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Flipping Project Boats


Grotty Thumberg

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Come January, I confidently expect I'll have no job, 30K in cash and no assets apart from a suitcase of clothes and a 10yr old laptop. Rather than be unemployed (and just pay rent with that 30K until there's so little left I qualify for Universal Credit) I would like to buy something expensive.... like a boat. The smarter option is possibly some land, but I want a boat. I even moved to Milton Keynes last year so i could study the matter further.

 

I am thinking of spending 20k on a small "project boat", where the engine works and not much else.

 

I am not a delicate person accustomed to central heating and working electricity. Hot water would be a nice luxury though, but apart from that I don't really care for myself. Fitting out a boat is more of an occupation I would create for myself. I don't have some fantasy a floating home to live in happily ever after. I want something I can sell in a year or so for the same, for ideally more than I paid for it.

 

I sometimes notice boats on the grand union where people obviously have the same idea. Floating building sites full of power tools and bits of wood rather than dogs and castles and roses jugs.

 

Is buying a "project boat" and living in it for a year a stupid idea?

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1 minute ago, Grotty Thumberg said:

Come January, I confidently expect I'll have no job, 30K in cash and no assets apart from a suitcase of clothes and a 10yr old laptop. Rather than be unemployed (and just pay rent with that 30K until there's so little left I qualify for Universal Credit) I would like to buy something expensive.... like a boat. The smarter option is possibly some land, but I want a boat. I even moved to Milton Keynes last year so i could study the matter further.

 

I am thinking of spending 20k on a small "project boat", where the engine works and not much else.

 

I am not a delicate person accustomed to central heating and working electricity. Hot water would be a nice luxury though, but apart from that I don't really care for myself. Fitting out a boat is more of an occupation I would create for myself. I don't have some fantasy a floating home to live in happily ever after. I want something I can sell in a year or so for the same, for ideally more than I paid for it.

 

I sometimes notice boats on the grand union where people obviously have the same idea. Floating building sites full of power tools and bits of wood rather than dogs and castles and roses jugs.

 

Is buying a "project boat" and living in it for a year a stupid idea?

Yes, unless you realy realy want to live on a boat.

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1 minute ago, mrsmelly said:

Yes, unless you realy realy want to live on a boat.

Seconded.

Boating has to be a vocation - supported by some understanding of how boats and boating really works.

Unless you have loadsa dosh and sharp with it the maxim of bottomless pits applies.

All the real bargins have long since gone - all that is left are beyond even care home possibilities.

You're too late and will be for the forseable future.

 

Them 'as make some dosh have grabbed all the good stuff - you're too late.

Mebe time to try another market that folks have yet to discover....

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3 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Yes, unless you realy realy want to live on a boat.

And have a site happy for you to do the work. And don't actually need to make any money from the project. And have plenty more money for when the unexpected bites. And can afford to pull out of the project if you, like many before you, find yourself unable to finish it. And recognise that, if you do pull out, you're unlikely to cover your losses. 

 

Otherwise, yeah, what @mrsmelly says! 

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What are your alternative plans?

You can't live on UC , that's not a plan.

If you get a boat or anything else you can't give up so easily, do you see what I'm saying?

There will be jobs, not well paid jobs, but better than UC, and an opportunity to get back on the career path.

Trying to do up some sort of wreck without cash coming in to your bank account is a recipe for disaster. You may get depressed, you may get ill, you may not, either way you will need money as well as skills and knowledge.

It may be that if you had a boat you're council tax might be paid, or it might not, etc etc, 

I'm not sure if it is possible  to buy a wreck, but you need heating and a dry boat. You may need or want to sell it, it won't be saleable if it still a wreck after a year.

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Thanks for your concern, but after a year of agency work, I am not that convinced about the "better than universal credit" part. And recent events suggest UC is the plan for almost everyone. 

 

Maybe woodland then. The main thing is not having 30k in cash while everything's going a bit Weimar.

 

Wrecks seem to come up on eBay quite often. There appears to be a market for them. 

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The trouble with a wreck is that they are. To resteel a boat is expensive, mine needed bottom and sides and ended up costing nine grand, and that's a job I couldn't do, even when young and fit. The gearbox went, twice, that was sixteen hundred each time.

