New boat vs Used boat

[Colin A]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

My advice is to either buy new, or buy an older boat that someone has just poured a ton of money into.

Do NOT do what I did -- buy used, recently made, and apparently in wonderful condition.

Let me explain why:

A boat, as is sometimes said about helicopters, is a large collection of different systems loosely tied together by the hull, which is a relatively small percentage of the whole thing in terms of value. Those systems all have different useful lives which are clicking down every year, to some extent by time and to some extent by hours or miles of usage.

My boat was 8 years old when I bought her, and was very lightly used and very well taken care of. Only 830 hours on the main engine, only 160 hours on the generator. She surveyed well and seemed to be ready for years of hard usage.

Wrong! Almost from the first day, system after system started failing -- never forget that useful life is determined, in most cases, as much, or even more, by TIME, not miles! So I started pouring money into her, and within a few years, I had spent more than a new boat of her class would have cost, and with a lot more trouble.

So when you buy a new boat, you are buying a large collection of brand new systems -- zero time, zero miles -- that's GOOD. It does not indeed mean you don't have to repair or maintain anything -- it's a BOAT after all . But you are repairing and maintaining zero time systems, which is a totally different ball game. You might even have a warranty!

So contrary to what some people say, it's not at all like a car. Modern cars are more or less trouble free for 100,000 miles or 10 years, whatever comes first. Call that the useful life, with some residual value after that. When you buy a used one, you are buying the last however many years of the useful life, and according to the depreciation schedules of cars, the last years are cheaper, sometimes much cheaper, so it's a good deal. And the last years are still likely to be as trouble free as the first ones were, or nearly so (unless you buy a Range Rover like I did last time ). The guy who bought the car new paid a premium for the new car smell the first few years; you get a discount for giving that up, and likely without any significant investment in repairs. Boats are TOTALLY different from that, because they are not at all trouble free, not ever, not for any period of time -- every system is a ticking time bomb of depreciation. They don't depreciate in price nearly enough to justify it.

So in my opinion, new boats are a very good proposition financially, and also in terms of how your spend your boating time. The only better proposition is to buy an older boat from someone who loved his boat so much that he never skimped on anything, and poured money into it, money which is never reflected in the price. Buying that boat, you get the benefit of all that investment. Just don't think that it will stop there

It shouldn't be 8 years old, like my boat was -- because that is within the useful life of most of the original systems, but already getting towards the end of all of them -- even if it doesn't look like that. Better 10 or 15 years old with most systems replaced already.

You may be unpleasantly surprised at the amount that fails on some new boats.

[UNCIVILIZED]

I'm gonna' refrain from much comment, given that I've answered this question like thrice+ in the last week alone. Or this question loosely phrased. But it's worth reading this article by Nigel Calder, an emminently respected expert & author on most systems boat.
A Refit Reality Check | Cruising World

You might also read this post, & especially follow the links within it, concerning a similar query http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2436545

And since you're a Marine Service Provider, put together some notes based on the info you glean here, & ask some other Service Providers for their no BS assesments of these questions & conclusion, as well as those that you come up with. Plus any which they may suggest that you consider, but that haven't yet been mentioned.

[MartinMV]

Maybe first assess, what you want from a boat.

When you know, what kind of boat you really want, then you could ask for recommendations and see what's on the market new or used.

As the current trend in new boats that is not for everyone, you may come to the conclusion, that you want to buy rather a used boat that better meets your specifications.

[boatpoker]

I get where Dockhead is coming from but I don't completely agree. I can point out around twenty 2yr. old boats with less than 50hrs' on them in my yacht club alone. Massive depreciation and the owners have already wasted all the time to get the stuff fixed that the factory got wrong. Two year old boats virtually unused abound in the Great Lakes.
where 50-60hrs per year is average usage among those who actually use their boats at all.

3-4 times per year I am asked to survey new vessels prior to acceptance. In my experience this is a very wise decision.

[alansmith]

If you look at the used boat market versus the new shining lights....the build quality on the new boats are corporate bean counters in many situations. I understand them and why they do it that way. If they built boats to Hinkley or Oyster standards...you could end up in divorce or homeless.

Dockhead and Uncivilized are absolutely correct (thanks for Nigels forthright article on his refit of Nada...second time I read it now). Buying boats is a lot like the college dances I used to go to as a freshman. Beautiful girls everywhere and which one to ask for.

I bought a 5000 dollar Sharpie 29' plywood boat back in November 2016. I stripped her bottom down to bare plywood and reglassed her, epoxy painted her, and tip and rolled her. It rained from November till end of June when I could do nothing on her due to the heaviest wet season since 1955. I bought a 9.9 hp Suzuki for 2600 dollars. My trailer has twin axle. On the way over to get some work done on her one drum seized up and a billow of smoke was coming off the wheel. I paid 1800 dollars to switch her over to disc brakes. Which required a new receiver and all new hydraulic steel lines. Because the engine is much larger than the 4 hp 2 stroke I had to hire a boat carpenter to completely redo the motor well. That will be in the 3000 dollar range.

