What are the pitfalls of buying an older boat

[Smart51]

I can't shake the bug and after 9 months glued to YouTube and Apolloduck, really want to buy a boat for leisure use on the canal.  I have a 50 year old car to sell first, and the Mrs to persuade, so I'm in the research before buying phase.

 

I'd like something small, perhaps a bit of a project but fundamentally sound.  I don't want to be trapped in a horror story of my own making though.  Other than a paper thin hull and an engine with minutes of life left in it, what are the big pitfalls to avoid?

 

As a discussion aid, this boat is something I might look at.  I'd be happy to sand and repaint the whole exterior in a more flattering colour scheme, as well as update the electrics, plumbing and interior decor.  Is this end of the market not for the faint hearted?  https://narrowboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/stoke-on-trent-27-cruiser-stern-for-sale/769594

 

 

[LadyG]

Would you consider a glass fibre cruiser. you may not need a steel boat , you'd get more choice....

[blackrose]

It looks ok, but it really comes down to hull condition and the engine & gearbox.

[MtB]

4 hours ago, Smart51 said:

I'd like something small, perhaps a bit of a project but fundamentally sound.

 

Don't tell me, with a good engine too?

 

You and 5,000 other wannabes are looking for the exact same thing at any given point in time, so your competition drives the price up to almost the same as a decent boat in good all round condition. 

 

Give in and just buy a well maintained boat and keep it that way! 

[David Mack]

5 hours ago, Smart51 said:

Is this end of the market not for the faint hearted?  https://narrowboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/stoke-on-trent-27-cruiser-stern-for-sale/769594

That is the (bottom) end of the market for a steel boat. Looks OKish if you are willing to tidy and update it, but at 43 years old the state of the hull and engine must be open to question. Problem is that the cost of a survey is a significant proportion of the boat cost, yet without one you could be letting yourself in for a lot of trouble (= expense). Yet if the survey shows up problems and you don't buy the boat, it's money down the drain.

[Arthur Marshall]

I suppose when I finally give up, I'll be looking for about £8000 for mine. But tatty all round, bit of rust but well resteeled a few years ago, well above the waterline, Lister thudding away as they do. Could do with a serious internal revamp, but everything works and will last someone another twenty years. Bargain.

But you'd have to trust I'm telling the truth.

[MtB]

26 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I suppose when I finally give up, I'll be looking for about £8000 for mine. But tatty all round, bit of rust but well resteeled a few years ago, well above the waterline, Lister thudding away as they do. Could do with a serious internal revamp, but everything works and will last someone another twenty years. Bargain.

But you'd have to trust I'm telling the truth.

 

Exactly. When buying an old boat, one is buying the previous owner too. You get their attitudes to maintenance, taste in interior design and a load of other stuff as well as a boat! 

[agg221]

One big advantage is you have is that you are looking for a size which is smaller than most people want. You are also looking for a leisure boat whereas much of your competition is looking for something residential. Given the boat you are interested in would not be quite to the taste of many buyers, you have another advantage. What you are very unlikely to find is a boat worth £30,000 selling for under £10,000, so if you are happy to look for smaller boats, perhaps GRP (although don't forget that leisure use can perfectly well encompass all round use and GRP isn't so suitable for that) and are prepared to do cosmetic work then you will find the odd reasonable option cropping up, like the one you posted.

 

Something else to bear in mind is that everything is repairable/replaceable. A hull can be kept going forever with welding or overplating. It does add cost, and it means less boating time, but most costs scale with length (licence fee, mooring fee, likely amount of welding, time and cost for blacking materials etc) so if you have income as well as capital then the amount it generally costs to keep a shorter boat going scales down too.

 

If you are the kind of person who only buys a house if the kitchen is already perfect then you are likely to be better off buying a more expensive, completed boat. If you are the kind of person who can see past the old, tired kitchen, see what the space could become and are happy to do some of the strip-out, do the painting and put up with the mess and inconvenience while a new kitchen is fitted then you are likely to find an older boat that needs work perfectly satisfactory. We have had ours for nearly four years. It still isn't 'finished' (are they ever?) but it is usable and we divide time between enjoying it and fixing it. Mostly we are going forwards rather than backwards in that regard. Maybe it will be done in the next four years...!

Edited April 12 by agg221

[Bee]

There is something to be said for a cruiser of some sort. GRP or less commonly, steel. You are shopping in a difficult end of the market, that boat on Apollo Duck could well be 1982 but i would have said (or guessed) that it was older and maybe Dartline. Or it could be something different again. Whatever it is there is a strong chance that it needs work underneath. You need to take your time, see a lot of boats and be aware of the work and expense. Bee is at present out of the water, in a yard and of the twenty or 30 boats in that yard I reckon that less than half will ever go back in the water again. Some of the others occasionally change hands, cost the new owner quite a lot of money and then are abandoned again.

[GUMPY]

I would be tempted to go fibreglass you get a lot more for your money.

No boat ever sank from osmosis

Boats have sunk from rust.

Something like this

https://motorboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/mayland-14-for-sale/778851

 

Before the naysayers pipe up.

Yes it's petrol and that takes a little more thought sourcing.

Yes the OB won't put much charge into the battery but you can add solar.

 

Great for weekends and longer if you can find a canal side shower block.

[Stroudwater1]

GRP boats tend to go faster too, big advantage at times especially on rivers. Easier to find moorings that steel boats might be too deep for. 

