Lostsailor13
Senior Member
it’s a Willard with a Detroit with 1700 hrs,great fuel economy,range,and is just a salty old girl
I grew up boating and got my wife into it early in our relationship. We had boats pretty much the entire time our kids were growing up and once they were grown, my wife and I started cruising extensively on our 25 foot cuddy cabin trailer boat.
The cuddy was low on amenities, but it had a stepped hull, 24 degrees of deadrise, big block power, and could effortlessly cruise at 35 knots all day. It was also easy to tow at 70 MPH with our diesel pickup. We used the speed and flexibility to our advantage and took that boat to the best cruising spots in the north east US and south east Canada, cruising mostly protected waters to make use of the speed. We had fantastic vacations on that boat and spent more than 15 days straight on it several times.
After one 17 day cruise ended, we were saddened to be getting off the boat and realized that if we could be happy for 17 days straight on a 25 foot sport boat, we should just live on a boat. A year or so later, we owned our Tollycraft 44 and were putting our house on the market.
It's been 2 years since we sold our house, we now live on the boat half the year and in a one bedroom beach condo, 1500 feet from the boat, the other half. Having the time of our lives.
Nice story! Have you any photos of the 25' cuddy cabin. Sounds like your family really loved that boat! What make and model was that comfortably fast cruiser? Bet she established many fond memories for each in your family.
My upbringing was aboard several boats; started with a 16' outboard engine cuddy cabin. For its size... a fairly well appointed 1948 23' Chris Craft Express holds some of the best memories, although we had bunches of great fun on all our family boats. Till we 3 boys out soon grew the 23' Chris... we spent much spring, summer, fall time [occasionally weeks] aboard the Chris as a family. 38' raised deck sportfish sedan was a great fun boat soon after. Aboard those two and one other "in between" boat, sometimes we'd spend dad's full 4 week summer vacation aboard doing NE inland water ways and often including coastal trips with stayovers at Block Island, Boston Harbor, Martha's Vineyard, Mystic Port, Penobscot Bay and other locations.
Boats are fun!! Tolly's are a well built blast!!!
I echo the above statements. I have owned 10 boats since 1995, from 30' to 54', Sport fishers, trawlers, go fast, etc. I loved all of them and all of them consumed a lot of my money for maintenance, slippage, insurance, etc. I am now driving a 22' Duffy Cuddy cabin, complete with head, smart TV & refrigerator. The cost, new, was 1/4th the cost of my last boat, less expensive slip, yearly maintenance is $1.9K (annual contract which includes washing, waxing, diver, cleaning the inside, etc.) and is more enjoyable than the big boats as I use it a more often and it burns "0" gallons of fuel/year! After owning big boats since 1995, I finally figured out that what I really enjoyed was being on the water! This is the most economical way I've found to still be on the water without all the hassles & expense of the diesel powered boats.Having owned a few trawlers and now having a blast learning something totally new (sailing) on a 16' boat is great. The level of enjoyment for us is the same as with our boats costing 15X more $$.
I echo the above statements. I have owned 10 boats since 1995, from 30' to 54', Sport fishers, trawlers, go fast, etc. I loved all of them and all of them consumed a lot of my money for maintenance, slippage, insurance, etc. I am now driving a 22' Duffy Cuddy cabin, complete with head, smart TV & refrigerator. The cost, new, was 1/4th the cost of my last boat, less expensive slip, yearly maintenance is $1.9K (annual contract which includes washing, waxing, diver, cleaning the inside, etc.) and is more enjoyable than the big boats as I use it a more often and it burns "0" gallons of fuel/year! After owning big boats since 1995, I finally figured out that what I really enjoyed was being on the water! This is the most economical way I've found to still be on the water without all the hassles & expense of the diesel powered boats.
NO. My electricity use is in the slip fee which is in line with competing marinas who charge extra for the electricity. (Meters)Is the marina charging you for the extra kw’s of electricity used to recharge your batteries? !
If I run down to a 80% discharge, when back in the slip and plugged in to shore power, the boat is at 100% the next morning. I really don't know how many hours that takes! Since my Balmar SOC gauge has time remaining to full charge, I haven't really checked it or have been interested enough since I bought the boat 15 months ago. My range on a full charge is just under 40 miles and that is at 5.5 knots. This boat is a bay and lake boat. It's quite an exciting ride when the waves are at 2 feet+. The boat will take it but I can't.Codger2 What is your run time on your battery charge?
Why did you buy your boat? How did you decide to make that most irrational of financial decisions to buy a boat? What was that final “thing” (or multiple “things”) that motivated you to bite the bullet, make that leap, take the plunge, throw caution to the wind, etc. …?
I didn’t.
My wife and I looked at a boat in Palm Beach on our way to Savannah. Riding down our hotel escalator my phone rang. It was the broker asking for our thoughts on the boat. My wife immediately grabbed the phone from me and said “We want it!” So much for negotiation.