It is amazing how expensive this has become. I still have to address electronics, anchoring systems, bumpers, lines, cooking, and refrigeration. In some ways I want to say that your personality strengths and weaknesses will come strongly into play in how you select a boat and what you will do with that boat.

I like to take old things and tinker with them until they look good. I ignore the bleeding from the pocket book. I don't need to sail to Tahiti. Coastal is fine for me. If you are looking for a good used boats please look at the fresh water boats up in the Great Lakes. There are some very nice ones. Fresh water is a good thing for boats.

[barnakiel]

Then again one must think about the dollar talk vs. the sailing talk.

Your dollars will not sail the boat while a good hull shape, good systems and new equipment all influence how the boat sails and how safe / easy it is to run.

So the new designs are generally better boats than the old ones - when we think about tracking in big following seas or sailing upwind in a blast, or ghosting in light winds. Etc. Where many modern designs will ghost, most old ones will power. Powering is not sailing.

So to say a HR44 (2017) may be the better choice for world cruising than its grandfather HR42 (1980), contrary to what some people claim about the older stuff being 'better'.

I have sailed many boats of many designs and on the whole the newer designs were the better ones - more stable, faster, easier. Old boats had their charm but were often hell to sail (esp downwind), esp the ones seen as the cornerstone of world cruising (in the Hiscocks times, though).

It is 2017 and new boats can be the cream of the pack. Off course the cream is the expensive ingredient of modern day cruising and otherwise cuisine.

Cheers,
barnakiel

[a64pilot]

There is a third category of boats not yet discussed.
This is an older boat that has no equipment. My boat was 27 when I bought her and had essentially nothing, I had to add it all, so now as we are cruising full time, everything is max three yrs old, and I mean nearly everything, except the hull and engine/ transmission, but there are many marina queens out there, like mine apparently was with 500 hours on its engine.

However not really having looked at new boats, I think I'd have to replace a lot of what is there, refrigeration is usually weak, windlass and ground tackle just looking at them is way undersized. Battery bank is often a joke, same with chargers and inverters, does it have a generator? What about a watermaker? Even the interior lights and mast lights, spreader lights, etc.
How about an HF radio? Good autopilot or just barely adequate in calmer waters? Solar? Davits or other way of handling the dinghy, dinghy?

Now I am not talking newer Oyster and that class of boat, but from your budget I don't think you are either, those I hope do in fact come very well equipped.

[MartinMV]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

So the new designs are generally better boats than the old ones - when we think about tracking in big following seas or sailing upwind in a blast, or ghosting in light winds. Etc. Where many modern designs will ghost, most old ones will power. Powering is not sailing.

You may find conditions, where a new design is far superior. But in boatdesigns adding one characteristic allways detracts from another if you use the same materials.

And for someone who wants to circumvent in five years, the 300 sailing days may not impact the overall experience of 1800 days all that much.

And with a small crew of pensioners, you may not want that kind of keel of a HR44 neither at anchor, in heavy weather nor with a wind vane.

Even though it is stable and perfomant. But it won't be very comfortable and be easy to handle.

[GrowleyMonster]

Good posts, Dockhead and Stumble. Slightly different perspectives but buying a boat is all about perspectives, preferences, and compromises.

I have to bang my drum now for oldies but goodies. 60's and 70s boats were often overbuilt because production engineers had not yet figured out how flimsy they could build a boat and still be able to sell it and not get sued for it. Lots of very modestly priced hulls out there for next to nothing that need, and deserve, a complete refit. This is especially true in the under 40 feet category. Yes a refit to a $6k boat will cost twice or more what the boat costs. Bottom line is you got a sound hull with new systems and rigging for peanuts compared to a new or lightly used boat. Downside is this requires experience and a lot of thought. And you will most definitely never get back even half what you put into this good old boat, should you ever sell. So this would be a keeper, not a flipper or a temporary just for right now boat. It could easily take a couple of years, too, to get it where you want it.

Many fiberglass boats of that era have a LOT of structural wood in them, and at the 40 year mark it would not be unusual to find that much of it needs replacing. Same with deck core. Chain plates. Mast and step. Shaft log, steering system. Big jobs. Only worth it if you are going to see it through to the end, with all new rigging, propulsion, electronics, and creature comforts. My advice for a boat like this is ignore the cosmetics. They dont matter, and they wont help to sell the boat for twice the market value of similar boats just because you sank a lot of money in her.

