Retirement boat question...

You have figured out the hardest part,

"they would work perfectly fine for what I would want to do"

the vessels requirements in terms of what its projected use will be.

Having a ballroom for a Hell Hole sounds on the surface grand , but realistically you will just inspect and perhaps do PM , and most repairs will be a hired wrench.

Who cares if he has to lug the new starter , rather than wheel a cart?

Relocating filter banks and batts is far easier for underway service than having them in the Hell Hole.

The "best" boat is the one that will require the least modification and "up grades" for your intended service.

Now I am confused,
Hell Hole, or, Holy Space?

John, get rid of the house, the land taxes, the electric and water bills....now. Move onto your existing boat while you shop. You will save about 20K a year which buys you a heck of a boat in 5 years, whether financed now or not. Living aboard your current boat will define what you want in your next/retirement boat. But dump the land based stuff NOW. A 55 ft Carver with roof mounted surfboard racks is in your future

A different approach would be to give consideration to what you want to do with the boat when you retire. If you are going to stay in one area in the United States or Canada you can buy the boat later and modify the boat to your needs where you are located in retirement.

If however you intend to cruise from location to location or if you intend to leave the US and Canada (same true for Australia) you will find it much more expensive and time consuming to modify the boat. If cruising is your intention I suggest buying the boat years in advance so you can figure out what you want done to the boat and have most of it done before you begin to cruise.

Two thoughts....one is - if financing, then borrowing money now is so incredibly cheap. Second is, how much time and effort will be needed to sell the current boat? Or is that even a concern?

John Baker, My favorite poster of photos on TF!! - LOL

List all the pros and cons regarding what design(s) in a boat you want for retirement. Also list what you feel you will (may) do with the boat for "All" your years of retirement. You know the drill for getting the correct "Boat-Focus" into place... before actually searching for a boat and surely before placing cash on the barrel head!


Then spend a year or two or longer visiting boats for sale that have what you want, at cost that is comfortable. And Then... "When the correct boat finds you"... you can purchase with nearly 100% feeling that you (and the boat - lol) have bath made the correct choice.

Happy Boat-Search Daze! - Art

Baker said:

In case you haven't noticed, I am a boat freak!!! I love boats. Anyway, keep the suggestions coming.

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I've read & re-read all the suggestions and for the most part they make a lot of sense. I then re-read them one more time while mentally putting myself in your shoes. Having had my fair share of boats since 1995 (9) I still agree with Healhustler about the stand up ER. If you don't get a "stand up", you will be kicking yourself until they haul you off in a box. I didn't get one but as previously mentioned, I now have a guy who's very knowledgeable, crawl through the ER once a month looking for gremlins. I'm also adding two controllable cameras in the ER for viewing things like fuel filter vacuum readings, coolant reservoir levels, leaks, etc. to increase my SA. (Situational Awareness) I realize that it's not the same as actually entering the "hell hole" periodically but it does provide me with information about what's going on in the ER while I'm on the fly bridge. In closing, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat but I think the most important one is to buy a boat you love, both at cruising & in the slip. You'll figure out the rest.

dimer2 said:

John, get rid of the house, the land taxes, the electric and water bills....now. Move onto your existing boat while you shop. You will save about 20K a year which buys you a heck of a boat in 5 years, whether financed now or not. Living aboard your current boat will define what you want in your next/retirement boat. But dump the land based stuff NOW. A 55 ft Carver with roof mounted surfboard racks is in your future

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This is what I wanted to do, but my wife wouldn't go for it-- she wants to keep a "dirt house". I could justify a lot more boat if we lived on it and got rid of all this "stuff".

I'm now working on the idea of downsizing the house after both kids are in college in two years. Something with no yard and pool to take care of. Smaller house. Maybe something like a condo in a walkable city (close to some water obviously).

How many folks here keep a house AND a retirement boat?

Edit:

And on cue, the motor on the pool pump just went out. Awesome.

cardude01 said:

How many folks here keep a house AND a retirement boat?.

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I do. Of course it's not a large boat. OK for days, weeks, even months of living aboard but not really forever.

Besides, for most of us, a time will come when we can no longer live on a boat because of health reasons. We need a home on land or funds to buy one.

cardude01 said:

This is what I wanted to do, but my wife wouldn't go for it-- she wants to keep a "dirt house". I could justify a lot more boat if we lived on it and got rid of all this "stuff".

I'm now working on the idea of downsizing the house after both kids are in college in two years. Something with no yard and pool to take care of. Smaller house. Maybe something like a condo in a walkable city (close to some water obviously).

How many folks here keep a house AND a retirement boat?