[Crewcut]

Well you've mentioned the two big pitfalls & you don't really get one of them with fibreglass boats - if a fibreglass boat is floating the worst you'll likely have is some osmosis and perhaps the hanging gardens of babylon underneath. A bit of drilling and filling, scrubbing and scraping and off you go. That said it's always better to see out of the water and also where you can check the condition of the hull from the inside. An outboard engine can easily be replaced and taken home to service but diesel inboards are so much better to live with. That wee steel boat might need a full overplate, I'd guess that would about double the price and I don't think anyone in their right mind would bother.

 

Boatwork in general takes 2/3 times more time & money than you think, so unless you really enjoy that sort of work/project, have the money, skills, tools, time and motivation then I'd carry on doing what you're good at to earn enough money to get the boat you want. Persuading your wife that any of the above is a good idea is a whole other ball game but you will need to get her on board (ha ha) as well.

 

Best of luck though, boating in all it's forms is a joy...

[Smart51]

Thanks everyone.  I'd confidently tackle most jobs on a boat outside of welding.  I could probably rebuild the engine, but wouldn't really fancy it.  Fitting out a sail away boat from scratch would be fun, though not cheap.  I'll take a look at some GRP cruisers.  There's perhaps a bit more bang for your buck to be found there.

[Tony Brooks]

Remember that there are comparatively few narrow beam GRP boats and if you go for anything over about a 7ft beam you won't be able to cruise the midland canals or get between the wide beam north and south canal systems.

[Montyburns1982]

Take a look at Oundle Marina brokerage they always have a good selection of cheap cruisers (I got my Viking 26 CC from there).

 

For example there’s a nice looking Nauticus on there at the moment.

 

https://oundlemarina.com/2024/12/06/juh/

 

I paid less than 5k for my boat which I considered low risk as a first time boater. I didn’t bother with a survey as it’s an old cheap boat but the engine worked and it was floating what more do you need? 😂 Just make sure you get one with a 6 foot 10 beam designed for the canals.

 

I fitted solar to my cruiser for about 150 quid, more than enough to keep the leisure batteries topped up. I have 2 85ah batteries for engine starting and boat systems. I don’t have a mains battery charger wired in as it’s a pure leisure boat.

 

I personally wouldn’t consider a cheap steel boat for leisure use unless I loved welding. The few I looked at in the 10k and under category were total horror stories!

Edited April 15 by Montyburns1982

[Smart51]

13 minutes ago, Montyburns1982 said:

I personally wouldn’t consider a cheap steel boat for leisure use unless I loved welding. 

Made me smile!

[LEO]

I posted a few days ago about a 'team' who bought a boat ( a Springer) for £13 ,800 and are gutting and repairing it, It's a series on Utube.....amazing, anyone buying a cheap boat should watch it,,,,,covers everything, even down to a cracked piston and the engine rebuild. search round for it. I think the subject boat has every known problem. Might make you think twice about buying a boat.........and the boat looked quite reasonable when purchased.

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:17 by LEO

[Manxcat54]

I was in the same situation in a way, I had 20k and was looking for a boat with the final intention of living aboard, there are very few decent ones in this range, I was at a local marine/chandlery and asked if he had anything around 20K for sale, his reply was "for that money all you will buy is trouble" so I went the complete other direction and bought an old wreck off CRT or should I say Commercial Boat Services, it cost me very little, however the engine is sound and there is no welding required, I have had to strip it right back to bare metal inside and start from scratch, which might not be an option for you. 

[robtheplod]

The boat you're looking at is low value and you're selling a car to purchase so you're not overstretching at all so you can presumably take the hit if it proves to be a turkey..... kind of exciting though, best of luck whatever you decide to do!

[MtB]

Here is one helluvalot of boat by a good builder on for for peanuts.

 

A 60ft Gary Gorton trad for £26k. I'm almost tempted myself!

 

https://narrowboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/gorton-60-traditional-for-sale/787791

[carlt]

13 minutes ago, MtB said:

Here is one helluvalot of boat by a good builder on for for peanuts.

 

A 60ft Gary Gorton trad for £26k. I'm almost tempted myself!

 

https://narrowboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/gorton-60-traditional-for-sale/787791

 

^^^^^^ THIS!...is why I should never have come back to this cursed website.

 

After Usk was torched the OH swore she'd never return to the canals but a bath onboard might just sway her (the rest of the boat would be mine).

[MtB]

2 minutes ago, carlt said:

 

^^^^^^ THIS!...is why I should never have come back to this cursed website.

 

After Usk was torched the OH swore she'd never return to the canals but a bath onboard might just sway her (the rest of the boat would be mine).

 

It has a bath? I never noticed. No wonder it is so cheap!! 

 

[carlt]

2 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

It has a bath? I never noticed. No wonder it is so cheap!! 

 

Perhaps I should have said "tool cleaning station"

[MtB]

Just now, carlt said:

Perhaps I should have said "tool cleaning station"

 

Dishwasher. These are utterly BRILLIANT for cleaning tools and various bits of engines etc. 

 

Don't tell anyone ok?

 

 

 

 

[David Mack]

3 hours ago, MtB said:

Here is one helluvalot of boat by a good builder on for for peanuts.

 

A 60ft Gary Gorton trad for £26k. I'm almost tempted myself!

 

https://narrowboats.apolloduck.co.uk/boat/gorton-60-traditional-for-sale/787791

"Somewhat jaded inside and out, and not for the faint-hearted"!!

Looks like a owner fitout that was never completed, but certainly has potential, if you are a brave lady (or man).