Budget long range cruiser fit for Pacific crossing - Ideas ?

Which price per lb is in dispute ? Or are you simply saying that material cost is not equal to hull cost ? Obviously this is a labor of love thus I do not count the cost of my time, but hope it is worth something in the final analysis since if one cannot sell a boat for the price of the raw material, then obviously there is a massive oversupply of that product in used condition....

 

Sorry, I clearly used a wrong term. I should have said displacement....

 

The latter is the case, one can buy a 15 year old Nordhavn 46 or other popular quality boats for less than all the materials will cost today, more so if you need the stuff for only one boat.

And there's even less market for the oddballs we're talking about here, no matter if they're well built, they stay on the market for years, and eventually go for very low prices.

Like eg. this beautiful built and maintained 36' LOD steel sailing oddball - link - link - built over 15 years from 1993 to 2008, on the market for years, asking US $ 79,000 ‘‘Negotiable’’ by now, thought this was the case most of the time with asking prices, bad sign for the seller if the broker starts to mention it in bold on top of the ads...

 

If I remember well then the partly by an ex pro rough built and inside barely finished 2 years old 55' Idlewild, with a lot of hours on the not expensive to replace engine, came on the market asking CAD $ 500 K, then dropped to asking CAD $ 400 K, and I'll think they were lucky if they eventually got half of the latter. Guess that last asking price I know of at 2 years old was already equaling the price of all materials and equipment new, if sold for half of that then they've got a hell of a trip for a bargain . .

 

Unfortunately, there are really very few highly efficient boats out there. Plenty of sailboats with many 1000lb of lead in their keels. Plenty of squat powerboats like the Cheoy Lee referenced earlier, with semi displacement hulls, length/beam ratio of just over 2, waterline length of just over 35 ft and originally fitted with 240hp worth of engines. Regardless of how cheap one can get these hulls, you just cant turn a pig into a racehorse. So for uneducated people, looking to get something to run around in or protected water cruising over shorter distances, there is plenty offered on the used market and the smaller sailboats can be very cheap.

I think that true long range capable boats with the correct hull configuration and having optimized fuel consumption are actually rare. I think there is very little out there being sold at any price. Tad Roberts posted that finishing a 30000lb displacement boat (in reference to Idlewild) once the hull was done at the yard would take 8000hrs at $65/hr or $520k. Whether he meant to "yacht standard" with exquisitely fitted hardwood I dont know, but surely not every buyer on the market is looking for an interior like that ? A statement like that seems seriously out of touch with ordinary people.... Do you even know someone who's home looks like that ? I dont. The builder of Idlewild paid something like $200k to get the hull custom built. When he wanted to sell her he should have sailed her to a destination where he was more likely to get his price like Chesapeake bay, Florida or perhaps closer to home, Portland OR or Seattle. Not every buyer is going to travel that far north and out of country to go to look at a vessel. He also put the boat on the market very close to the start of the financial crisis, which I'm sure didn't help matters at all. I bought my home in 2006 after the average home price in the area had fallen by about $50k and thought to myself, just how much more is it likely to drop ?? Well, I paid $203k and from 2008-2016 I could not have sold it for $140k, not even considering paying a realtor. So my local real estate market has been depressed for a very long time, far longer than any of the major metro areas for sure.

 

I've looked up the post of Tad mentioning the labor costs, but whether one agrees to it or not, all needed materials and equipment to build the boat still needs to be bought.

↓ thread: Idlewild Expedition → post #8 (Aug 10, 2008)

Which also brought me to Tad linking Idlewild listed at asking CAD $ 250 K when about 6 years for sale, which was a very well known boat at the time, so there just was no market interest in it. Never read somewhere she was actually sold, maybe Ben Gray's Idlewild Expedition book tells about it, although that was published on September 4, 2012, so I don't think it has any Idlewild sell mentioned in it.

↓ thread: FPB 64 or Fleming 58 or Buehler Ellemaid ? → post #5 (Dec 18, 2012)

And it brought me across Tad's sketch and renders of 60' × 10' passagemaker concept based on William Garden's old Tlingit design.

↓ thread: Bill Garden's Tlingit → post #20 (Jan 4, 2016)

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Think the reason the well known such long and narrow and light like Idlewild and Garden's Tlingit and the Tad's above 60' × 10' sketch isn't ready build on the market because there's no demand from any buyers for it, and so such a boat can't be sold, as you need to go longer and longer to get space in it, and in the end that's expensive boat space, also in mpg per person that comfortably fits overnight inside the boat. After all 55' Idlewild just sleeps four comfortably plus has one pilot berth, and 45' Little Ullin only sleeps two comfortably, so can move those small numbers of people more economical at the same little comfort and the same slow speed at the same little mpg per person on shorter beamier power passagemakers I'll guess.

 

Angelique, perhaps it because the average boat owner doesn't go anywhere, or hardly anywhere.... and because dock space is charged by the foot in length.

So if the vessel is to be stationary for the majority of its life, short beamy hulls rule. For vessels actively sailing, long hulls rule. If anchoring out, the marina rules usually dont apply.

I'm sorry, but Tads convictions regarding hull design seem to easily be swept aside by pandering to other attributes like bigger accommodations which are more cheaply available on commercially made yachts, which have poor sea keeping properties by comparison. Either you want the one or the other, unless your pockets are very deep.

