Are there really any bad boats?

[bayview]

Over many decades spent boating I have seen people enjoying boats of many different, brands, designs and construction. I don't think there is a perfect boat but I also don't think there are any really bad boats. Some have known flaws but they all seem to work ok when used as intended.

 

[Shrew]

I understand that the Titanic had some flaws.

 

[psneeld]

bad boats are the ones you buy and underutilize.

 

[bayview]

The Titanic suffered from operator malfunction

 

[Woodland Hills]

Yes there are: homemade boats with homemade changes to the design of hull or rig. Also home builds with poor workmanship.

 

[Giggitoni]

More poor caretakers than boats.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
I would day there are not necessarily "bad" boats so much as "wrong" boats. Vessels that one might have that are unsuited for the tasks one wishes to accomplish. Yes, there are poorly constructed and poorly maintained boats but bad, not so much because "it all depends".

The Titanic DID have several design flaws that were highlighted by "operator malfunction" BUT some good DID come about as a result. After the sinking, ocean liners were built with watertight bulkheads that extended upwards to the main decks and they were also required to have sufficient lifeboats/life rafts on board for the number of passengers/crew.

 

[alormaria]

There are no bad boats. Just bad skippers.

 

[The Brockerts]

I believe so. Like cars there are some lemon boats. I have one of them and didn't realize it how bad it was until after I purchased it.

My 1990 Carver Californian MY 4809 was between manufacture changes from Californian to Carver and things didn't go together the same. I looked at 5 of these boats. All built the same year, same model, same engines, same everything, almost.

Why is it a lemon?
Floor hatches and access panels are in the wrong place. Open up a hatch and not much there. Cut open the floor 5 inches either way and find exactly what I needed. And it's not like the hatch was in a hard place, as my new hatch is in the middle of the hallway, very easy access. Now who puts floor hatch in the wrong place when your building a boat? Why would one put aluminum diesel/gas tank in for a holding tanks then cover it up completely without a access panel or floor hatch, when the other boats I looked at had poly holding tank, hatches in the correct place.

I could go on with more examples.

I'm ok with the issues as it just makes the upgrade process a little slower and harder. When I'm done everything will be fixed and I'll know the boat inside and out.

Then Brockerts

 

[O C Diver]

The steel in the hull plating of the Titanic was found to be too brittle which contributed to the hull failure. Operator error in the form of excessive speed greater than the conditions allowed, was probably what made the collision fatal.

Ted

 

[Captain Max]

Badly designed, badly built, or just flat out dangerous, or a combination of all? Good lord yes! I was running a stabilized Symbol 55’ on a seatrial on the St. Johns River on a flat day, doing hard turns at speed, and it almost rolled over. Couldn’t imagine one in the ocean. That was quickly terminated. It handled just like it looked-top heavy. I’ve found the Carver Voyager series to be “squirrelly” to dock without thrusters in any beam winds. A friend delivered a 5788 from NY to Miami going offshore, and from then on-refused anymore deliveries due solely to the disconcerting noises it made as the hull/deck joints worked.
Their deck/superstructure and hulls were delivered on separate trucks from the mfg, then assembled at the dealerships. I’ve been on several Tempest Yachts that couldn’t plane until the fuel tanks were half empty, and even then one had to use following seas to surf them up.
Fountain 48’s have a tendency to regularly sink overnight after use because the bilge pump hoses had no check valves ( which are totally unreachable between a bulkhead and the transom) would siphon water into the boat. Other than that-great boats..That’s why most live on lifts or in dry storage. They filed bankruptcy. Carvers had gel coat issues -they too filed bankruptcy.
I’ve seen big Vantaries of the early nineties with undersized stringers which caused flexing and cracking of their bottoms.
I could go on and on about construction defects of production boats, but generally “if it looks bad, it is bad”.
The fact that boats are totally kitted out before the decks are put on, doesn’t help when you later need to access the innards. You sometimes have to do surgery to remove things, even to the extent of cutting out the sides to remove tanks and engines. Boat builders did what was convenient for them when building. How many here remember some car models where the rear spark plugs were totally inaccessible? Like that.
Ever notice how so marques of one particular builder mysteriously burn either offshore or at 4am?

