Cost for a couple routine but major cat fixes

[IAmGroot]

Hi folks, I have a Lagoon 450 in need of some work and got a couple local quotes on US East coast for which I would appreciate a sanity check.

Job 1 is a full bottom.strip+seal+paint. At some point in the past, a previous owner must have painted a new coat of bottom paint on top of an old coat, and the bottom was either not clean enough or the paints were simply chemically incompatible. Right after being hauled in the fall, I noted *numerous* surface blisters between the coats of paint. Over the winter on the hard, the outer coat of paint started peeling off in sheets in some areas. The yard first quoted a bit over $20k to media-blast the bottom down to fiberglass, apply 3 layers of barrier coat and then 2 layers of bottom paint. Note that I am sailing the NE US and not planning on warmer waters of Caribbean anytime soon, in case that matters.

$20K+ seeming like an extraordinarily large number, I asked how much to just scrape what comes of easily, lightly sand, and repaint with a couple coats of bottom paint, and was told $9K. Can anyone tell me if either/both of these quotes seems reasonable at US costs nowadays for a 45 ft cat? If it is just the cost I need to pay, then I guess I need to pay (and then delay my Lithium upgrade another year).

Job 2 is a pair of Yanmar 4JH57 engine mount and SD60 saildrive bellows replacements. They are both probably 5-6 years old and the mounts at least have seen 4000+ engine hours. For this combo job, the yard wants $16k and wants to remove the engines completely. Again, seems high to me and maybe overkill from what I have seen elsewhere online, albeit with the work maybe being part DIY or being done in some lower labor cost island someplace. So....too much? About right? A bargain?

Yes, I am certain I could DIY both of these jobs, but would need to take vacation time that I would rather be...well...sailing! So it is really a question of the tradeoff and if these are reasonable under the circumstances,

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/feedback!

[Fore and Aft]

IamGroot down here in Queensland a client recently forwarded me his bill for slipping, sanding, replacing anodes and antifouling his 50 foot yacht. The bill was $8000 Australian and he felt like he was getting the rough end of the pineapple. But like I said to him, big boat big bills.
20k for the bottom job sounds realistic to me. What sort of medium will they use for blasting? They will have to sand the hull after blasting, maybe some filler as well depending if the blasting breaks through the gelcoat layer. Then masking painting etc which all ads up when you consider that you really have 90 foot of boat and roughly 180 foot of waterline.
Cheers

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by IAmGroot

... Yes, I am certain I could DIY both of these jobs, but would need to take vacation time that I would rather be...well...sailing! So it is really a question of the tradeoff and if these are reasonable under the circumstances,
Thanks in advance for your thoughts/feedback!

Are you willing to pay a ± $36,000 premium, for that vacation?

I don't suppose you've considered requesting [comparison] quotes from other yards?

[BCCLover]

I've got no idea on the engine mounts, but some questions on the bottom job. Are those prices inclusive of product, or is that just labor? Barrier coat and bottom paint are expensive and could easily amount to $3000 or more for your boat.

Definitely get comparison quotes. And GordMay is spot on. Are you willing to pay a $$ premium for that vacation? You might also not be able to DIY the bottom job depending on what yard you're talking about.

[Bill O]

The quote for the bottom job seems high to me. As Gord suggested, keep getting quotes from other yards.
Other approaches maybe to find a yard that allows outside contractors, then sub out the bottom blasting (most likely this is what the yard will do also). Removing the old paint will be the most labor intensive portion of the bottom job.
The material cost to barrier and paint the bottom are well under $3K. Did a quick look at TotalBoat barrier and they wanted ~$107/gal. kit. Let's assume $300/gal. for bottom paint.
Our boat has more wetted area than a 45 cat. We can put down 2 full coats of bottom paint and a 3rd at the water line w/3 gallons. Using similar volumes for bottom and barrier (at 3 gal each) the paint cost is only ~$1,200. The cat will most likely use less barrier and paint to do 2-3 coats of each.
If you hire a helper to help you paint, the job will go much quicker.

