express for sale - the very same boat that I had been admiring from afar. Excited that what I imagined as my ideal boat was on the market, I did a deep dive into the boat's origin story, and set up an inspection with the broker. I wanted to like the boat, and was ready to pull the trigger on a full-price offer with contingencies. After three hours of crawling through every compartment, asking probing questions and having my own surveyor help me decode a five-year old pre-purchase survey, I reluctantly gave the boat a hard pass.
The bottom line IMO is that these were
very lightly built boats. I saw abundant gelcoat crazing, stress cracks at or near deck / bulkhead joints, separation at the deckhouse rooftop, and hull sides where, in certain places I could make out daylight through on a cloudy day. The factory hardware was cheap Chinese no-name equipment - even the stainless steel anchor (reportedly original to the boat) was impossible to identify. The best thing aboard was the single 480 hp Cummins QSB 5.9. But even that had me scratching my head - the broker shared with me that during a sea trial it had inexplicably dropped back to idle and wouldn't respond at all to throttle or shifter inputs. He showed me the receipts for what took weeks to diagnose and fix - a replacement control module from Mercruiser, which marinizes the Cummins QSB line. $6K for parts alone. Understandably that prospective buyer had walked away.
That particular Seville Express had accumulated a lot of deferred maintenance, and several years of neglect by its owner was obvious. I could easily see $100K + of my money going into making the boat something I wouldn't have to apologize or make excuses for. But even then I could see that I was going to be constantly wary of it. The listing took many months and successive price reductions before it finally disappeared from the market.
In my view, if you're going to accept the challenge of a boat's accumulated list of needs, it's better to start with something that was a solid product when came out of the builder's yard. It's easy enough to get in over your head, even then.