 

[Toki]

I believe our beloved "Flipper" up here in the PNW might qualify as a bad boat:

 

[sunchaser]

For those of us who’ve worked in and around really good yards the bad boats are evident. Not necessarily in totality but more in specific areas. But, few owners get beyond the simple positives such as dock presence and comfortable salons.

Until a set of mission specific tests are applied, I’d guess one could argue all boats start out good.

 

[DavidM]

Well, I do think that there were many boats built in the 70s and 80s, particularly by Asian yards that we now know today that they weren't built with proper techniques then. These were T/Ts with screwed teak decks (they ultimately leak), wooden framed windows (the wood shrinks and they leak), steel tanks (deck fittings leak and rust them out).

But generally they were built hell for stout (no one knew what thickness of fiberglass was really required then) and even with some core rotting few are in any structural danger.

I do know of one newish sailboat that I would say was bad in the early production runs. They supposedly corrected these problems- they didn't build to the designer's specs, and were ok for a while until they went bankrupt.

David

 

[Nomad Willy]

There are bad boats indeed. Probably most chopper gun built boats are bad. I wouldn’t buy one. Don’t know if they exist now as new boats though.
When I worked at Uniflite (about 1974) a boater came up to the office wanting to know how FG boats were made. He pushed his FG boat next door at the trailer boat launch off the trailer and pushed his hand through the hull at the upper bow. He was not happy.

A chopper gun layed up boat can be a fair boat only if the guy operating the chopper gun really knows what he's doing. But using the gun will always build an unnessairaly heavy boat. And extremely so in some spots .. especially in corners and holes.

But as David says there are lots of old trawlers out there w wood deck cut-outs or strips of wood screwed to the GF deck tops .. usually through plywood core material. I would call this stupider than stupid and many here own those boats.

 

[Shrew]

The Titanic suffered from operator malfunction

Steel: The steel was too brittle and the tears were sharp and jagged, more like it shattered, when it should have bent prior to failure

Rivets: Iron rivets, below the waterline they froze and shattered on impact

Wireless: The Marconi wireless radio broadcast interference, causing any ship within range to fail to receive a message.

Lifeboats: Insufficient for the number of passengers and crew

Bulkheads: Not sufficient in design to stand under weight. They did not seal the chambers at the top and could flood from one compartment to the next.

That seems like a bit more than simple operator error. I'm not saying that going full speed on a moonless night in mill pond conditions through a region known to have iceberg activity was bright, but not (hardly) the sole contributing factor. Rather it was the catalyst followed by a string of cascading issues.

 

[Dougcole]

There are no bad boats. Just bad skippers.

This.


I did a lot of duck hunting in Florida and South Louisiana when I was in college and the 6 or 8 years after I graduated. This should be read as to say it was a period of my life when I had a lot of freedom but very little money.


In order to stay out in the Delta Wildlife Refuge for as long as possible my buddies and I decided to build a houseboat.



Another friend had a 30' pontoon boat that was abandoned on his lake property in Alabama. He said I could have it if I hauled it away. So I scrounged up a rickety old trailer, drove up there and brought it home. Getting it home was quite an adventure in and of itself, but that's another story.


Another friend had an old 40 hp outboard he sold us very cheap, like $300 if I recall. So I stripped off the rotted deck, screwed on a new one, then built basically a tin tool shed on the boat. A fifty five gallon drum gravity fed the "water system." It had a plywood counter on the deck we used as a galley. A very basic side console, also plywood. Four bunks inside. That was pretty much it. No electronics of any kind, not even a VHF.



We named it the quack shack. Spent four to six weeks a year onboard. We would pile pirogues on top and tow a jon boat behind it.



On its best days it didn't sink, but that was often because we generally kept in less than 18" of water, so it kind of just sat in the mud. Since it spent close to 10 years sitting on a mud bank in Alabama I think it always wanted to return to that natural state.



It broke down all the time. The roof leaked. The pontoons leaked. It had ants. In the summers when we didn't use it the Nutria would move aboard. It somehow survived a direct hit from Hurricane Georges.



