Springer 23 Overplating?

[Alan de Enfield]

8 hours ago, Crow said:

I'd have to agree with majictime 100%.  After spending hrs and hrs welding and grinding ,fitting ,fetching stuff and buying £600 fridges  £1000 rear cover etc etc,I'd have been better off going to work and earning a bit more ,and just buy one that's finished and done,if there is such a thing.  I'm in a position that I can  work on boat at home and do anything I want to it,but I'd never do another,the best place for a project boat or one thats nearly done ,is  in my view best left where it is ,get one that's ready to go , Itl be cheaper in the end ,and you'll have less headaches 

 

This should be the 'official forum' reply to folks asking about the feasibility of a project boat.

 

Snotty awarded.

[magictime]

It might just be worth adding this to the discussion:

As I've said, we bought our boat for £6,500 and spent maybe another £6,500 on improvements. If we'd had the time and skills to do most of the work ourselves, no doubt we could have cut that figure in half - but not much more than that, simply due to the cost of materials and equipment.

We sold the boat after 3 years for £10,000 - leaving £9,200 in our pockets after brokerage fees.

So we lost several thousand pounds, and IMHO even a highly competent DIYer would have done well to break even (after putting in quite a bit of work).

Whose position would you rather be in - ours, with our £6,500 bargain 'project boat', or our buyers', with their £10,000 'full price' boat in ready-to-go condition?

(Of course, the trick is finding that ready-to-go boat - or more realistically, that boat that really does only need a little bit of work.)

[Horace42]

On 27/04/2017 at 14:32, Neil2 said:

The problem with a boat of that vintage is knowing exactly what state the hull is in, I don't think thickness surveys are worth much, what you need to know is the extent of any pitting, and there's a lot of guesswork involved in that unless you go to the trouble of having the hull blasted back to bare metal.  

Here's a likely scenario - you place you boat on the market and an interested buyer commissions a survey.  The surveyor finds a few deep pits and recommends overplating, the buyer then has a powerful weapon to use against you in renegotiating the price.  The end result is you sell the boat for much less than it is really worth, you might even end up virtually giving it away. 

The alternative is you go to the expense/trouble of grit blasting the hull.  You might find it to be in A1 condition in which case you get a surveyors report, have the hull epoxy coated and you can then market the boat with total confidence.  The problem is if you find significant defects, then you have to decide whether to carry out the work yourself or sell the boat as a "project".  

Personally I would take ownership of the problem rather than selling the boat as is, where you are always going to be on the back foot.     

Thanks for  that.  the idea of a proper shot blast and epoxy coating seems an option - if done properly - but is that a solution acceptable to the 'trade ie, boat brokers/surveyors. What would they be recommending - It seems to be a temporary fix to me.

Especially as there are so many corners that can be cut by the boat blacking brigade. 

[Horace42]

On 28/04/2017 at 09:30, magictime said:

It might just be worth adding this to the discussion:

As I've said, we bought our boat for £6,500 and spent maybe another £6,500 on improvements. If we'd had the time and skills to do most of the work ourselves, no doubt we could have cut that figure in half - but not much more than that, simply due to the cost of materials and equipment.

We sold the boat after 3 years for £10,000 - leaving £9,200 in our pockets after brokerage fees.

So we lost several thousand pounds, and IMHO even a highly competent DIYer would have done well to break even (after putting in quite a bit of work).

Whose position would you rather be in - ours, with our £6,500 bargain 'project boat', or our buyers', with their £10,000 'full price' boat in ready-to-go condition?

(Of course, the trick is finding that ready-to-go boat - or more realistically, that boat that really does only need a little bit of work.)

I suppose you have to set the loss against how much benefit you got from cruising - or what it would have cost to buy your own fully fitted and functional boat at the outset, and whether you could have sold after three years at a profit - compared to the cost of hiring for the same period of cruising time.

The actual figures of the economics of your purchase and DIY refit, and eventual sale seem to indicate you paid out too much for your boat and materials to start with, or you sold at a price too low.

 

[magictime]

8 hours ago, Horace42 said:

I suppose you have to set the loss against how much benefit you got from cruising - or what it would have cost to buy your own fully fitted and functional boat at the outset, and whether you could have sold after three years at a profit - compared to the cost of hiring for the same period of cruising time.

Absolutely. At the end of the day I can't devote too much energy to kicking myself, because the times we spent on that boat were some of the happiest of our lives.

8 hours ago, Horace42 said:

The actual figures of the economics of your purchase and DIY refit, and eventual sale seem to indicate you paid out too much for your boat and materials to start with, or you sold at a price too low.

I think £10,000 was always going to be pretty much the ceiling on the value of that boat. If it had had a diesel inboard rather than a petrol outboard, maybe somebody would have paid £12,000, but it didn't.

So yes, we simply paid too much, given the cost of doing it up and especially given our lack of skills and inclination to do most of the work ourselves. The 'right' buyer at that price would have been a keen DIYer who would have positively enjoyed making those improvements themselves, and wouldn't have minded if they'd only managed to break even at the end of it. Or, I guess, someone who would have been happy just to chug about on the boat more or less as it was when we bought it, without hot (or even running!) water, a shower, cooking facilities etc. It probably wouldn't have lost much value if pretty much left alone.

[Horace42]

4 hours ago, magictime said:

Absolutely. At the end of the day I can't devote too much energy to kicking myself, because the times we spent on that boat were some of the happiest of our lives.

I think £10,000 was always going to be pretty much the ceiling on the value of that boat. If it had had a diesel inboard rather than a petrol outboard, maybe somebody would have paid £12,000, but it didn't.

 

You sound like me. I bought a fully functional ex hire boat (circa £11k in 1987). Having hired for years, the idea was to see if we liked owning a boat as opposed to hiring - and if not, then selling it immediately to cut our losses.

We decided to keep and after 7 years decided to modernise bits at a time. No problem of access - with an EOG mooring and fully equipped workshop,  I now have a bang up-to-date modern DIY fitted out boat - lost count of cost - paid for out of pocket money as and when it became available - it was a hobby leisure project in my retirement with no time scale) but now finished (until I change something) but with a 40 year old rusty hull - no doubt the governing factor on sales value.

My mistake was to keep it. I should have sold it 'as is' - and bought a brand new shell. But with 20-20 hindsight......

It will be interesting to see how much we can sell it for -  regretfully something soon to be forced on us due to age related physical limitations in our ability to handle a 50ft boat. Which is linked to moving to a new home (as yet unknown time and place) but avoiding the need for an EOG mooring will increase the options in our price range - but sadly no boat.

 

 

 

[Fozzi in Lancashire]

Hi everyone! Thanks ever so much for all your comments! Managed to pick up a great little Springer, overplated with 5mm & very

tidy inside & outside. Job done! If anyone's on the Lancaster, look out for "My Newt". Thanks again.

[WotEver]

Congratulations:)

[leeco]

I bought this springer for 11k and was already overplated