Jobs like plumbing and wiring are ok, easy and cheap enough, and so is gas, really. But the problem if you're living on it is that everything is connected to everything else, you can't just fit out one end while living in the other, because you'll find you have to rip out what you've just done to get the other end to work. And you won't believe how much you'll have to spend on screws...

And there's nowhere to keep your tools. It rains all the time and the water point is miles away. There again, when it's done, it's very satisfying for the next thirty years.

PS I bought a near wreck thirty years ago. But I had a good friend who was a boat engineer and metal worker, and another who was a welder, both out of work and looking for something to do and happy to help when they could.

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Boats are a depreciating asset, maybe not as fast as rent but sooner or later it will be scrap and  the money gone.

Bostyards exist because it is vastly harder in all respects to do repairs without their facilities.

It can be done, it has been done but at what monetary and personal cost?

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Been there, done that. We bought a new hull and fitted it out in a dodgy boatyard. We also had talented friends. It took us two years and we had a retirement income. Without that combination it would have been impossible for us.

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18 hours ago, Grotty Thumberg said:

Thanks for your concern, but after a year of agency work, I am not that convinced about the "better than universal credit" part. And recent events suggest UC is the plan for almost everyone. 

 

Maybe woodland then. The main thing is not having 30k in cash while everything's going a bit Weimar.

 

Wrecks seem to come up on eBay quite often. There appears to be a market for them. 

You won't be able to live in your field you know, only certain groups are allowed, and even they get little parks with facilities these days. I had the same problem, and the whole benefit thing as it was known at that time was a complete unknown to me, and a nightmare, I think it is only those who have evolved with the  benefit system who can cope. I certainly never got any 'advice', and they are out to identify scroungers, you are guilty unless you can prove otherwise, it's just a nightmare.

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1 minute ago, Grotty Thumberg said:

I have considered it, but rejected it. Doing a poo in a van is one of my few red lines

Don't see a big difference from pooing in a caravan and a boat . Both use cassette loos 

 

Haggis

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I know what you mean: having a certain amount of capital and wanting to make the best use of it.

 

If I was in your position ... and Covid wasn't awash everywhere ... I'd decide to 'take a couple of years out' and buy a seriously good and lightweight tent, sleeping bag, camping stove and medium-sized backpack that I could fill and walk around with all day ... and wander. I might start in Morocco or India or Mali, and take it from there.

 

Doing this sort of thing will almost certainly 'take you out of yourself' ... and give it a few months to few years, you'll almost certainly develop new ideas and thoughts about what to do next, how to make money, and so on. Heck, I'm sure you could probably do this sort of thing while Covid is with us. (Although, today, Pfizer's reports about a new vaccine is good news!)

 

Only live on a boat if you're really keen on living on a boat. 

 

The reason I'm not doing much of what I've alluded to above is because I love living on a boat, the boating lifestyle, independent boaty people and the beautiful inland waterways. 

 

Edited by Jim Batty
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41 minutes ago, Grotty Thumberg said:

I have considered it, but rejected it. Doing a poo in a van is one of my few red lines

cant see much difference, the posh ones can even be emptied by just opening a flap on the bottom of the vehicle (over a suitable drain!), or you could buy a separate "toilet tent".

You would get more for your money with a van (and it is easier to tell if you are getting a rusty one than with a boat ) and be able to stop more places. Most campsites in the Uk are now open 12 months a year and plenty of people live in vans moving on every month or so. If you fitted your own "stealth van" it could be very affordable  you could spend some time off the radar just parked up. Or as Mr Batty says get a tent and travel (though that will be a bit harder with brexit)

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I did "a couple of years out" thing 20 years ago and lived in various countries for all this time. At one point I spent a few months in Indonesia looking at getting a boat built, but concluded it was a stupid idea then too (phinisi boats in Sulawesi if you're interested). I can't quite shake it though. I blame watching Miami Vice at an impressionable age. Crockett lived on a boat with a crocodile and everything. 

 

 

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I could not contemplate a motorhome in the UK, but for travel in the USA it's better, or a SVU plus A liner or Egg, like Slim Potatohead looks wonderful, he doesn't stealth very often, and lots of the sites are free, some even have, a loo.

I see people parking overnight in towns, just think it's a nuisance to the people who bought a house with a view to be met with campervans parked in their street. Most of them are over sixty, and couples, so not sociable.

Edited by LadyG
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