Edit:

And on cue, the motor on the pool pump just went out. Awesome.

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We're keeping the house and the boat. For us, in our situation it's a good decision, although we recognize that like any life choice, it's not best for everyone.

Here is the rational...

1. We honestly do not know if we will like cruising full time. Thats a huge issue for us as a couple. I am more optimistic, the wife is more pessimistic regarding this. We spend allot of time aboard but that is in about a week incriments now. Keeping the house allows us to explore the concept without making a "all in" decision.

2. The house is our home. We have been in it for over 20 years. It holds significant mental attachment.

3. We do not have a financial incentive or need to trade our home for our retirement boat. That did require us to make some compromises in our retirement boat though. Instead of a large passagemaker we "settled" for a Coastal Cruiser. That decision of course limited our cruising dreams, but for us it was a good decision. It did not commit us to a cruising lifestyle, and freed up resources that we can use to for example buy a snowbird house someplace warm if that's the direction we choose to go.

This "all in" concept of trading the house for a boat has much more appeal to males than females in general. Guys tend in general to be the "explorers", and gals tend to be in general the "nesters". Married guys need to keep that in mind when thinking about this stuff.

ksanders said:

We're keeping the house and the boat. For us, in our situation it's a good decision, although we recognize that like any life choice, it's not best for everyone.

Here is the rational...

1. We honestly do not know if we will like cruising full time. Thats a huge issue for us as a couple. I am more optimistic, the wife is more pessimistic regarding this. We spend allot of time aboard but that is in about a week incriments now. Keeping the house allows us to explore the concept without making a "all in" decision.

2. The house is our home. We have been in it for over 20 years. It holds significant mental attachment.

3. We do not have a financial incentive or need to trade our home for our retirement boat. That did require us to make some compromises in our retirement boat though. Instead of a large passagemaker we "settled" for a Coastal Cruiser. That decision of course limited our cruising dreams, but for us it was a good decision. It did not commit us to a cruising lifestyle, and freed up resources that we can use to for example buy a snowbird house someplace warm if that's the direction we choose to go.

This "all in" concept of trading the house for a boat has much more appeal to males than females in general. Guys tend in general to be the "explorers", and gals tend to be in general the "nesters". Married guys need to keep that in mind when thinking about this stuff.

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Well, what can I say? Kevin explained my rational (and my wife's) precisely! We both love boating but not to the extent that we want to give up a lot of other retirement goodies.

Retire as soon as possible. I retired at 55 and have 25 years of retirement under my belt. We bought a fixer upper "retirement" boat and it has kept me active for all these years. Ain't nothin' like messin' around with a boat to keep you "yootful" as Cousin Vinny would say.

^^^^^I agree as well^^^^^

Strangely, the lil woman is pretty damn optimistic about the whole thing. She is perfectly happy with the boat we have and would move aboard tomorrow. She says that without really giving it thought as she has closetS full of clothes and a shoe collection that would make Imelda Marcos jealous. I really do think she could simplify though and that is really what she likes about the boat....it forces simplification.

Anyway, I do appreciate all of your thoughts. This thread is awesome. I really am not struggling with the type of boat. I have spent most of my adult life boating and have a pretty good handle on what I want/need. And there are many boats that would satisfy me. One that stands above the crowd is a DeFever 49(44 with a cockpit). I have a hard time with just straight sundeck boats...land handling aft is a challenge. The cockpit solves that issue. And the engine room on those boats is as good as it gets in a boat that size. My current boat, and most Carvers of that era, have a very nice molded swim platform with nice molded steps and a secure rail. It totally solves the line handling problem without getting stuck with added cost simply due to boat length.

Anyway, the timeline and the thinking that go into that timeline is what I was looking for and y'all have provided some great food for thought!! I need to read this thread over and over!

Keeping the dirt house is a good ideaIMO because boats depreciate dirt houses mostly don't.


If money is a consideration looking at new boats today with an idea of buying one in 4 years or so at a steep discount may work for you. I would buy my Carver 440 over again and I will always prefer the mechanical diesels. That keeps me away from new boats.

bayview said:

Keeping the dirt house is a good ideaIMO because boats depreciate dirt houses mostly don't.


If money is a consideration looking at new boats today with an idea of buying one in 4 years or so at a steep discount may work for you. I would buy my Carver 440 over again and I will always prefer the mechanical diesels. That keeps me away from new boats.

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It is nice to hear you speak so highly of that era of Carvers. They got a little weird(er) looking with the 455 and 456(my boat is a 356...basically the same series but smaller and not as weird looking). But the weird ones still had a very nice layout and tons of space and storage. There is a 445 around here that I want to take a look at. Not really interested in buying it...I just want to check the engine room space. There are also 3 440s in the area for sale.

