Marin - As our resident GB expert, I was wondering if you'd care to give your opinion on this one? Yeah, it's a single, but I very strongly prefer that. And it has a flybridge, that's a "must have' for me.
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First, I'm not a Grand Banks expert by any means. If you have specific questions about this boat I suggest you join the Grand Banks Owners forum
Grand Banks Owner's Resources and ask away.
I am very familiar with this brokerage--- we pass their dock of sale and charter GBs every time we go to our boat. If you want to talk to someone directly about this boat I suggest you call Scott Blake, their lead broker. He found our boat for us in 1998 and is everything a broker should be but often isn't.
All that said, this appears to be a very nice boat. The lack of a side door on the port side is totally irrelevant as far as we're concerned. Our boat doesn't have one and we've never wished it did. The 1991 GB36 we chartered before we bought our boat did have a side door on the port side and we never used it. You've good deck access from the starboard door and great deck access from the aft door, something a GB Classic (tri-cabin) does not have at all.
What is great about the Europa configuration is the aft deck and the access to it from the main cabin. In this climate a Europa, be it a pilothouse boat or a one-level boat like a GB, is the best configuration there is because of our rainy, windy, cold-ish weather. The covered aft deck, which can be enclosed with transparent curtains if you like, lets you be "outside" without being outside. Conversely if you are in a hot area the covered aft deck will provide a shaded place to be outside.
The FL135 is an engine I know almost nothing about. It represents an improvement over the FL120, not only in power but in servicing---- if nothing else you don't have to change the fuel injection pump's lube oil every 50 hours. The FL135's pump is lubed by the engine. Keith of this forum has an FL135 in his Krogen I believe, so he could offer more meaningful opinions of the engine than I can.
At first glance the interior configuration is very nice on this boat. A Force 10 range is great---we put one on our boat within a week or two of buying the boat and in the 14 years we've had the boat it's performance has been flawless. My wife preferred cooking on the GB to cooking at home until last week when we had the kitchen plumbed for gas and installed a gas stove-electric oven range in place of the all-electric range the house came with. But for a boat, as far as we're concerned you can't do better than a Force 10.
We installed a Lofrans horizontal windlass on our boat a few years ago and it's terrific. I'm not familiar with their vertical windlasses but if their performance and reliability is anything like ours, it's a winner.
The refrigeration system seems very good. For this area, the new cabin heat system is a major plus. The electronics are good. I'm not a huge fan of Onan but ours is a million years old and still runs fine so perhaps it's not so much I don't like Onans as it is I prefer Northern Lights.
It's nice to have two heads, which this boat doesn't, but that's to be expected in a Europa of this size. It's one advantage of the Classic configuration over the Europa unless you get a big one, like GB46 or 52.
A separate shower stall is nice but not essential in our opinions. We don't have one, there is curtain that makes our "stall" in the aft head. The arrangement in this 42 is better than ours and roomier to boot. So as far as we're concerned, it would work just great.
I would like to see more holding tank capacity than 30 gallons. We have a 40 gallon tank for the forward head and a 25 gallon tank for the aft head. We use the aft head the most and this tank gives us perhaps four days of use. In a pinch we could probably stretch it to five.
I don't like dinghies carried on boat decks for several reasons but it's a common practice on boats of this type. So if you prefer that arrangement, this boat has it.
One thing I don't see is any reference to a bow thruster (unless I overlooked it). Doesn't mean it doesn't have one--- things get left off listings. Our boat had an autopilot that was never mentioned in the listing. But with a single engine boat this long and with this much windage I would like a bow thruster. You can always add one, of course.
The price is lower than I thought it would have been given the boat's description and appearance in the photos. But I don't track boat prices so perhaps it's right where it should be given the economy and the market.
Things I would want to know about are all the usual suspects---- window integrity, teak deck integrity, door and hatch integrity, anchor rode condition, emergency tiller, exhaust system integrity, and so on.
It's apparently a new arrival at Northwest Explorations. I don't recognize the name but then again they have so many boats we don't pay much attention to them. We'll probably see it when we go to our boat this weekend.
I've been on a few GB42s and it's surprising how much extra interior volume you get over the GB36 even though we're only talking a six foot difference in length. Based on what I see on the listing url it looks like a great boat to me. But as you know, photos and listings don't tell you too much other than the basics.
It's always good to have a carry permit for a volcano.
