bfloyd4445
Guru
which one is best for short trips offshore and range?
When you buy a 20 or 30 year old boat the previous 2 or 3 owners are at least as important as who drew the lines. Use the search function; read the archives.
I'd take it a step further Bob. I gave up looking at brand names all together. Condition is what I look for exclusively.
Nothing is more expensive than a big, cheaply priced boat.
Nothing is more expensive than a big, cheaply priced boat.
Which is a nice alternative to the advice, "Buy the smallest boat you can afford." By which is meant that for x-amount of money, the smaller a boat you buy the better shape or newer it will be, which generally amounts to the same thing.
You don't want to buy a boat that's too small for what you want to do, of course. But all else being equal including the price, the smaller the boat, the better shape it will be in and the less it will cost you to start using it and maintain it.
...thats for sure. No, i have no desire to own anything made in certain eastern countries so i would exclude them. I have been looking at several diferent boats all seem to be DeFever or GB clones. The DeFevers for the most part are made here in the west and i like that
Might want to do some research on where the vast majority of grp DeFevers were made.
I could be dead wrong but I've always been under the impression that deFever was a designer but not a builder. So deFever designs were built by all manner of yards, from a handful of steel-hull, wood topsides versions built in Mexico to wood boats built by American Marine in Kowloon (Alaskans) to glass boats built in Taiwan and the US.
So unlike Grand Banks or Bayliner or Uniflite or Nordic Tug and other production boats built entirely by the parent company deFevers seem to be somewhat at the mervcy of whatever yard chose to contract for or license the design.
Again, I may well be wrong on this.
For the past decade or so DeFevers have been built at Pocta on mainland China. They are quite busy right now with the largest DeFever under construction at 70 feet. As previously mentioned, comparing thirty year old boats by "brand" is indeed a crap shoot.
For an experienced yacht type mate or surveyor, after 10 minutes aboard any vessel they'll quickly know if the previous owner(s) treated their boat well. That is why a pre-survey walk through by the right guy is helpful. Things to look for if the owner claims it to be in good shape and able to pass survey:Yup, 10 minutes will tell you if the boat is worth spending more time on, assuming you don't stand around and BS. If you are looking for a project boat, buy for the name brand, it will sell quicker if re-done correctly.
- Junk laying around - neat or sloppy.
- Water in bilge with an oil sheen on top
- Clean ER, bilges and lazarette
- Oil drips a no show, a few absorbents in place are OK
- Water stains around interior windows
- Boot stripe area foul or clean
- Varnish, waxing and detailing up to date
- Add ons (thrusters, instruments, wiring, diesel heat etc) done well
- Covers for dinghy, windows, flybridge instruments in place and in good shape
- Correct anchor and rode
For frequent day fish trips , I would look at boats designed for that specific task.
Speed seems to be important to get to and return from the fish grounds , and is realistically ONLY found in plaining fish boats.
Boats built under license as defevers seem to be better than others, at least the few i have seen.
DeFever designs appear to me to be more complex aka labor intensive to build assuming one follows the design accurately. This may be one reason that these boats tend to be well made--- the yards building them are willing to take the time to do it right which, of course, is reflected in the price of the boat.
CHBs, like many of the so-called Taiwan Trawlers, were aimed at a "mass market" if it can be said there is such a thing in this kind of boat. So the parent company made the hulls and then farmed them out to local boatyards for completion. This is why their build quality tends to wander all over the map, at least in the boats from the 70s and 80s. Each yard used somewhat different methods and materials even within a particular boat brand.
This is really the only major contribution American Marine brought to the table with their Grand Banks line of boats. First in wood and then in glass, every one of them was made by the same people in the same yard to the same specs using the same materials, systems, and hardware. GBs are well made boats, but there are other boats that are just as well made. What GB did/does is offer consistency.
More recently the same can be said for Nordic Tug, Hatteras, Nordhavn and so on.
I am new to this game but i have already noticed the consistant quality with GB's. There dosent seem to be many Nordic Tugs, Hatteras or Nordhavins out this way to look at. Most seem to reside on the east coast.