 

Deep pockets is one of the problems I think, in general people with enough money for power boats capable of ocean passages and the needed fuel seem not to care for what they can spare on their hobby. Ben Gray looks to be one of the very few the exceptions, who knows if he ever and for what he sold his boat. Anyway in this I'm a boat dreamer and not a buyer, and I like the looks of the skinny boats over the fat ones, so I'm glad Ben had Idlewild commissioned to be designed and built. About Buehler's Ducks, I'm glad he has put them on their own website, so to look at them on the web is easy to omit.

 

I don't agree with that, as I don't see that in his designs.

 

Its not what is in his design, but what he says in his comments regarding Idlewild. I found his comments (after the fact that they set many records) to be exceedingly derisive of the owner and of the boat itself and the execution of the interior. Perhaps it was sour grapes that he didn't get the contract to build it, although I can see why.... Bear in mind that he is working in Canada too.

Let me quote him:
Post #6 in that thread;

If one wants a feel for the kind of interior finishing and yacht standard that appeals to "real sailors" look no further than the Skip Novak series of videos on the sailboats he had built for sailing around Cape Horn and down to Antartica. I'm pretty sure he will have the same comments on Skips boats too.

 

Luckily I can look as far as I want, and see you've changed your topic from a <$100k DIY power boat illustrated with pictures of a FPB 64 and Nordhavns 52 and 41, to now Cape Horn sailing in a sailboat. Don't see where you speak on behalf of Skip Novak, so I'm pretty sure you're not. It's just too bad for the Grays the sale of Idlewild worked out like Tad suspected when the topic came up 11½ years ago when she was already 1½ years for sale, and like I remember it from following their website for a few years since she was built. Think Tad just rightly summed up there in advance why the Grays couldn't sell Idlewild for the money they'd expected, she was even still for sale when the book was published six years after the trip. Maybe you can track her down to give it a try for the next circumnavigation, at least don't go into the Northwest Passage in a heavy ice summer like in 2005. She could do with a bit more Hp, some down to the keel ballast and a sun powered water maker instead of most of the 400 gals fresh water, and better steadying plus auxiliary sails and paravane stabilizers as designed, and sea water bladders in the fuel tanks to replace the used diesel for an easier motion when the circumstances call for it, can pump it overboard again in light weather.

 

For all the short comings, Idlewild accomplished a remarkable feat and seeing those ice sheets up in the artic is amazing. Then circumnavigating, that speaks for itself. Ontop of it with a 55hp engine, even a Mac Gregor 26 has more power. Its a specialized boat so it would appeal to a certain segment, that a given and definitly harder to sell to typical boaters market.

 

Interiors can be arranged however you want especially on a custom build. Another of the reason for great efficiency is the additional 3' extended boarding platform which releases water, I was apprehensive of boat without it at first.

It also is a roller at times which is attributed to top weight and height. Offcourse almost 100% of the time, the common answer is- more beam. Which negates all the inherent qualities of long and narrow.

A very small fraction even get close to 5-1 ratios , so that is almost an unknown modern day concept along with smaller engines doing what Idlewild accomplished.

So sad when the everybody is talking about green this and green that, proves most are just virtue signaling.

 

Any used boat has a base price and that is half the scrap price of her recyclable materials minus the price of disposal of the non-recyclables (sometimes this baseprice becomes negative). On top of this you can add pedigree and actual condition. Pedigree consists of designer and builder and any race results and other noticeable events. Home buildt and/or unknown or controversial designer equals no markup at all. In the actual condition department we differentiate between systems and appearance. Systems have pretty clear lifetimes but how the interior looks usually makes or breaks the sale. The so called Herreshoff style interior still has a following on the north american continent but even here one must differentiate between a nice professionally done one and painted ply with random trim. A good Herreshoff style be it flat or raised panel only offers savings for material price, the workload stays the same. The only way to significantly save time or money on the interior is to eliminate it. Poorly done painted ply interiors actually diminish the value of a boat significanly. Designers all know this and advice their clients accordingly.

As for the subject of this thread, the budget long range cruiser, I dare to say that if one cuts into the two advantages of a motorboat, namely space and speed one is better off with a sailboat.

 

Rumars, I think the concept is that if one had been buying a sailboat and choosing size based on accommodations, then one would buy a 36-42ft sailboat, based on how the space is utilized. Thus, if one is going to build an efficient motorboat, one goes with 60-70ft of hull and builds into it the same amount of accommodations as one would have on the 40' sailboat. The rest of the space is utility space. A nicely laid out engine room with good access to all systems, a workbench and storage for spares, usually somewhere forward a space dedicated to batteries, inverters and charge controllers. Not every space needs to be finished to "yacht standard". This same approach is used by commercial shipping to get better mileage for a given amount of freight and is proven to work well and actively in use. But freighters do not tie up to docks for 95% of the year and pay by the foot, so operating cost is king, not having a floating condo.

So I fail to see how one is giving up anything with regard to speed or interior space. One is choosing to build the hull in a manner that is not that common (long and slender) but with more than adequate space for a couple and few guests. But there is no need, in fact it would be contrary to the intended mission to add weight and cost into finishing out every space on the boat merely so that it looks like every other yacht at the marina.

There has been a considerable amount of criticism directed at the owner of Idlewild for his choices, but the fact is that the vessel was built for a mission. It was funded privately by someone who made considerable sacrifices to afford the build (he sold off his buffalo ranching operation and the very large ranch associated with it and additionally had to find a buyer for an oilfield invention that he had invested considerable private capital into) and who at the age of 70 did not have an endless amount of time to get it done. And by all counts it fulfilled the mission and broke many records, even though not crewed by an experienced crew. If he had been selling his boat in 2016 instead of 2006, the outcome could have been much better, and he was not the only investor to get screwed by the financial crisis.