On its worst days it tried to kill me. Including a 4 am trip down the Mississippi River in freezing cold, windy, foggy conditions when a crew boat wake washed all the way across it, filling the cabin with about 2' of water. My duck dog was swimming INSIDE the cabin.


Man, we killed a lot of ducks off of that thing. I'll never forget it. But it was a bad boat, and I was a bad skipper.

 

[BandB]

Among new boats, there are very few bad boats. Even the brands I would list are more the lack of ethics of the builder than the boat itself, although the boat also is bad. However, most new boats are good, some better than others.

Now, as a boat ages, many are neglected and abused and they become bad. Call it poor parenting skills.

 

[Comodave]

I believe our beloved "Flipper" up here in the PNW might qualify as a bad boat:

I wonder why they didn’t stop the launch when the boat was starting to go over before it was fully afloat? I would think that pulling it back out might have been a better idea...

 

[BandB]

I wonder why they didn’t stop the launch when the boat was starting to go over before it was fully afloat? I would think that pulling it back out might have been a better idea...

Or, perhaps not if you knew you couldn't afford to finish it anyway and knew it had significant issues. If you're going to close anyway, might prefer the insurance money to finishing the boat.

That's why I mentioned ethics of builders in bad boat situations.

 

[Woodland Hills]

What about that Cutwater that sank at anchor or the TT35 that those folks had so much trouble with? They may or may not have been bad designs, but they sure seem to have been bad boats when they were delivered to the customer.

 

[High Wire]

Yes there are bad boats from the factory. Bad before anyone has had the chance to abuse them. Other stuff like wood in contact with water just rot away over time. Buyer beware! Pascoes site is full of photos of manufacturers bad products.

 

[BandB]

What about that Cutwater that sank at anchor or the TT35 that those folks had so much trouble with? They may or may not have been bad designs, but they sure seem to have been bad boats when they were delivered to the customer.

TT35 fits in my small group of unethical builders and bad boats. I'm not as familiar with the Cutwater situation but if the builder didn't make things right, then I'd toss it in.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Bad boat?

Personally, not bad but not a real looker perhaps? I wish I could find one but they are scarcer than hen's teeth.

 

[Benthic2]

RT: what is that thing ??

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. B. Cargile Cutter. I've done a quick search and I can't find any model specific information on them. The builder took one across the Atlantic.


I saw one at a distance some 30 years ago.

 

[Pete Meisinger]

I once owned a "bad" boat. It started out good but by the time it came to me it had been badly mistreated and was "bad". It was a Thompson "sweet 16" lapstrake wood boat which had sat a lot of years on a mis matched trailed with an old Evinrude monster 75 hp on it. It ended up with a bad sag in the bottom and you couldn't make it go straight, you really couldn't even get it on a plane.

I also agree, whole heartedly, with R.T. There are lots of "wrong boats" out there. I have always said there is a boat for every boater. You just have to find the right one. Case in point. There was a young, disabled veteran who thought he wanted a boat. He had a pretty bad alcohol issue but the marina I was at at the time sold him a poorly maintained thirty some foot sailboat. It didn't have a mast or sales. The engine barely ran and it was a real challenge to change the gears. This guy knew nothing about boats and nearly killed himself and nearly crashed several boats taking it over to the well one day to get the black water pumped. He only attempted it once, after that he used a port potti and would sneak over to the marina bathrooms at night and drain the potty into a toilet there. When he ended up getting asked to leave the marina because of his "yap" dogs he attempted to motor it to a nearby marina where he was also asked to leave in short order. He hired a "captain" of sorts and made it a few miles down the lake where he sold the boat at a loss. Not the right boat for that person.

pete

 

[Baker]

This.


I did a lot of duck hunting in Florida and South Louisiana when I was in college and the 6 or 8 years after I graduated. This should be read as to say it was a period of my life when I had a lot of freedom but very little money.


In order to stay out in the Delta Wildlife Refuge for as long as possible my buddies and I decided to build a houseboat.