[LoudMusic]

Are we allowed to trash talk marine service providers on this forum?

Who are you getting quotes from? Multitech is wildly overpriced and their yard is freaking tiny.

We had a little bit of work done by Georgetown Yacht Basin and they treated us quite well.

[Jebtrois]

Groot,
I have a 36 foot mono in SE Virginia. Have quote in hand for complete bottom job ..same media blast, 3 coats of barrier and 2 coats antifouling with a third on leading edges. All in is $6800. I opted to delay the blasting and barrier coat until next time. They did the work yesterday. Your quote seems a bit high, but not crazy.
JEB

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by IAmGroot

Hi folks, I have a Lagoon 450 in need of some work and got a couple local quotes on US East coast for which I would appreciate a sanity check.

Job 1 is a full bottom.strip+seal+paint. At some point in the past, a previous owner must have painted a new coat of bottom paint on top of an old coat, and the bottom was either not clean enough or the paints were simply chemically incompatible. Right after being hauled in the fall, I noted *numerous* surface blisters between the coats of paint. Over the winter on the hard, the outer coat of paint started peeling off in sheets in some areas. The yard first quoted a bit over $20k to media-blast the bottom down to fiberglass, apply 3 layers of barrier coat and then 2 layers of bottom paint. Note that I am sailing the NE US and not planning on warmer waters of Caribbean anytime soon, in case that matters.

$20K+ seeming like an extraordinarily large number, I asked how much to just scrape what comes of easily, lightly sand, and repaint with a couple coats of bottom paint, and was told $9K. Can anyone tell me if either/both of these quotes seems reasonable at US costs nowadays for a 45 ft cat? If it is just the cost I need to pay, then I guess I need to pay (and then delay my Lithium upgrade another year).

Job 2 is a pair of Yanmar 4JH57 engine mount and SD60 saildrive bellows replacements. They are both probably 5-6 years old and the mounts at least have seen 4000+ engine hours. For this combo job, the yard wants $16k and wants to remove the engines completely. Again, seems high to me and maybe overkill from what I have seen elsewhere online, albeit with the work maybe being part DIY or being done in some lower labor cost island someplace. So....too much? About right? A bargain?

Yes, I am certain I could DIY both of these jobs, but would need to take vacation time that I would rather be...well...sailing! So it is really a question of the tradeoff and if these are reasonable under the circumstances,

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/feedback!

Where you are trying to get the work done matters a lot. The price can vary dramatically just between Annapolis yards and Kent Island yards let alone mid-bay yards....and that's all within 100 miles. So when you say "east coast" where exactly are you talking? For your bottom job it sounds in-range for getting something done at several of the Annapolis yards, especially since they all have a backlog of work and trouble getting labor, but expensive for mid-bay.

[LeeV]

Did you get a quote from Zimmerman Marine in Matthew’s?

[Joli]

Both quotes are totally out of line. Shop around.

[Redreuben]

I used to work on boats, their a luxury item so spending on them is resented.
I work on houses now, spending on them is a necessity. [emoji2]

[IAmGroot]

Wow - lots of great feedback here - thank you folks!

Taking things more or less in turn:

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

...50 foot yacht. The bill was $8000 Australian ....you really have 90 foot of boat and roughly 180 foot of waterline.
Cheers

This is a great perspective. $8000 AUD works out to around $6000 USD, and if we think of a ~45 foot cat to be like two 45 foot monohulls, I would be looking at about $12000 USD. As it happens, I just received another quote (as advised from other folks in the thread), and it is right around ~$12K USD. So - spot on and thank you!

Originally Posted by GordMay

Are you willing to pay a ± $36,000 premium, for that vacation?

Gord - you put this in interesting perspective and I had to do the math. I think these two jobs would take me about two weeks to DIY. (Perhaps conservative?) My company bills my time out at about $300 per hour. I do not get to realize that income myself, but it gives me a baseline that works out to 2 weeks x 40 hours x $300 = $24,000 for my DIY labor "cost". Throw in another $5K for materials, $3K for media blasting (got that quote), and we are at $32K. So - still $4K short. But also throw in that if I used my 2 weeks of vacation to do this work...I would have nothing left to actually use the boat....which makes my time worth (to me) a lot more than that $300 per hour. So - that leads me to verify that I would rather pay for the work than do it myself. But STILL not willing to pay more for it than it is *worth*.

