Rebuild or Turnkey?

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Rebuild, Convert, or Turnkey?

  • Refit, or rebuild from scratch

    Votes: 6 20.0%
  • Convert a commercial vessel

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • Find a turnkey boat

    Votes: 26 86.7%

  • Total voters
    30
the repower stories are sobering. we had a terrible experience with what should have been a simple repower of a 30' boat because the only yard that was geographically close misrepresented the credentials of their only 'diesel mechanic.' turned out the guy was a bit of a flybynight who had worked at 'several' shops before starting the month before at this one. i came to find he had never installed a diesel, ours would have been the 1st. fortunately i was visitng the yard daily and noted the following:
1) solid fiberglas engine bearing stringers 'the mechanic' had unnecessarily hacked off , leaving portside 1 inch higher and 2 inches longer than starboard side;
2) resulting in wrong down angle for propshaft, which required max 6 degrees,
3) no install manual for the engine in sight,
4) wrong size thru hull installed , too small and not as spec'd for raw water supply, and made of cheap plastic not bronze

after observing 1 through 4 i confronted the shop manager and asked to see the install manual for the engine ''so we could go over some things''. (I had ordered my own shop and service manuals from the manufacturer before deciding on this particular yanmar engine, which is how i knew they were screwing up certain things.. ) shop man said o it must be in the shop, i said fine let's go get it, i want to check the dimensions on your jig. by the way where's the jig? it turned out the yard had saved $25 by not ordering a shop manual. and had no clue why a jig would be helpful...

the yard was upset when i told them they had already screwed up 1 to 4 and that w as the end of their work. the new engine went out of that yard still wrapped in plastic, the boat was towed to a different yard, highly recommended but much further away. the new yard of course did not get the profit from the engine order , so my repower was at the bottom of their to-do list. we lost the whole s eason, from may to september, as it took till after labor day to get the repower done. (once completed, it was a magnificent job, the boat hit her power curve on the 1st sea trial...)

so there is no doubt in my mind : i would NEVER buy a boat expecting to have to repower or do major work of any nature whatsoever. :banghead:I did not like having to ride herd on a mechanic, and be contrained by boat location to very few yards, only one of which was capable of doing excellent work. I might add that i'm a retired engineer who did failure analysis work for a living, and that engine repower was on the list of frustrating experiences.
 
There is no such thing as Turnkey , as so many choices are very individual.

If you will just be cruising there is still a set of choices.

The Marina to Marina folks will want bow and stern thrusters , onboard dink storage,
the anchor out folks will be far more interested in endurance, silently on the hook.

Even if the boat is 90% just what you want it will still be big bucks and time to obtain the other 10%

Remember the 90/90 rule,

90% of the work takes 90% of the time,

the remaining work ALSO takes 90% of the time.

If boat building is your hobby , get a fixer up and be happy for 5-10 years.

IF cruising is the goal , get the boat , get underway and in a year decide what isnt working for you.


Yep. I can't vote, because there is no such thing as truly turnkey, and the other two offered options aren't attractive.



Honest, and naive question.

Is this the case? I haven't done a full cost breakdown, but even assuming a complete repower and a deck core project, done by a yard, there should still be money left from the initial $100k. No?

No, I don't think that's reasonable. You can maybe make a boat sufficiently operable to suit your standards, but that probably wouldn't ring my chimes. I base that on the amount of upgrade money we have invested in a boat initially (to us) twice your theoretical budget. In our case, it came with no electric windlass, no swim platform, no dinghy lift/mount, etc.. and needed engine tune-ups (and new hoses, aftercooler service, turbo service, etc.), freshwater and washdown pump replacements, blah, blah, blah... I could do much of that, so saved labor where possible... but the end result wouldn't fit inside your budget envelope. And I don't think of our boat as anything especially fancy...

Speaking specifically about repowering, I know of a couple boats near here that were repowered -- at about 100K each -- for a change to twin Cummins B engines and a genset.

-Chris
 
And 120% of TF said

View Poll Results: Rebuild, Convert, or Turnkey?
Refit, or rebuild from scratch 4 20.00%
Convert a commercial vessel 2 10.00%
Find a turnkey boat 18 90.00%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 20. You have already voted on this poll
 
My lowly 27' Owens will cost better than $30k for the diesel re power part of the planned refit and that is doing the work myself.

