Tell Me All About Carver Vessels

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Sidclark

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2018
Messages
220
Location
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Vessel Name
Jubilee
Vessel Make
Marine Trader 36 Sundeck
Having sold my Marine Trader Sundeck 36, man I loved that boat, we're back in the market. Because of insurance being more and more difficult and expensive to attain for these 1980-1990 vessels, it looks as if we're going to have to leave the typical Taiwanese trawlers behind. After 1990 there just isn't much in the way of those type of boats with the beautiful woodwork. So now looking at other options and these Carver's, among others, keep coming up. According to Pascoe these boats are junk. But was his opinion and survey limited to just that year/model? Are they really that awfully constructed? My wife likes the layout, I think about windage and easy engine access. We're looking at 40-45 foot for full time livaboard. Are there certain years that are inherently bad? Models? Or do I tell her forget the Carvers altogether?
 
Carvers are ok. Maybe not a Cadillac but pretty good. My only problem with them is most come with Volvo engines and I wouldn’t buy a Volvo. Other than that they are a nice boat. Maybe a bit blimpy in some models…
 
Middle of the road boat, maybe a bit below based on available production boats at the time. Nothing special, probably a step above Bayliner......oh boy, now I've started something! :cool:
 
Maybe a step above Bayliner, maybe not. Bayliner gets a bad wrap due to making a whole series of really cheap entry level boats. I can’t find anything materially wrong with their over 30’ boats.

My issue with Carver is I don’t find them attractive. If it works for you then my opinion on aesthetics means nothing.
 
Pascoe, rest his soul, was quite unkind to the Island Gypsy 44 too. I recall inspecting a Carver with unfinished edges of fiberglass inside, suggesting the quality of finish lacking. If a house builder can`t get the finish right what lies below? But this is a boat, not a house. Another TF member of note has previously commented about the presence of filler in Carvers, I don`t know them well enough for that.
 
I prefer a more traditional look. They look like a sling back open toed shoe.
IMHO of course
 
Pascoe seldom liked anything.

Carver seems like just another decent Chevy in the boating world. Previous owner's care and resulting condition more important than Pascoe review.

Generally known for offering very good interior spaces. Hull form often throws a big wake under plane with standard engines.

We looked at a few, during our last shopping trip. Good interior layouts, both lower and flybridge helms... but I didn't like either helm stations. Windshield too raked at lower helm (glare) with MFD mounted about the windshield. No room for large MFDs at upper helm (our preferred station). Helm forward on flybridge (we prefer aft).

You either like the look of boat like that, or not. Or put up with it (as we do with ours) in favor of the boat's features.

-Chris
 
Carvers are built to a price point. So think about the fixtures and hardware. Good for weekend use, but live aboard is more demanding.
I think they’ve gotten better in later years, but still, keep your eyes open when inspecting them.
 
Blister machines make sure you have the hull surveyed well. Function takes precedent over style. Price takes precedent over quality. Is it a great boat to do a lot of rough water traveling? NO. Is it a great looper with tons of room? YES
 
Taking the Carver around the world?

Carvers work and pass by me all the time on the ICW as well as the Hinkleys. The difference I see is the skippers are more polite on the Carvers.

While true the fit and finish may not be as ice as other boats, it is usually out of sight and easily fixed if it is a problem or bothers you.

I hsve not seen a rash of Carver problems (any more than any other boat brand/type), but then I haven't researched them beyond seeing them around and an experienced boating friend or two that wound up with one. Also have experienced boating friends who bought Bayliners too. A totally different boat than the little runabouts that used to fall apart.

Sea Rays were made in different factories and even different states. When I was a fulltime tech/capt for a MarineMax dealership I learned a lot about production boats and their construction. While some companies shoot for high price points, and some shoot low but all of them put out boats that probably aren't going to have major issues. Major issues can be found all the way up to the best, even right off the factory floor. I would say most boats built in the USA after the mid to late 90s are fine except some model years where manufacturers "experimented" with design or construction and are actually pretty well know in the groups of people who purchased them. The info is out there.