What brought me to post this thread was I saw a 445 for sale and pending. The boat was REALLY clean and low time on Cummins 450C's. It sold for $125k!!!! That is a whole helluvalotta boat for the money. It sold the day it showed up. Had I came upon that boat at that price and it was still for sale, I would be a two boat owner at this very moment. And obviously pondering the possibility of that 445 being THE boat....which brings us to this thread. The problem with that thinking is that if I retire in 5-10 years, that boat will be 5-10 years older as will its systems that are "upgrades" now and potentially would have to be upgraded again. But untying the lines in a very easily paid for boat is quite attractive.

This is the boat that sold for $125k. The listing is without a lot of pics because it was made AFTER the boat sold.

http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/199...330/League-City/TX/United-States#.VnWUQJODGko

Also for you lurkers out there, "trawlering" is a lifestyle...and not necessarily a type of boat. Be open about boat selections and how you are going to use the boat. There are a lot of decent boats that will serve your purpose well....they just may not look like a "fishing boat"...

healhustler said:

Bake: A retirement boat ought to have a stand-up engine room. That whittles the market down quite a bit. In fact, instead of focusing on your retirement boat, how about focusing on your retirement engine room.

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AMEN! The more we looked at retirement boats, the more I wanted a nice, roomy engine room. Unfortunately, in a true trawler, in our price range, we didn't find many options. The Hatteras 58 LRC from 1975 to 1981 (or '82) has a HUGE engine room, and two nice, small, non-turbocharched DD's that would be a joy to work in. If only they weren't 35 - 40 years old.

Here you go Art....This was on the current boat and a 450 mile trip. The boat did very well. And I did NOT kick her out of bed for eating spaghetti!!!!

Ps...she'd kill me for posting this!

Great advice here Tom. We were in your position 5 years ago, getting ready to retire. Unlike you, we were almost completely new to boating back then. I once had a share in a sailboat, but was otherwise very new to it. It took us 2 years to figure out which boat was best for us and our "tastes" changed. We bought "way more boat" than we needed but it was "all the boat we wanted". We looked at a lot of boats and looked at a lot of boat porn on Yachtworld. Be aware that not all of the better boats are sold on Yachtworld. Three of the better KK42's that have sold in the PNW over the past 3 years were sold privately, and one of those was ours. We were fortunate to find ours on Boat Trader. Once you have decided on the make and size, get the word out that you are interested.

As far as standup engine rooms go, I can't really comment. We don't have one, and I don't think Larry's manatee is standup. I do know several owners of KK42's who were over 80. We have only one engine and there's lots of room to move around. Hopefully boat maintenance wil keep me a "Yoot".


Jim
Sent from my iPad using Trawler Forum

Baker said:

Here you go Art....This was on the current boat and a 450 mile trip. The boat did very well. And I did NOT kick her out of bed for eating spaghetti!!!!

Ps...she'd kill me for posting this!

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OMG!

I'll never tell -

We keep both a land base and a 42 foot boat in the Caribbean. We seem to like both lifestyles very well, spending four to five months on the boat the rest either "home" or traveling.

Must admit the cost of the boat is much higher than the house. In part because we are outside of the US/Canada. Expense is hard to justify, but then that is always true for a boat.

About half the Eastern Caribbean cruisers have a land base, many condos or small homes. The other half live full time on their boat, or in some cases have RVs, and in other cases schedule several months of traveling each year. Eastern Caribbean cruisers are mostly sailboaters but the same percentages seem to apply to the trawlers.

Bay Pelican said:

We keep both a land base and a 42 foot boat in the Caribbean. We seem to like both lifestyles very well, spending four to five months on the boat the rest either "home" or traveling.

Must admit the cost of the boat is much higher than the house. In part because we are outside of the US/Canada. Expense is hard to justify, but then that is always true for a boat.

About half the Eastern Caribbean cruisers have a land base, many condos or small homes. The other half live full time on their boat, or in some cases have RVs, and in other cases schedule several months of traveling each year. Eastern Caribbean cruisers are mostly sailboaters but the same percentages seem to apply to the trawlers.

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Interesting. I could possibly talk the wife into something like this.

Is your home in the states? Do you come back from the Caribbean during hurricane season? Do you leave the boat on the hard somewhere during the 7-8 months on land?

Baker said:

This was on the current boat and a 450 mile trip. !

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450 miles, huh? That's a lot of boring time....how did you cope with that?

