Lessons Learnt

I’ve been wanting a boat for a while and have finally come to a point in my life that I have time, and most importantly I can afford it. I made sure that in the build up to buying a boat that I went and got my skippers ticket, volunteered to be a deckhand on friends boats, and generally offered to help with anything boat related.

This approach taught me a few things. 

                I love boating and all the activities that it can offer me. Diving, Skiing, Fishing, Socialising, etc.

                I don’t like spending lots of money and time on maintenance

                I don’t like it when things breakdown, especially if it interferes with boating activities.

                I enjoy exploring places that are off the beaten track. Like rivers and estuaries.

With this criteria in mind I set about looking for a style of boat that would suit what I wanted to do.  I tried to be honest with myself as much as possible, because I have seen lots of people say I “need” this particular feature…then in reality they never use it, so it becomes a waste of money. I also tried to consider all options (within financial reach) that were available to me.  By doing this I’d hopefully end up with a boat that ticked the right boxes.

So what did I consider.

                Big Boats:  By this I mean boats that are too big to fit on a trailer and need to be stored in a pen, mooring or hard stand in some way. Given my budget, I could afford older boats like 35ft Bertrams or old cray boats. This however meant an older boat and therefore the maintenance requirements would be higher. It also restricted some of the activities that could be done, like skiing (have you ever seen someone skiing behind a 35ft Bertram?) or getting to those off the beaten track places. As most of the bigger boats have at least 4-6ft of draft, this can limit where you can go. Not to mention Air Draft, like getting under bridges. Finally boats of this size meant finding a place to keep it, and that means joining sailing clubs, or paying big fees to stack it.

                Imported Fiberglass Boats: By this I mean, Bayliners, Wellcraft, Gulfcraft etc. Now this style of boat offered a lot of appeal. They were big, cheap and had a lot going for them. Usually they have large cabins with smaller aft deck spaces with lots of lounges scattered about the place. This is great for the socializing aspect of boating, but I started to wonder where I would put dive gear and if I would be able to manage putting all my gear on without smashing a steel tank into the lounge fiberglass. The answer I gave myself was ”I could probably do it”…but then if I add in my dive buddy …its going to get a lot harder to get in the water without adding a few dents to the fiberglass.

                Other aspects of this style of boat appealed though, like being able to tow the boat wherever I wanted to go. The down side was that by the time the boats got to the 22-25ft range, they tended to be over the 2.5m width limit for towing. If the boat was from the U.S. then they were often in the 2.7-2.8m range. I know that you can get a permit to tow overwidth boats as long as they are under 3.0m, but you are not allowed to tow when its dark, which is an issue for me. Also when the boats were that size, they also tend to be heavy… My max towing limit is 3.5ton and a lot of the boats weighed right on 3.5ton, not including fuel or water…or all the “extra stuff” that ends up in a boat. I had spoken to a weights and measures officer, the guys who check heavy vehicles for oversize or over weight issues. He effectively said to me that if I didn’t appear to be obviously oversize or overweight then it was unlikely that I’d ever be stopped. He then went on to say that they do conduct random checks now and again, but the real issue was Insurance. Basically he had seen plenty of cases where people had an accident, and their claims were denied because they exceeded limits of the towing laws and their vehicle limits. That discussion made it apparent to me that if I wanted a boat like that…I’d have to shrink it’s size to around the 20-22ft range based purely on its likely weight. Length was something that I didn’t want to compromise on so that was a cross against this style of boat.

The other aspect of fiberglass boats that I had an issue with, was because most of the builders focused on the socialization aspect of boating, the designs ended up being “all couch and house”. In other words, if I wanted to go fishing, I’d have to contend with standing on a couch. As much as this is an asthetics problem I couldn’t go to the builder and say remove the couch, mainly because the builders didn’t allow custom designs…at best you can only choose option A or option B. This lack of flexibility messed with my goal of trying to get the boat to do everything.  In fairness there are some layouts that come close, like Boston Whalers 255 Conquest.

Though as with all boats there is compromise in designing layouts, it just happened to be in the case of the Whaler, I’d have to settle with a crappy ladder, very close to maximum weight, overwidth permits and a few other layout niggles that didn’t quite work for me.

                Aluminium Boats: In the early stages of me looking at Boats, I largely ignored aluminium boats because they looked ugly.  In retrospect this was a little naïve perspective because they offer specific advantages over fiberglass boats, as well as a few disadvantages.

I started by looking at Trailcraft, Noble,  Surtees and all of them are nice boats, but they had the exact opposite issue that the imported fiberglass boats had, too much deck space and a clear focus on fishing. They were also a lot smaller on average, with most boats being in the 5m- 6.5m range.

A friend suggested that I look at his 7.0m Goldstar, and began by telling me that he had built his brand new and had specified a bunch of things that the builder put on the boat for him. This peaked my interest, because if I could custom build a boat then I could get a layout that I wanted.  So I started quizzing him on weighs and dimensions of the boat. It turns out that his boat is 2.5m wide, so less than the oversize towing limit, and fully fueled and watered weighed in at about 2.7ton. After a bit of research it became apparent that an ali boat for its size is a significant amount lighter than a fiberglass boat.  So far this was two big ticks in favour of aluminium, a custom layout and the light weight allowed a bigger overall boat, given the limiting factor was weight. They were still a bit ugly, but I could live with function over ugliness.