Tahiti Ketch 2002

Ha ha. This is how I arrived at the concept of 'negative nett worth' for project boats.

Say you can buy one floating and ready to sail for $100K. OK it'll need work but assume the (PAR type) survey is good, so it doesn't need massive and immediate dollars.

Now say you find a 'bargain' (as you have here) for $20K. All it needs is the entire interior rebuilt, a new engine, standing rigging replaced and maybe new sail or 2.

You add all that up, double the estimate because nobody ever gets it right and the figure comes to $90K.

Therefore the bargain actually should be given to you for free along with a cheque for $10K to make it a reasonable buy.

Somehow sellers fail to see the logic behind this, which is why I decided that if I was going to pour a lot of money down a rathole, I'd just build a new boat myself. That way I knew just where all the bodies were buried and was under no illusions about anything.

I've also written off 100% of the expenditure as though I'd eaten, drunk or otherwise consumed the money on totally trivial expenses. Some people spend more on golf and have no return to show, why should a boat be any different?

Good luck with it, $1000 sounds about right. It's a small enough amount that, if the whole thing ends up being too hard/expensive, you can just walk away from it.

PDW

 

It's always going to be cheaper to refurbish then to build new, but this assumes you can do the work. If you have to pay to have the work done, then you should just buy what you want (completed), rather than deal with the inevitability of having many hands (and checks) in the soup.