You want a boat that works for you and be on the water for hundreds of thousands of dollars less?.... research the models you are interested in and see what the issues are. Talk to some owners....ignore the "it's my boat so it's perfect" or the ones that discuss what a great deal it was. Find the ones that are brutally honest and will take an hour and go through the boat telling you how they fixed the issues that nag the brand/model but are still running the boat regularly
 
"Pascoe seldom liked anything"

I remember what he had to say about Grady White boats, which are well-thought of in the PNW for salmon fishing. He completely skewed Grady despite the fact they are considered a high-end product here and have always commanded high prices. He did love the 6V92 2-cycle Detroit engine, being about the only game in town in his era with that power and size.
 
"Pascoe seldom liked anything"

I remember what he had to say about Grady White boats, which are well-thought of in the PNW for salmon fishing. He completely skewed Grady despite the fact they are considered a high-end product here and have always commanded high prices. He did love the 6V92 2-cycle Detroit engine, being about the only game in town in his era with that power and size.
I get his take on GW boats. The same goes for Boston Whalers. Both were way overpriced at one point because of their huge following and both had real issues as in foam separation and saturation or rotted transoms. But because of their basic design, construction and detailing, both had huge followings and became cult boats with high resale to offset their problems.

However he was extremely opinionated that all/most boats, engines, etc be near perfect or meet the highest standards when most boats are nowhere used to their perceived necessity of performance.
 
There are plenty of them out there which must mean that the combination of price, utililty, and boater satisfaction is acheived. From my observation these do not seem to be used primarily for fishing, rather most are used for cruising where perhaps an occasional fishpole is baited and tossed out the side.
 
From observations on older non-top tier and some top tier boats, sealing around doors, windows and port holes are their downfall. It goes undetected for too long and gets expensive to fix, sometimes more than the boat is worth. Usually, price point boats use lesser grade hardware also. An example, I've seen Bowmar hatches that you can jump up and down on and also ones that would break if a 5 year old stepped on it. If you like the boat - get a real good surveyor and be there when he surveys it.
 
Since surveyor Dave Pascoe's name has been brought up here, here is what he had to say about the Carver 370. This is lengthy but has a lot of information.

When we first decided to do boat reviews, we pretty much decided that there were certain boat builders that we wouldn't consider. These would mainly be the entry-level class builders, or builders whose products had established such a well known reputation for poor quality and defective products that we needn't state the obvious.

There are always those folks who can't resist a bargain, or whose philosophy is to always shop and buy based on the lowest price. Sure, we harp on quality a lot, mainly because boats are so very expensive, and to spend $100,000 on the lowest priced boat of its class is just plain nuts. But we've come to realize that there are some people -- many of them, in fact -- who will never realize the error in this. So there's no point in our attempting to dissuade them.

We also pointed out in our Introduction to Boat Reviews, which many of our readers don't read, and therefore miss the whole point of these reviews being here, that the quality amongst any builder's product line can be highly variable, not only from model to model, but from year to year, or even month to month. We cautioned against simply reading a review of one boat, and then applying the information in that review more or less globally. We cautioned that boats are not cranked out of a machine, but are hand made products. By human hands, that is. So you may want to reflect on the old Russian adage that you never want to buy a refrigerator that is made on a Monday or a Friday. Or anything else, for that matter.

Carver is one of those builders whom we didn't see much point in mentioning, for the caliber of their products are well known, and a buyer would have to have been asleep for the past twenty years, or simply too lazy to do any research at all, not to know what kind of boats they build. Surveyors have long considered them to be little more than floating campers, and are often heard to make jokes such as "they forgot to put the wheels on this one."

