Proud new Prout 35 owner!

[pianopraze]

Made the down payment to seller, loan approved waiting for final check to give to seller. Had no trouble getting full coverage insurance - half the price of our SUV.

So happy!

It's a bit of a project, not too bad. New Suzuki engine. It feels HUGE! Love it! Wife is ecstatic. She couldn't handle monohulls. Loves this boat's feel. Didn't think we could afford a Cat. We got lucky. Can't wait to take her home and fix her up!

Here's a video of our initial inspection, feel free to point out what needs done: https://youtu.be/G949gsecpCU

[tomfl]

Gratz best of luck with your new boat

[chrisr]

best wishes for the new boat

first thing i'd be doing would be to make a list. get some advice if you need it

at the top of my list would be to move the batteries to a watertight location !

cheers,

[atoll]

looks nice and light,try to keep her that way she will sail better.
looks like you can steer the engine when turning the rudders which is good.
have fun

[Chayal]

Nice! I love the room in that boat, outboard well is pretty slick too.

[pianopraze]

I love how much room is on this boat. Sooooo much space compared to all the monohulls we looked at. I thought it would feel smaller inside but I'm 6'4" and I can stand inside. Love that! Three possibly 4 berths if we take out the cooler. Possibly 5 actually — I think the table lowers and makes one also.

Compared to even 40 foot boats we were looking at this feels roomy. And the front deck is huge! We could park our SUV in a parking spot the size of the front deck. Makes it great for possible future cruising and living in the Bahamas and Caribbean. I wasn't looking forward to that in the 30-34 foot boats we were looking at, they all felt so cramped.

I love the inboard/outboard installed engine. I've only driven powerboats and fishing type boats so it gives me a familiar feel until I become confident sailor. Makes this huge boat feel manageable like a much smaller boat.

[mikedefieslife]

Welcome to the club.

First thing I notice is that the original genoa tracks from the coach roof are missing, and tracks have been added aft. This will give you a massive possibly unruly genoa for going downwind but won't work well up wind.

Yours has a lot of nice cut outs, and areas for storing small items that my 35 doesn't have, and the low bunks in the stern add some desperately needed head hight there, but you do lose some storage for larger items.

One thing to check very throughly is the steering. Your looks original I think there are 3 separate steering junction boxes. They are heavy and most have worn out or been damaged by now and replaced so do double check them.

Check under the floor in the nacelle for water. Also check that a previous owner hasn't cut open your sealed floatation chambers in the stern and bows. A Prout was lost in part due to this. It sprung a bad through-hull leak. It would have floated but a previous owner had cut open the water tight areas to use as storage.

Originally Posted by chrisr

best wishes for the new boat

first thing i'd be doing would be to make a list. get some advice if you need it

at the top of my list would be to move the batteries to a watertight location !

cheers,

That is the same place my batteries lived all 7 of them, adding 200kg towards the stern. There is no better place for the batteries really due to the layout of the boat and the exaggerated cable lengths you need if you moved them inside (not that there is anywhere inside to place them). I changed to LiFePO4 for the weight and other advantages.

[Alistair242]

Congratulations!
Fair winds and safe passage.

[s/v Moondancer]

Nice looking boat...What are your plans?

[pianopraze]

Thank you.

Take her to Green Cove Springs Marina and refit. Learn to sail in St. John's River. Then day sail out to the Ocean when I get experienced. After a couple years and feeling comfortable we will go full time for a few years to Bahamas and Caribbean. After that we will be retiring and sailing to the Philippines. Depending on how much we love sailing her we might get more ambitions plans or just settle down in Philippines with costal cruising, maybe explore SE Asia/Australia...

[Sailorman Ed]

Piano, ah, so many memories, we loved our little Snowgoose, also converted to an outboard. They are rugged boats and I agree, move those batteries and make just one bank of them, our were under the aft port bunk. Also suggest you add inspection ports to the 2 water tanks if not already done.

Ed

[pianopraze]

mikedefieslife and sailor man_Ed thank you so much.

Will look into all those things. Plan on going LiFePO4 and rewiring whole boat. If leave batters in same general area will rebuild whole area so totally waterproof. Maybe adding some more Solar where the dingy davits are on the back.

Will try to find layout of original running of the lines and redo those.

There are plastic watertight ... windows/plugs... (inspection ports?) under the left and right bilge areas. They were very tight and I could not open them. Forgive my total ignorance here. Will get the surveyor involved there and pass along those comments to make sure I get those fixed right. Don't even know what a nacelle is. Lots to learn.

When researching this boat the steering was always the most common problem in the threads. I tried to get them in the video, looks like they have all been redone. You can see some of the back at 6:00 in the video and the inside part at 10:20. I think it will get me to Green Cove Springs. Might redo them again. Will let inspector advise. The steering felt nice and turned smoothly all the way left and right.

Plan on replacing all tanks for gas and water. Installing water maker.

Might go all electric with the engine eventually. Not sure. Love that Suzuki. The way the engine has been replaced would make this very easy to install an electric engine there. Or might look for way to install both. Will ask some engineers. like idea of having both. The area around the engine feels like it's been replaced and not as strong. Might cut it back, strengthen it and put electric and gas side by side. Also get a generator eventually. Have redundancy in all areas of power.

Any ideas and thoughts very welcome.

[Cadence]

She looks nice. A little soap and water. It would appear the window trim is cosmetic. I would get anything out of the forward locker than might block an overboard drain for the LPG.

[Hardhead]

Great! I've always felt like I "got lucky" too with the boats I've bought. That's the start of something good - Best way to go through life-

[joelhemington]

Originally Posted by pianopraze

Made the down payment to seller, loan approved waiting for final check to give to seller. Had no trouble getting full coverage insurance - half the price of our SUV.

So happy!

It's a bit of a project, not too bad. New Suzuki engine. It feels HUGE! Love it! Wife is ecstatic. She couldn't handle monohulls. Loves this boat's feel. Didn't think we could afford a Cat. We got lucky. Can't wait to take her home and fix her up!

Here's a video of our initial inspection, feel free to point out what needs done: https://youtu.be/G949gsecpCU

You know, they tell me if you paint the bottom red it'll go 2 knots faster (they tell me a lot of things)

On a more serious note, I'd get a back up OEM belt for that wheel mounted autopilot and there appeared to be some sort of water flow in the chain locker. I see that the PO has designated a lot of the berth space for storage - you want to avoid the temptation to load the boat up with too much weight just because you have the space.