Egregious wrote:
Your boat might have been made in Taiwan, but it still looks cool.* I know deep down you love your boat.* And don't tell me it is "old" or has "old technology"* do you "feel" good when you are underway?
FWIW Grand Banks boats were never made in Taiwan. The original yard was in Kowloon, across from Hong Kong.* This yard turned out wood boats only starting in the early 1960s (or maybe even late 1950s).* In the late 60s or begining of the 7os American Marine acquired a new, larger yard in Singapore which had the space for the molds for the fiberglass versions of the Grand Banks boats.**The company continued to operate the Kowloon yard for awhile but soon closed it.***All the fiberglass GBs were made in Singapore until relatively recently when the company opened a second yard across the strait in Malaysia.* So today some Grand Banks boats (Grand Banks, Eastbay, Aleutian) are made in Singapore, some are made in Malaysia, and some are started in Singapore and then towed across to Malaysia for completion.
Also FWIW, American Marine never used the word "trawler" to describe their Grand Banks line of boats and I don't believe the current version of the company, Grand Banks, Inc, does either.* American Marine's term for*their GB line*was "Dependable Diesel Cruisers."
When we're underway we're underway.*That's all.* We like being out on the water and seeing what's going on out there.**We like the challenge of navigating and dealing with the strong currents and high tide ranges and all that.* We like that we can use the boat to get away from as many people as possible and not be tied to mobile phones and computers--- we do not use either one when we're on the boat although I sometimes use a laptop to work on my current book.* But we do not communicate with the "outside world" when we're on the boat unless it's an emergency.
But the boat itself is not part of any of this.* It's just the means to the end,*the end being the voyage itself.** Grand Banks, Krogen, deFever, Tollycraft, Nordic Tug, Fleming, Nordhavn--- it's all six of one, half dozen of the other as far as we're concerned with regards to what we want to do and experience out on the water.* The brand of boat would have no impact at all on our boating experience UNLESS it was a really crappy brand that forced us to keep screwing with the boat all the time.* In this respect the GB has been pretty good considering its extreme*age.
As I said, it's like a Honda in that it does what we want it to do while being minimally intrusive on our enjoyment of the marine environment.* As such we feel it was a sensible purchase.* Aesthetically it's a poor design in our eyes but aesthetics played no role in our reasons for buying it.