Mainship 34 Trawler

[tshug]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum and looking for some feedback for a 2008 Mainship 34 trawler my wife and I are interested in. We currently own a 2004 Albin 28 and love cruising on it, but are now looking to do more extended cruising, ICW, Great Loop, Bahamas, etc. and are looking for something a little bigger.

There's a Mainship 34 that we've looked at with very low hours and has everything we are looking for in a trawler. My question is how seaworthy are the Mainship's for the type of cruising we are looking to do?

Thanks,

Ted

 

[DavidM]

I owned a Mainship 34T in the late 2000s and ran her from Long Beach to Catalina Island most weekends.


It is the perfect fly bridge trawler for a couple. It has a huge main salon and fly bridge that can accommodate scads of people. But it can really only comfortably sleep two in the forward queen berth. Yes you can use the pull out couch in the main salon, but that is more like roughing it.


Engine room access is excellent and the access from the tilt up stairs means that there is no penetration in the main salon's sole so noise is eliminated.


It handles probably as well as any semi displacement hull boat, with the exception of following seas. Because of its higher beam to length ratio it is more susceptible to following seas. You will need a good autopilot with gyro feature to take the S turns out of these.


We were ok with up to 5' seas, but anything more we would wait for another day.


David

 

[Bacchus]

Again I Agree w David...
The sofa bed in salon wasn't very comfortable for us so we replaced it w 2 recliners and now wish we did it sooner.
Great boat for a couple.
More info & pics can be found on the Bacchus website in our signature

 

[tshug]

Thanks for the info David. The Mainship 34 with a flybridge we looked at does have everything we are looking for in a smaller trawler. The broker we talked to rated the seaworthiness of it on a scale of 1-10, he rated it a 5. We generally don't go out in sea's over 5', but will check to see if the autopilot installed has a gyro.

Ted

 

[tshug]

Thanks Don for the follow up answers to David's. I looked at your pictures of the chairs that replaced the sofa and it's something we may consider if we end up buying the boat.

Ted

 

[J105]

We bought an '09 34T in Dec. and have put 400hrs on it so far. We love it...as Dave said its perfect for a couple (and our two dogs). We're half through our 3rd trip down the ditch.

I don't know that I'd head out if it was 5' but I've been out off NJ coast and had it blow up to 5'. Found a huge difference in just moving from flybridge down to lower helm and altering speed in a following sea to minimize time on swell/wave peak...someone posted a great youtube on the forum about following sea and it was very helpful.

Inside we went the other way...adding a couch that folds out into a full queen for the occasional guests and built in a bench on the opposite (starboard) side and folding table. Back/top of bench becomes the seat for the lower helm and a fold down foot rest under the wheel.

Cheers

Bryan