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Old 08-14-2016, 10:29 PM   #13
Blissboat
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City: Jacksonville Beach, FL
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 1,252
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lost Horizons View Post
Since I have started looking into diesel motor yachts direction, I am interested to hear the reasoning your surveyor uses while doing the nudging.
Here’s the context: I’ve looked at a lot of “trawler” style yachts that fit my criteria, e.g., fiberglass, forty feet in length more or less; single diesel (for several good reasons); split stateroom arrangement (to accommodate two couples at times); draft NTE five feet (ideally less); ready egress from the lower helm to the side deck (for ease of singlehanded or shorthanded docking / locking); salty enough to transit a lake or sound on a lively day, and some other lesser specifications. Everything on offer at prices I feel comfortable paying is a compromise among these standards, and is also to one degree or another a project with unknowable contingencies.

For example, a handsome and well-built trawler yacht of mid-1970s vintage with a reliable single diesel looks good in most respects except the original steel fuel tanks have been painted, with the paint peeling away along the bottom inch or so, and visible external rust is gazing out from behind the paint flakes. In another example, a similar 1970s-vintage trawler-style boat, whose builder name rhymes with “lamb shanks,” has had its original teak decks removed and the under-laying deck covered with fiberglass. The fuel and water deck fills stand proud by a toe-jamming 3/8 inch, and a visible seam appears to be ever-so-slightly open around the entire deckhouse.

I want to do coastal overnights, week or two cruises to somewhere and back here to Jacksonville, extended weekends up and down the Atlantic and Gulf ICWs, and eventually do the Loop. Most times I’ll be in protected or near-coastal waters, but sometimes I’ll be nearly touching bottom in some remote cove, or getting beaten up crossing Albemarle Sound, or Lake Erie.

My surveyor points out that if I can get past the less-than-salty looks of diesel motor cruisers, and can accept the twin engines that are conventional among that class, then my universe of prospective boats is greatly increased, and I’m more likely to find something in good condition and reasonably priced, that can be run efficiently at trawler speeds and otherwise do what I want to do. Besides (as has been said approximately 100,000 times on this Forum), with twins an engine failure just means inconvenience, rather than stranding or a tow.

Ergo, my willingness to look at the Bayliner 38xx and its kind.

Last weekend I spent an hour aboard such a Bayliner, a late-1980s 3877 with twin Hino naturals. There is a lot to like about that boat: deep cockpit, nicely proportioned Down East profile, big foredeck, two comfortable staterooms and two heads, comfortable salon and galley, shallow draft, and reliable systems. There are show-stoppers however, at least for me: precariously narrow side decks with no direct egress to said decks from the lower helm, and not a lot to hold onto out on that expansive foredeck while wrangling the anchor in a pitching sea. Added to that a tight engine compartment affording limited access to both sides of both main engines (and very narrow access to the front ends of said engines). I know – if you don’t like hot, cramped engine compartments, what are you doing aboard a boat anyway? Still, there are limits and boundaries.

A boat should be 1) safe, 2) reliable, 3) efficient, and 4) good looking, in that order of importance. Primarily because of those disturbingly narrow side decks, the Bayliner checked all the boxes except the most important one, so, with a ruefully admiring look back, my hunt continues.
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