Then, very early in the decade, we started hearing talk that Carver was trying to reinvent itself by entering the mid-sized boat market, and was turning out a higher quality product. Well, "better quality" is a phrase that always gets our attention, so we started paying more attention to Carver. Sure, we've surveyed plenty of their small boats, but didn't see much point in commenting on them. If you do your shopping at a discount store, you know what kind of quality you're getting. By the mid 1990's we were hearing a lot of talk about Carver, mainly by the broker/dealer types, favorably comparing this new line of boats to some of the higher end boats like Hatteras or Viking. Surveyors, of course, don't get to survey new boats very often. Typically, we don't survey a boat until its 3 years or older. What we were seeing in the boat shows and at the dealer's docks certainly looked good. But, then, all new boats look good. It takes a while for the shine to wear off and the boat has some miles under its bilge before we begin to see whether they're really made of the right stuff.

Now, when a builder enters the larger boat market, particularly with boats priced well over 1/4 million, that attracts our interest. Not because we're interested in the higher rollers, but to see what a builder can get away with in this price range. (Sort of like wondering if you could sell a Rolls Royce with plastic bumpers.) And also when the literature is peppered with words like quality and craftsmanship.

Our first good look came in 1995 with Hurricane Opal in the Florida panhandle when we got to see a couple of damaged 43's. There's nothing like examining a boat that's been broken apart (or not broken apart) by a storm to really get a good look at how they're made. For this is where all the cost and corner cutting begins to stick out like a sore thumb. And what we were seeing wasn't looking too good. Our first example was a one year old 43 footer that broke its moorings and was driven up onto a sandy shore in the courtyard of a condominium. This boat really caught a lot of attention because it had part of a helm chair imbedded in the side of the hull. Yep, the base of a helm chair was sticking right out

On close examination, it was pretty easy to see how that had happened. The hull sides were balsa cored and the exterior fiberglass skin was somewhere around 1/8" to maybe 3/16" thick. The glass was so thin that you could swing a small hammer at it with only moderate force and it would go right through. We know because we tried that. The other boat had small holes punctured in the sides all around the hull, but what really caught our attention was the fact that it also had creases in the hull sides where it had scraped against the gunwales of other boats. That's creases like you'd get in your car door if you brushed up against the bumper of another car. This one also had only 1/8" glass on the sides. Fiberglass is strong stuff, but not that strong.

Dent's and creases in a fiberglass hull? Now that's something we've never seen before. But the glass on this boat was also so thin that creasing it was made possible. Then we starting thinking and comparing these two Carvers with the 46 Bertram just down the road that broke loose, wiped out half a marina, took out part of a restaurant built on 12' telephone pole pilings and ended up in a heap against a concrete retaining wall with a pile of other boats. It didn't have a single hole in the side, even though the hull side of that boat was only around 3/8" thick. You can see pictures of it in the 46 Bertram review.

Carver370-1.JPG

Hole cut here is for a test coupon in way of area where outer laminate started peeling off. The hull is about 1/4" thick in this area and is delaminated. Bottom flexing was so bad here that even the paint flaked off. The delamination can be seen inside the hole.
Our next exposure came with a 46 Carver wherein the owner had decided to add a cockpit extension to the hull. After going into the yard, the after interior was stripped out, then they removed the exhaust pipes from the transom. Problem was, water started pouring out of the balsa cored transom and hull sides. Seems Carver thought it was a good idea to core the hull right down to the chine, well below the water line. But worse, for all the through hull openings and exhaust pipes, they just cut holes right through the core and bedded the fittings and pipes in place. Now builders have know ever since the 1960's that you can't do this, but apparently Carver didn't. So when the fittings inevitably leaked, the core filled up with water.

But there was another problem. Once again, both the outer and inner laminates were so thin that the yard discovered, much to their surprise, that there wasn't enough material to bond an extension to. The hull was simply too weak to add onto it. At least for the amount they had quoted in the customer's contract. On the inside, over the balsa core, was only ONE layer of mat and roving for a laminate thickness of about 1/16".

It is our policy that we do not publish instances of hull failures or defects of any kind unless we can establish a pattern of defects. All boat builders make mistakes, and its not our purpose to go around pointing them out. The defect has to be endemic to their way of doing things. Moreover, we are extremely careful to make sure that the boat wasn't abused or damaged by some other means. We do not wish to sully anyone's reputation, so unless we find multiple instances of defects or poor design, we keep quiet about it. The boat that put Carver over the threshold for us is this 1994 model 370 that experienced massive bottom laminate failure.

