T&T: 1984 Boats

[LCCableJr@aol.com]

I pulled up the list of boats on the Yachtworld site and came up with  
another way of looking at those figures. First, look at the values starting with  a 
5 year old boat, $235K was asked for the 2001, the 15 year old boat was $132K, 
 and the 25 year old boat was $100K for a 1981. In ten years from 5 to 15, 
the  boat lost 56% of it's value or $100k for depreciation alone. The flattening 
of  the depreciation curve is significant for a reason and that is a 
perceived  reduction in the cost of ownership. The real problem is that 10K a year for 
 the years 5-15 is much more than should be required for maintenance or  
repairs and Joel didn't include this within his calculations.
 
In my case, I am lucky enough to be able to do the mechanical repairs  
required in my choice of boat, a 1971 35 year old North Sea steel hull,  built like 
a tank so they don't need replacement. Depreciation  from a comparable new 
Dutch boat is in the 10% range and you can buy a  lot of upgrades for +$800k 
difference in cost. I doubt I can lose 56%  from my purchase price since I'm 
investing the 10% a year in repairs and  maintenance and she's only getting better. 
She's much more boat than I need on  the TN river, but when I go across the 
Gulf or Lake Michigan and get caught in a  nasty, I know my boat will feel at 
home in 12-15' seas. It's my job to make sure  I don't find out. I haven't 
decided if I'll re-power since that would constitute  her third set of engines 
with this set just passing 20 years old and approaching  2000 hours, but a set of 
new Volvo 100's and their much better fuel economy  would be sweet and doable 
for less than $25K. I'm not afraid of getting dirty or  doing the grunt work 
and refuse to be a check writer, perhaps because I'm too  cheap but mostly 
because I want to know the job was done not only correctly  but to the highest 
standards possible. Like Bob England said about Get Rot,  a yard may be tempted 
to patch it without solving the problem but that is just  putting off an issue 
not fixing the problem. In Bob's  case he got the boat for a song and will 
have a fair chunk of money invested,  but she will hold her value in the long 
run and he'll know what he has. The  message is buy a quality boat and invest 
what it takes to make her as seaworthy  as possible with the best equipment you 
can afford and age will not  matter.
 
Len Cable
Entropy
_http://groups.msn.com/TrawlerMV/mventropy.msnw?Page=1_ 
(http://groups.msn.com/TrawlerMV/mventropy.msnw?Page=1)