Your signature line "If you didn't have the time or money to do it right in the first place, when will you get the time/$ to fix it?" kinda puts that other $9K quote for the lesser bottom job in perspective. Do I want to spend $9K on a job that is essentially "throw-away" within the next couple years? No frickin' way. Especially if it is ALSO overpriced.

Originally Posted by LoudMusic

Are we allowed to trash talk marine service providers on this forum?
....
We had a little bit of work done by Georgetown Yacht Basin and they treated us quite well.

I do not want to trash talk anyone; my current yard (whose identity I will not be sharing in the open forum) has done some *great* non-routine work for me and I am very happy. Bottom jobs are more labor intensive, so I can think of all sorts of reasons about why I might be getting an inflated price. Both skilled and unskilled people are REALLY hard to find right now, and maybe I am getting an inflated price because they have to assign a skilled person they have available to do a cr@p job because they cannot find anyone else. Other factors there, but hopefully you get the picture. Short version: the hiring market is awful right now. Don't want to get into why; not my agenda.

Moving on...

FWIW - To narrow-down the locale, everyplace I am talking to is on the Chesapeake. I will definitely check out Georgetown Yacht Basin - thanks!

Originally Posted by BCCLover

Are those prices inclusive of product, or is that just labor? Barrier coat and bottom paint are expensive and could easily amount to $3000 or more for your boat.

Yes - all my quotes so far have been inclusive of product. And I think that $3K is a good base number - but is quite probably more like $5K.

Originally Posted by Jebtrois

I have a 36 foot mono in SE Virginia. Have quote in hand for complete bottom job ..same media blast, 3 coats of barrier and 2 coats antifouling with a third on leading edges. All in is $6800.

Jeb - $6800 for a 36 mono seems pretty competitive relative to my new $12K quote for a 45 cat. Maybe *slightly* higher, but we can also throw in the base costs of haul-out and set up for the media blasting and maybe they work out to be about the same? Either way - thanks for sharing the figure - it seems fair/competitive.

To be fair though, I have a concern about the new $12K bottom job quote I received today: I have heard that the yard in question both can and cannot haul out a cat with 25+ foot beam. Until this is confirmed one way or another, I am going to continue to check on a couple of the yards mentioned above that I have not already contacted.

One more:

Originally Posted by Redreuben

I used to work on boats, their a luxury item so spending on them is resented.
I work on houses now, spending on them is a necessity. [emoji2]

This one really made me smile as my wife and I are in the process of selling our house to move aboard this boat.

I think of these costs as a necessity to ensure our new "house" is good to operate for at least another 3-5+ years without these particular items coming up again. (Yes - bottom job is likely on the inside of this range, but hopefully will not need the media blasting next time around.)

Thanks all for your feedback - it is all part of what makes this forum such an awesome resource.

[Matt Johnson]

Do you really need to soda blast the bottom?

The boat may already be barrier coated, and all that really needs to be done is have the bottom paint sanded off until the good barrier coat base.

If you can save this step, you'd save a lot of money without compromising the quality of the boats bottom. But if you tell a yard to soda blast, barrier coat and paint, they are going to do it regardless of this necessity. I'd have someone take a look first before they bring in the soda blast contractor.

[Tetepare]

I did job 1 myself on a 30 foot monohull and it sucked. One of the worst projects I ever did. Odd angles, very messy. Going rate in NE pre-covid would be about $10k for a 45’ monohull so I’d not think $20k out of line. If you’ve got a less expensive quote, good! Just make sure you know what you’re getting for less. I’ve seen great jobs that will last forever, and terrible jobs that were superficial.

[LeeV]

You didn’t respond re: Zimmerman down in Matthews Va, but I would certainly get a quote there before you go up to Georgetown on the Sassafras.