This is a story we're telling with pictures because they speak for themselves. What you see here is a hull that has so little fiberglass in it, that is so thin that it is simply falling apart. At best, the bottom laminate around the unsupported panels (between frames) is one quarter inch thick. It looks a little thicker where you see the test hole cut because the bottom is delaminated and spread apart. Worse yet, of that 1/4" you can see that there are multiple layers of chopped strand mat, a material that is only used (or should be used) to prevent telegraphing of the weave pattern of the structural fabrics through to the gelcoat. In this case the mat, which is a very weak material, comprises a major part of the bottom laminate thickness, at least 25%.

What you see here is a catestrophic hull failure in progess. It was caught in time, before the boat sank, after the boat was hauled out and discovered that parts of the bottom laminate were peeling off. What you see here is the inevitable result of what happens when the bean counters get involved in the design of a boat in order to produce it as cheaply as possible. What you see here is the result of a conscious decision to use as little clostly materials as possible, not just in one or two boats, but throughout a product line. Its what happens when you design a hull to the edge of failure limits: some of them are going to fail. What you see here is a boat that cannot be repaired and, unless the builder is willing to refund the sales price, is likely to be tied up in litigation for years.

Carver370-2.JPG

This is a very rare shot of bottom panel flexing so bad that it completely outlines the inner hull frames. Note the rectangular pattern. The horizontal cracks outline the stringers, while the vertical cracks outline the bulkheads or frames.

Carver370-4.JPG

These circular pattern stress cracks are the more typical pattern that indicates bottom flexing. Note that at extreme left, these cracks have been painted over several times, indicating that they are not newly formed. Highly irregular patterns at far right are areas of delamination that are about to fail. At bottom, the strake is badly cracked and is in danger of splitting open.
Consider that the advertised weight of this boat is 17,500 lbs. and that a comparably sized Hatteras of same vintage comes in around 32,000 lbs. If you price a boat by the pound, which we often do for purposes of comparison, you are looking at a difference of almost DOULBE the weight. If you subtract the difference in average per pound cost in materials between the two, the conclusion you must draw is inescapable. And in case you've never made the connection, there is a direct correlation between weight, longevity and quality of ALL products; well made things simply weigh more, whether its a Rolex watch or a Rolls Royce. Even a good toaster is going to weigh more than a cheap toaster. To be well made, it not only must have more material, but better material.

There's no excuse for this sort of thing, or course. This is not high technology stuff here; mankind has been successfully building good boats for thousands of years, and fiberglass boats for over 40 years, boats that are reasonably priced, and boats that don't fall apart. And while its easy to blame the builder, increasingly we are turning our attention to the boating public that buys products like this without discernment. The fact is that you can't ever have your cake and eat it too. Unless you have two cakes. People who shop price alone don't have two cakes; they can only afford one.

Carver370-3.JPG

Stress cracks outline the hull stringers extending nearly all the way aft.
Its the competitive nature of of capitalism that some manufacturers will attempt to capture market share by reducing the price below all competitors. Of course they cannot stay in business if they don't also reduce the cost of manufacturing by an equal amount. Companies must make a profit to survive. This unfortunate nature of capitalism means that inevitably the cost/quality relationship of manufactured products is going to spiral downward to the least common denominator, ending up with what you see in these photos. We end up with boats little better than so-called mobile homes. And when the big wind comes along, everyone looks to the taxpayers to pay the cost of their stupidity. You don't have that luxury with a boat.

