Philippines Yachts for Sale

[cooper1991]

I'm going to Philippines next month to visit my wife's family. While I'm there I want to see as many modestly price sail boats as possible.

I've looked at Yachtworld, PGYC, Rdhmarine & Boats.com and there's very little available. I realise that banca motor boats are popular but I find it hard to believe a nation with 7000 islands is bereft of a boat market.

Is this just a fact, or am I looking in the wrong places?

[ricwoz]

The Philippines is not a rich country, though that's changing. Still, even a used Western built fiberglass sailboat is way out of the price range of most Filipinos, especially the more rural ones.

Also there is local taste to consider. My wife (also a Filipina, who grew up in a family where fishing is the business) views any boats without "balancers" as suspect in the extreme.

My father in law is a fisherman, and their business includes daily trips to another island to buy fish, about 2 hours each way. Much of it is out of site of land. They have a couple of boats for the business. Sadly they lost one (badly damaged) in the recent Typhoon Rai this Christmas. So, he's shopping for a new boat.

He found this beauty for $1,500 and is thrilled. It's a bit bigger than the current mainstay, and he thinks it will be more seaworthy. It is a "bare hull", but he builds boats from scratch as a hobby (usually a bit smaller). Almost all the boats you see are this same design, scaled up or scaled down. And, yes there are thousands and thousands of them. A lot of them use really cheesy 1 cylinder Chinese diesels, which are also very cheap and simple. (And loud!)

He's thinking another $500 to build out the engine box, and some internal flooring, repaint and I think he's got an engine from the destroyed boat he will use.