Another friend had a 30' pontoon boat that was abandoned on his lake property in Alabama. He said I could have it if I hauled it away. So I scrounged up a rickety old trailer, drove up there and brought it home. Getting it home was quite an adventure in and of itself, but that's another story.


Another friend had an old 40 hp outboard he sold us very cheap, like $300 if I recall. So I stripped off the rotted deck, screwed on a new one, then built basically a tin tool shed on the boat. A fifty five gallon drum gravity fed the "water system." It had a plywood counter on the deck we used as a galley. A very basic side console, also plywood. Four bunks inside. That was pretty much it. No electronics of any kind, not even a VHF.



We named it the quack shack. Spent four to six weeks a year onboard. We would pile pirogues on top and tow a jon boat behind it.



On its best days it didn't sink, but that was often because we generally kept in less than 18" of water, so it kind of just sat in the mud. Since it spent close to 10 years sitting on a mud bank in Alabama I think it always wanted to return to that natural state.



It broke down all the time. The roof leaked. The pontoons leaked. It had ants. In the summers when we didn't use it the Nutria would move aboard. It somehow survived a direct hit from Hurricane Georges.



On its worst days it tried to kill me. Including a 4 am trip down the Mississippi River in freezing cold, windy, foggy conditions when a crew boat wake washed all the way across it, filling the cabin with about 2' of water. My duck dog was swimming INSIDE the cabin.


Man, we killed a lot of ducks off of that thing. I'll never forget it. But it was a bad boat, and I was a bad skipper.

DUDE.....that sounds like an excellent boat to me!!!

 

[klee wyck]

This.


I did a lot of duck hunting in Florida and South Louisiana when I was in college and the 6 or 8 years after I graduated. This should be read as to say it was a period of my life when I had a lot of freedom but very little money.


In order to stay out in the Delta Wildlife Refuge for as long as possible my buddies and I decided to build a houseboat.



Another friend had a 30' pontoon boat that was abandoned on his lake property in Alabama. He said I could have it if I hauled it away. So I scrounged up a rickety old trailer, drove up there and brought it home. Getting it home was quite an adventure in and of itself, but that's another story.


Another friend had an old 40 hp outboard he sold us very cheap, like $300 if I recall. So I stripped off the rotted deck, screwed on a new one, then built basically a tin tool shed on the boat. A fifty five gallon drum gravity fed the "water system." It had a plywood counter on the deck we used as a galley. A very basic side console, also plywood. Four bunks inside. That was pretty much it. No electronics of any kind, not even a VHF.



We named it the quack shack. Spent four to six weeks a year onboard. We would pile pirogues on top and tow a jon boat behind it.



On its best days it didn't sink, but that was often because we generally kept in less than 18" of water, so it kind of just sat in the mud. Since it spent close to 10 years sitting on a mud bank in Alabama I think it always wanted to return to that natural state.



It broke down all the time. The roof leaked. The pontoons leaked. It had ants. In the summers when we didn't use it the Nutria would move aboard. It somehow survived a direct hit from Hurricane Georges.



On its worst days it tried to kill me. Including a 4 am trip down the Mississippi River in freezing cold, windy, foggy conditions when a crew boat wake washed all the way across it, filling the cabin with about 2' of water. My duck dog was swimming INSIDE the cabin.


Man, we killed a lot of ducks off of that thing. I'll never forget it. But it was a bad boat, and I was a bad skipper.

Flashback! This boat story above points out that a bad boat can also be a great boat.
When we were single digit years old (me, my brother, and a neighbor kid) we had a little hydroplane built out of two sheets of plywood, a 2x6 and some resin. We had a 6 hp Johnson outboard with a high pitch prop on that thing that couldn't have weighed 65 pounds. Scoot, and I mean scoot, with two of us in the cockpit and this little butt ugly dog on the deck that would get all of us washed off of the thing if we hit a wake better than 3 inched tall at mach 4.

So...if your intention was to live to adulthood, that was a really bad boat.

But, if you were talking pounds of fun per dollar spent..... best boat in the world.

NOT a trawler.

 

[FF]

Years ago sailboat brokers had lists of boats to avoid , mostly by year of construction.

When the company was going in or out of bankrupcy it was a good boat to pass up.