BECAUSE depreciation begins as soon as you take delivery, distress sales in the first year of ownership can be good opportunities. Can, if the seller is a realist and is not too broken up about having just paid $100k more for the boat than what he stands to get for it. Often these guys who cant afford to keep these boats, keep them anyway, grudgingly going down a few thousand on asking price every 3 or 4 months while the boat falls apart from neglect at the dock, generating bills for slip fee and insurance, driving the seller crazy with need to recoup his losses... you get the picture. But the potential is there for you the buyer and he the seller to walk away both happy, too. This for the nearly new boat, not the 8 year old "like new" boat such as what Dockhead warns about.

I personally dont like new boats. Another name for new is "untested". One of my neighbors has a beautiful new Beneteau and not trashing the brand name mind you, but he has nothing but grief from it. New modern design stuff breaking under perfectly normal abuse. Electrical and electonic stuff acting up, all the smoke leaking out. Air conditioning mysteriously refusing to work even after the pros come down and "fix" it for the third time. Stuff that an owner once would have repaired himself with cheap off the shelf parts, requiring major tear downs and waiting on newfangled stuff to ship from across the pacific on the slow boat from China. New and Improved and Positively Awful. Beautiful boat, though. Cosmetically perfect... I want to take my shoes off when I approach within 10 feet LOL. But it is infected with what I call modern new boat sickness. Not every new boat is a horror story, but I really like the old standard ways of building and engineering stuff. Yeah I know, I have electric drive in my current boat instead of good ol smokey clanky familiar diesel, but even so my components are standard and basic, because some day someone else will have to source replacements. Having everything engineered to fit together just SO complicates things for someone on down the line. New boats are often over engineered, designed for the right now and not for the 40 years from now. Or even 15. Or, as Dockhead points out, even 8.

For a boat to be used in lake, bay, or sound, or used mostly as a dock queen, no biggie. If you have the budget and you simply prefer a new boat with warranty on everything, its a viable option. I have to tell you that because if nobody ever buys new boats, there won't be any more used ones in the future LOL. But for serious cruising, there aren't many new boats that give me a high ratio of confidence to purchase price. You will pay through the nose for something sensibly designed and appropriately overbuilt with standard easily replaced components.

All in all, and definitely YMMV on this, I have to vote for not the new boat, or the merely used boat, but the good ol boat that has been given new life. I think thats where the smart money goes. Just my opinion. Listen to the other guys too, take your time and make your own decision.

[FionaJC]

I have a 1980's boat, built like a tank, sea freindly and great. I bought it as an internal wreck, then I discovered that although it had 3 previous owners it been in the water it had never been sailed nor the motor run.
7 years later it was launched technicaly for the first time. I bought a bargain and sank a fortune into her with new/used equipment and ten years on I have installed a different engine and I will be completing everything I planned this month. However OI have had ten years of sailing, several channel crossings and my opinion on new vs old?
You get more for your money with an older boat, you can modify it, change and add without guilt or worry but best of all there are four things. 1. When I am asleep on board it doesn't matter if I paid £25k or £250K when my eyes are shut. 2. When somebody bumps me or empties a greasy bilge when rafted alongside I don't get upset enough to cry (maybe swear though). 3. When I'm sailing it doesn't matter how much I paid but at least its a firm boat that doesn't flex. 3. I saved the depreciation and under warranty hassle. 4 I have the pride in all my improvements and achievement. So on Balance I have a 40ft ketch or I could have bought a new 25ft day sailer for the same money. That's my choice so what is yours? Oh I forgot, the best advice I had when I knew roughly what I wanted was from a sailmaker, if it talks to you, you were made for each other, its like falling in love.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

My advice is to either buy new, or buy an older boat that someone has just poured a ton of money into.

Do NOT do what I did -- buy used, recently made, and apparently in wonderful condition.

Let me explain why:

A boat, as is sometimes said about helicopters, is a large collection of different systems loosely tied together by the hull, which is a relatively small percentage of the whole thing in terms of value. Those systems all have different useful lives which are clicking down every year, to some extent by time and to some extent by hours or miles of usage.

My boat was 8 years old when I bought her, and was very lightly used and very well taken care of. Only 830 hours on the main engine, only 160 hours on the generator. She surveyed well and seemed to be ready for years of hard usage.

Wrong! Almost from the first day, system after system started failing -- never forget that useful life is determined, in most cases, as much, or even more, by TIME, not miles! So I started pouring money into her, and within a few years, I had spent more than a new boat of her class would have cost, and with a lot more trouble.

So when you buy a new boat, you are buying a large collection of brand new systems -- zero time, zero miles -- that's GOOD. It does not indeed mean you don't have to repair or maintain anything -- it's a BOAT after all . But you are repairing and maintaining zero time systems, which is a totally different ball game. You might even have a warranty!