Hey Baker,


To answer your original question. I am 13 days from retirement. Yep less than 2 weeks. I am 57 and we bought ASD in 2013 so I would have time to make her ours. As some TF have read, I just added the last piece of equipment (laptop). I am ready to go north. There will always be things to fix, improve etc. I gave myself a few years to get it together. Just me I guess.......

Size matters to some. I started looking at 34' CHB's but Pam nixed that in a hurry. I was concerned about handling a bigger boat, but quickly realized that, the only times you wished your boat was smaller, is when docking, waxing, doing bright work and paying for moorage. I think you'll find that Carver probably has the space you'll want.

We took it on faith that we would be ok with cruising for months on end. We said to ourselves, "we better like this or else!" We spent 10 weeks on her his past summer and had a wonderful time. That's because we chose a boat large enough to satisfy our need for space. Others are fine with something smaller. Others want something bigger. We don't go stir crazy on our boat.

Also we decided to try to buy our last boat first, even if it meant being something a lot more than we needed...and a lot more money than we initially planned on spending.


Jim
Sent from my iPad using Trawler Forum

As far as timing goes, it happened that we closed the deal on the purchase the day I retired. It just worked out that way. We originally backed out of the deal, but the PO contacted us 2 months later with a lower price. We reached an agreement to purchase. Further motivation was that the value of the Canadian $ had started to decline. We locked in our money at $0.97 US. The writing was on the wall. Today the exchange is $0.7165 US.


Jim
Sent from my iPad using Trawler Forum

cardude01 said:

Interesting. I could possibly talk the wife into something like this.

Is your home in the states? Do you come back from the Caribbean during hurricane season? Do you leave the boat on the hard somewhere during the 7-8 months on land?

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The boat is left on the hard in the Eastern Caribbean, May though December. So far we have stored in Trinidad, Grenada, and St. Lucia. Storage costs are about the same as the SE United States, in St. Lucia 55 cents per foot per day. For storage in St. Lucia the insurance is double or triple the insurance cost for the SE United States, outside of Florida. In my case it is 2.4% of hull value. The insurance cost if storing in Trinidad (230 miles to south) is similar to the cost of the US. Grenada which is geographically in the middle is also in the middle of the insurance costs. Trinidad is considered outside of the hurricane zone.

Our land base is back in the United States, Midwest actually. We have bought a "retirement/downsized" single family home which has the master bedroom on the main floor. The area we wanted to buy in did not have a selection of upscale condos which met our needs.

We now accept that we would love to spend more time on the boat, we would love to spend more time at our land base, and we would love to travel more.
Conclusion we are very happy with our life.

I have spent some time on boats with stand-up engine rooms, a world more comfortable and convenient, but I think layout and space make a huge difference too, not just whether my head touches the underside of a salon floor. In the current boat we take up the floor hatches and it's comfortable and wide open. The engine bay has a center aisle to stand on, and I can conveniently lay tools and parts on the edges of the salon floor which is waist high when I'm standing in the engine bay.

A stand-up ER is the best, but I figure as long as I don't have to turn myself into a pretzel, hang upside down for long periods or squeeze myself into spaces like a bullet in a rifle barrel, I'll be okay doing maintenence well into retirement.

I don't believe in borrowing money for toys. ... There are going to be a lot of post-retirees needing to dispose of their boats within the next decade. Undoubtedly there will be a lot of good used boats available then. ... Purchased my ultimate boat nine years after retirement (retired at 55) when the finances were right, having allowed investments to grow. ... Your circumstances are likely to vary from mine.

markpierce said:

I don't believe in borrowing money for toys. ... There are going to be a lot of post-retirees needing to dispose of their boats within the next decade. Undoubtedly there will be a lot of good used boats available then. ... Purchased my ultimate boat nine years after retirement (retired at 55) when the finances were right, having allowed investments to grow. ... Your circumstances are likely to vary from mine.

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Everyone has a different take on that borrowing thing.

The way I look at it is that borrowing on a large boat is like a forced savings plan where you actually get to use it while saving the money.

markpierce said:

I don't believe in borrowing money for toys. ... There are going to be a lot of post-retirees needing to dispose of their boats within the next decade. Undoubtedly there will be a lot of good used boats available then. ... Purchased my ultimate boat nine years after retirement (retired at 55) when the finances were right, having allowed investments to grow. ... Your circumstances are likely to vary from mine.

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While I agree with you and only finance a home, there are situations where a person has the money or assets to buy the boat comfortably, but taxes and penalties make it expensive to pay cash for the boat. A good example are IRAs. Using a portion of your IRA to buy a boat while you are in your 50s will involve substantial penalties and taxes. With today's low fixed interest rate loans, it can make much more sense to finance versus raising tax expensive funds.

Ted