Buy New or Used Boat?

[Apex]

....
P.S. 2%er's do not last on the market so do not hem and haw over one or it will get snapped up from under your feet. Whip out the checkbook and write the deposit on the spot when or if you find one...

Mainesail: In YOUR experience, where would you focus search for the 2%'er? On-Line: Yachtworld, Craigslist? Hire a local broker to keep a lookout?
Would you pick a specific model and look there, or keep a length/year range in mind looking at many models?

 

[Maine Sail]

Mainesail: In YOUR experience, where would you focus search for the 2%'er? On-Line: Yachtworld, Craigslist? Hire a local broker to keep a lookout?
Would you pick a specific model and look there, or keep a length/year range in mind looking at many models?

#1 Boats that are mint but not currently for sale. Leave the owner a note or contact them directly.

#2 Always have a good broker or two in your back pocket & make sure they have a very detailed spec sheet describing to them exactly what you are looking for.. I have a few brokers who call me before anyone when a 2%er is found. It has paid off for them as I can usually lead them to a 2% buyer.

#3 Yachtworld
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#451 Craigslist - JUNK
#789 eBay - Worse JUNK

 

[Warren Milberg]

Couple of end-of-thread thoughts:
1. I'm glad some people buy new boats or there would be no used boats for the rest of us to buy.
2. This may sound odd, but when I am looking for a used inboard power sailboat, the very first thing I look is the engine. If the engine is nice and clean, with no rust on it and no water or oil spots under it, I then get further interested. If the engine and its spaces don't pass the first glance, I move on right away. If the current owner cares enough to keep the inboard in good physical shape, chances are he also keeps up with maintenance on the rest of the boat.
3. While I am qualified to survey my own boats, I always use a known professional surveyor as well. I do my own survey first, note my concerns to him/her, and then let them do their survey with me looking over their shoulder. Then we compare notes. Always worth the price in the long run.

 

[Pilgrimtex]

Kings Gambit.
About the storm
First Weinie.
Isn't that great. All NEW equipment and usually top rated.
Now the storm. We were passaging from Galveston to Tampa Bay in Nov. The night before we ran our sailing plan over with a friendly chemical tanker Captain out of Corpus. He was nice enough to get us a weather forecast from their contract weather service based on our plan. We agreed it was a good sailplan. I turned south to line up for a tack that would take us northeast outside the busy miss. And New Orleans traffic. From there turn southeast direct to Tampa Bay.
Heading northeast,We wound up running directly into the storm.
There was a tropical depression east of Florida expected to travel northern along the coast. Instead to everyone's surprise it turned directly west across northern half of Florida into the warm gulf stream fed gulf.
For the next 4 days we fought the storm. Winds to 45 knots. Steady at 35_37 knots. Seas to 15 feet, very steep and no distance between.
It was a tropical storm in all aspects but no circulation. It was cells jammed together like a ball of cotton balls. I would rather have fought a tropical storm over this one.
The winds were continuously changing direction through 360 degrees. The sees were totally confused coming from all directions. You couldn't heave too, run a sea anchor or drogue. I maintained as much sail as I could to mitigate rolling. The boat took a hell of a pounding. I told Treva I felt the boat aged 20 years.
All in all we made it. At the pleadings of Treva's sisters the Coast Guard pinged her cell phone and our AIS and told them we were still above water. Lol. They also said we were off Sanibel Island. That's how far the storm had taken us.
My sister was vacationing at orange beach and said the winds were incredible and the seas looked very angry.
We wound up covering 850 nm to get to Tampa Bay and 8.5 days. I wound up sleeping a total of 3.5 hours over the 8.5 days.
Seas and winds verified from weather boys utilizing my sirius weather account.
Only damage was the storm exploded the balls in my boom car. I have furling main. Limped along like that to Tampa and back to Seabrook Texas.

 

[kimelmore]

The Admiral and I undertook a 2 year search for the perfect boat after hours of poring over specs and making numerous lists as to "want" "got to have""upgrades" etc. We ended up with a used boat that met all our desires with a budget left over for the new electronics and such that we needed. Yes we could have bought newer and with more electronics (radar etc) but they would have already been outdated compared to new. Our actual costs are coming in below our original estimates so we are upgrading a few things and having some additional canvas work done to minimize the work the admiral was planning to do leaving her more "boat enjoyment" time. It is our plan to retire and do some coastal cruising so we have a couple of years to fix er up to meet our perfect plan.