Boat builders are not going to stop producing products like this, no matter how much pressure is put on them to do otherwise. The problem is market driven, and must be solved by the market. That means that unless and until the boating public becomes more discerning about the products they buy, they are going to continue to get burned. We shouldn't forget that capitalism is democracy in action. We cast a vote every time we buy something. That vote tells manufacturers what you want in terms of quality and price. They don't know whether you are knowledgeable or stupid; if you know what you bought, or of you just bought it blind. They only know that this is what sells. If you are willing to make a $250,000 purchase indiscriminately based on price alone, the manufacturer will be willing to take the same risk and design the quality right down to the bare bones, and below, in order to give it to you. Even if it takes both of you right down the drain. Once the downward spiral starts, the builders really haven't much choice. They either meet the market or perish. Its you, the boat buyer, who holds all the cards.

Consider that Hatteras has pretty much abandoned the mid-sized boat market. And so has Viking. Consider that Bertram and Blackfin are out of business. Consider that a lot of other quality builders have met the same fate. See what's happening here? Low quality is driving out good quality, because that's what the market wants.

That's why we find it hard to blame the builder for this sort of thing.
 
The trouble I believe is .....builders evolve.

Taking a sample from a particular decade (or less) and saying every model and every year group is of the "same" quality shows more prejudice than expertise.

There are manufacturers that have been bought out several times and the typr, quality and following of their boats are wildly different.

If you like a model/style/something in a boat...research the crap ut of it. I have found many popular boats where owners have found things that they didn't like about them. I have also met experienced boaters who bought boats Pascoe beat up in his writings, but they satisfied people who operated them extensively but weren't "surveyors".

A great example is about some older Bertrams like Pascoe discusses. Yep, 2X as heavy as other boats. Well some profess they are like "Tanks" and can take anything the sea can throw at them. Well, a charter guy I was friendly with moved his 80s Bertram 42 to Hatteras to take the beatings Hatteras can give. But he started buying light weight cold molded NC boats because they were faster and more economical than those old Bertrams for his other charter areas. It didn't take long for Bertram to change their design/construction and there were a few 2000 year timeframe boats I would have bought on a dare as their interior systems were nightmares to work on. Built well? Maybe, but that's only part of owning a boat.
 
Let’s be real, if Carver’s and Bayliner’s were not built to survive their mission the insurance companies wouldn’t insure them. Trying to hold them to a standard they were never meant to preform is silly.

They are low on the quality list but they are far from junk boats.
 
Heard this somewhere years ago when everyone was bashing Bayliners.

Some guy buys a Bayliner runabout to take his family to sandbar and some light skiing etc. Has a blast with it for a few weeks. Then mentions how great boating was and how much fun he's having at a party, and someone asks what kind of boat he has. After telling them, the response was "Oh no you didn't get a Bayliner did you." Of course, it ruins the guy's day when in reality it was the perfect boat for him. Affordable and did everything he needed it to.
 
That article is really what drew my concern. That's why I asked if this issue with this boat was centered around that model and year. Not saying I would never buy a Carver or not. I just want to be informed. A lot of folks turn their heads at Marine Trader. I ended up with one that had responsible caring owners throughout it's life and I never had any issues. I really don't shop brand. I shop does it fit me in what my wife and what I want to do with it in the next five years. Well maintained means alot. In that Carver article the vessel had serious issues that had nothing to do with how well a boat was cared for. That's scary...
 
That article is really what drew my concern. That's why I asked if this issue with this boat was centered around that model and year. Not saying I would never buy a Carver or not. I just want to be informed. A lot of folks turn their heads at Marine Trader. I ended up with one that had responsible caring owners throughout it's life and I never had any issues. I really don't shop brand. I shop does it fit me in what my wife and what I want to do with it in the next five years. Well maintained means alot. In that Carver article the vessel had serious issues that had nothing to do with how well a boat was cared for. That's scary...
I've never heard widespread reports of issues like the one from the Pascoe article being found, so I'd expect it's not a common issue. In particular, there are still plenty of 30+ year old Carvers around, so they must be holding up well enough for their expected use. And everyone I've known who has a Carver of some model likes it. Depending on the model they're not necessarily the prettiest or best boat, but their layouts, etc. do tend to be pretty practical, at least in their older boats.
 

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