So contrary to what some people say, it's not at all like a car. Modern cars are more or less trouble free for 100,000 miles or 10 years, whatever comes first. Call that the useful life, with some residual value after that. When you buy a used one, you are buying the last however many years of the useful life, and according to the depreciation schedules of cars, the last years are cheaper, sometimes much cheaper, so it's a good deal. And the last years are still likely to be as trouble free as the first ones were, or nearly so (unless you buy a Range Rover like I did last time ). The guy who bought the car new paid a premium for the new car smell the first few years; you get a discount for giving that up, and likely without any significant investment in repairs. Boats are TOTALLY different from that, because they are not at all trouble free, not ever, not for any period of time -- every system is a ticking time bomb of depreciation. They don't depreciate in price nearly enough to justify it.

So in my opinion, new boats are a very good proposition financially, and also in terms of how your spend your boating time. The only better proposition is to buy an older boat from someone who loved his boat so much that he never skimped on anything, and poured money into it, money which is never reflected in the price. Buying that boat, you get the benefit of all that investment. Just don't think that it will stop there

It shouldn't be 8 years old, like my boat was -- because that is within the useful life of most of the original systems, but already getting towards the end of all of them -- even if it doesn't look like that. Better 10 or 15 years old with most systems replaced already.

Jeepers..... I've had exactly the opposite experience with our same size, six years used boat. 630 oringinal engine hours and 350 generator hours when we purchased Orinoco five years ago. After a quick freshening, replacing all things that pump water (around $2000), most everything else has been trouble free unless caused by us. The only BIG item was replacing the sails, but that was because we were swindled out of a new set that was supposed to be on the boat by the previous owner. Otherwise, It's all been small stuff, minor service type repairs and add-ons like the fuel polishing system, solar, second watermaker etc., new dinghy; but even our 15 year old Mercury 15hp two stroke is still going strong.

It's like we're in a parallel boating universe, I'm sorry to hear you've had so many problems.
But to be fair, I did undertake one major repair which was a complete deck refurbishment.

I think the OP should not be afraid to look at a 15-20 year old Oyster in his price range.

[JPA Cate]

G'day, Richard,

If you buy a new, liner built boat, how are you ever going to be able to add what you want? How are you ever going to make repairs? Would you want to own a throw away boat?

If you are really interested in good value for your pounds, then my opinion is that you need to find a strong, seaworthy, older boat that is in good nick. Yes, much harder to find. Plan to add on what you want for the circumnavigation, unless you are fortunate enough to find one that is circumnavigation-ready.

And, just a note: the smaller and simpler it is, the less time and money you'll spend on upkeep.


Here's a list of additions that Jim put on our first Insatiable, which was a re-purposed ocean race boat from the days when they weren't lightly built. This is just some of what he did, himself, not hiring others, and I only mention it so that you can see some of the things that might sneak up on you, otherwise.

1) refrigeration, added insulation to icebox, prior to adding the fridge
2) increased the battery bank, added high output alternator, fancy smart voltage regulator, trolling and wind generators, and aimable solar panels, AND an inverter
3) replaced the original 18 gal. fuel tank with a 45 gal. one made of aluminium,
4) added chain and rope rode
5)added radar
6)made a cabin heater (diesel)
7)autopilot
8)converted two berths for storage, added knockdown netting
9)Kayzee Head foil, new genoa, new mainsail,
10) designed, built, installed a wind vane for the boat

Do not assume a boat is cruise ready, no matter what others may tell you. There will be a "personalizing" time, and that time is also a money hemorrhaging time. I notice you're a marine service provider, hopefully you can get the things you want at a discounted price. If you own the business, expect difficulties selling it.

One time, we met a guy who'd brought his bagpipes on board. He was kind enough to not play at dawn.


At any rate, good luck with it.

Ann

[El Pinguino]

What I would be looking for would be a relatively young boat that has just completed a circumnavigation.

Quite a few people do actually complete a circumnavigation and then - having ticked that on their list of 'must do' items - put her on the market rather than suck down the on going cost of having her sit around unused.

Seems to be more of a European than a US thing... younger cruisers ( 30/40ish ?) who take three or four years off and then go home and get back into the workforce.

[Joli]

Buy what you want. Just remember you will likely have to add: more robust ground tackle, autopilot, extra batteries, extra chargers, battery monitor, wind turbines, solar and controller for both, additional instruments, ais, additional sails beyond white sails, SSB or some other long distance communications, water maker, generator,, medical kit, safety items, life raft,,,,, the list is quite long from just a bare boat. Some used boats will have much of this gear.

[SV Bacchus]

Excellent thread and quite timely. We are presently looking for a new to us boat. And while we are not in the market for new there is a lot of info here we can use when comparing used vs. used, what to look for, pitfalls to avoid and other valuable insights.