Twins AND re-core for $100k?
 
What dinghy did you build ? I have the plans for a 8 ft nutshell pram. I've had the plans longer than it took you to build yours, I just can't seem to get started:eek:
 
Thanks everyone for the input. This has been a fun thread to follow.

What dinghy did you build ? I have the plans for a 8 ft nutshell pram. I've had the plans longer than it took you to build yours, I just can't seem to get started
I built the V-10 from Bateau. Currently it's simply a rowing dinghy, and I still have plans to build the sail rig and use it to teach my daughter how to sail. I also want to get a small trailer for it to take it out to area lakes.

I LOVED the process of building a boat from raw materials. In fact I've recently been looking into building the 3-person kayak on Beateau as well, to mount on the flybridge rail.

But to keep this post somewhat on-topic, even at the level of this little dinghy, the cost effectiveness of building vs. buying doesn't really exist. All told, I probably spent close to $700 on materials and tools. Not much less than a store-bought hard dinghy. Oh, and did I mention it was a 3 year project and I still can't sail it? :blush:

Here's the last blog post on the project before I abandoned that blog and moved updates over to facebook to keep friends and family updated
Fiberglassing. And a nasty little pattern. | Matt's space
 
Yep. I can't vote, because there is no such thing as truly turnkey, and the other two offered options aren't attractive.
Out of curiosity, what other options could have been added that you would have selected?


No, I don't think that's reasonable. You can maybe make a boat sufficiently operable to suit your standards, but that probably wouldn't ring my chimes.
No, me either. I am more intrigued in the stories by @ksanders and @manyboats where they got exactly the boat they wanted for a relatively similar budget. This is more the intent of the question.

I'm absolutely not convinced it's a project I would take on. And if I did, I'm still not convinced it'd be successful. :)
 
Out of curiosity, what other options could have been added that you would have selected?

I think a choice for "pretty good boat that's immediately usable but will probably need some immediate fixes as well as service/maintenance and probably gradual upgrades in order to become completely suitable..."

Or something like that :)

And even that probably presents a long sliding scale of acceptability, with some leaning more toward "doesn't need much work" and others leaning toward "affordable enough to acquire immediately even if it does need future improvements."

-Chris
 
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If boat building is your hobby , get a fixer up and be happy for 5-10 years.

IF cruising is the goal , get the boat , get underway and in a year decide what isnt working for you.

Exactly. There's plenty of work to be done on a boat without buying a project too.

Keep in mind, when was the last time you saw a yard remanufacturing old boats on their own initiative. Hey, they have all the skill and could keep busy in the off times doing this. They even know when good boats come available. I've never seen one. That's because they already know how the math works.

If fixing boats were profitable boatyards would be in that business instead. They aren't and for a reason.

But buying a boat isn't about finances. It's happiness. I knew Seaweed was okay when I bought her, but with some tweaks she's gotten better over the years. There's more to do of course.

Spending years in a boatyard is craziness. And all too often I've watched couples relationships implode as launch date nears. I suspect it's a combination of Fear of the Unknown (too many sea stories?) along with leaving the familiar confines of safety and a network of fellow boatyard denizens.

Buy what you can afford and use immediately your boat.

Six months (or a year) later, make your laundry list of what is unacceptable and have at it. But use whatever you buy as is immediately.

In my opinion.
 
OK, let me expand. No way you're going to get a quality job re-coring and re-powering for $50K. That boat has too many problems. You can get a boat that has been around the block but has been taken care of. Lollygag came to Stockton on her own power and we could take her out and have fun on the delta anytime we wanted. But there are always "projects" on boats, some large, some reasonable. I had to change oil in the simms pumps right away. no big deal. I have to remove the lectra-san system and install new toilets (need holding tank for NDZ areas), install a big inverter, change the stove to propane and a dozen other things. It will take a year but we will use the boat in between projects. As soon as the new toilets are in, we're going out! A good survey will tell you how big the projects are and you can estimate what they will cost. You don't need to do a full restoration on every boat but you probably need to do some restoration on any used boat.
 
Purchase a boat as Turnkey as possible. Then do what you must, if you must. Then play!
 
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