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There are worse things you can do than buy a Big Boat in the water.


Ray Frechette Jr

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This is a recent revelation for me.

I had a big glass boat kept in the water and I lost my shirt on it. Sold it for half what i bought it for. after investing several thousand and labor too, and marina fees and all the like.

But, I found out yesterday there are worse things you can buy.

I went to a seminar with someone who had bought a time share. Bought it about 15 years ago. New Orleans resort. 2 weeks. Spent 7 K to buy it.

Maintenance fees are $500.00 a year.

You can't find anyone to buy used timeshares. You can't find anyone to take them for free.

And you can't send the title back to the resort owner and give it back. Nope. You have that maintenance fee for life. And then your heirs have it after you.

Seminar was for a group that will take your timeshare off of your hands and take the liability of it from you.... For a Fee...

$7 K to have someone take your timeshare off your hands that you originally spent 7 k to buy.

Makes me feel less bad about the Big Boat in the water fiasco I got myself into years ago....

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I agree, Ray. When the timeshare thing got going - back in the `70s I think was when timeshare seemed to be the next great thang - I peeked at the deals and said no thanks. A few of my friends fell for the scam and forever regretted it. Their vacation schedule seemed to be at the mercy of the timeshare availability schedule. And $$$ wise it didn't make sense to me. Figure $$$ going in and $$$ annual whatever fee - now compare to just flat out booking a beach cottage for a week when YOU want to be at the beach - oh my, just renting one every year is cheaper!

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At least you enjoyed the boat while you had it (I hope). I bought a Catalina 25 6 years ago, sold it last year for what I put into it after I bought it (forget about purchase price). Divide what I lost by the hours I spent using it, comes out ok (would have come out cheap except we did not use it for the last 2 years).

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No, I never enjoyed it at all.

I used it, but I never enjoyed it. The constant dripping of costs associated with it kept me form ever enjoying it. Tried selling it after first season as it only took me one season to determine I would never enjoy it.

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The secret to being happy with a bigger boat (yacht?) is blissfully ignoring the actual financial costs. They never make sense financially.

Wisdom often comes too late to be properly appreciated. When we bought our first big boat (only an Alberg 30 in 1970), we kept it at the NC coast 230 miles from home. We made a resolution to never comment about the long drive or to regret the cost. Worked pretty well and we sold it for a bit more than the original cost but the yearly costs were considerable. We did enjoy the Alberg but eventually concluded that we never again wanted a boat that was not trailerable. That was the onset of wisdom and boating enjoyment has prospered ever since.

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Tom your scaring me!!

We plan to keep our new 28 at Kentucky lake which is a 150 mile drive for us. Its all four lane except a few miles so it only takes a little over two hours to get there. I am assuming marina charges are higher on the coast then they are in our area. The yearly slip fee for a 28 is $875 to $1600 at Kentucky lake for a uncovered sailboat slip. The $875 slip only includes showers and a laundry building along with gated docks. The higher end slips have more stuff like a pool and other things.

I know there are other costs to consider when keeping a boat in the water but I hope they don't break me up to bad. I would toll my Belhaven down there 4 or 5 times a year at a cost of $90 in gas.

Trailered boats are definitely a whole lot cheaper to care for but with fuel costs getting out of hand helps off set some of that slip costs. We can drive our Camry down to the lake for 9 gallons verses 24 tolling the boat.

There is also something to be said for just taking some supplies and stepping on the boat sailing off in a matter of minutes verses loading, setting up, taking down and unloading when you return.

I didn't mean to ramble on, its just like everything else that has to do with boats, there are compromises. If we were in an area where marina slips where high like $3000 to 9000 annually I would not be able to afford this boat.

Scott

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"There is also something to be said for just taking some supplies and stepping on the boat sailing off in a matter of minutes verses loading, setting up, taking down and unloading when you return."

Yeah, that is what I was thinking. That and standing headroom...

Here is what I found out. I had my boat on a mooring as I could get a mooring for $1,500.00 a year. Docks cost about 3-4 K a year. BTW A year in Maine on the coast is really July through October. May and June are pretty cold and raw and foggy on the coast.

So I pulled supplies out of the house and put them in the van. We drove to teh marina and found a parking spot. Hauled the gear and food from parking spot to the dock and offloaded there. Rowed out to the boat. Hopefully there would be an open spoto n the dock we could load stuff on the boat at. If not we were looking at about 2-3 rows out to the boat.

Then we had to take off sail covers and prepare to leave.

Coming back was same in reverse.

I did not save a single second by having a boat in the water over what launching and recovering a Belhaven would be like.

With a trailerable you schlep gear and food form house to the boat and form boat back to house when back. rather thanhouse to car to boat at marina..

Boat on warf might save a bit granted, but geesh, for the 3-4 K a year I was spending on the big boat it sure wasn't worth it.

I am much happier with my coastal storm and hurricane preparations now too.

Nope, I will Never ever ever have a big boat in the water again. A Bellhven 19 will be my big boat.

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Ray I hope you enjoy your Belhaven as much as we did. I believe its one of, if not the best small trailer sailors out there with a cabin. I would take nothing for all the enjoyment and places I got to take her. It was sad to watch her leave, but if I could have kept her and build a new boat for our future adventures I would have.

The Belhaven is a gem of a design. You'll never regret building her, we didn't. Good luck with your build.

Scott

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There is also yearly hauling and painting plus some other stuff which always comes up. With the bigger boat there may also be insurance costs which are not minor. I only have a cheap rider on homeowners for liability on any of my boats and it covers anything up to 26'. If anything breaks, I know who is going to repair it anyway. None of that is why I favor a trailerable though. I love the mobility factor above all else. We can and do get to windward at 55mph over long distances to cruising grounds that would take a long time at 6kts and cover the same waters for much of any trip. We once spent 5 days cruising the Florida Keys from Atlanta on a one week vacation and had an extra day to rest before going back to work. We now mostly do this in a powerboat but a sailboat has done the same thing for us.

If you have bigger dreams of far places, that makes for different choices but for the 99.9% of us, a smaller boat makes sense.

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I went to a seminar with someone who had bought a time share...

That's the problem; I've rarely been to a seminar outside of my field that wasn't designed to separate a fool from his money.

The problem started when your friend went to an earlier seminar about buying timeshares ;-)

"Seminar" is a red flag word to me nowadays.

Mike

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Your absolutely right Tom. We hauled our Belhaven to Grahams three times and to Ten thousand islands twice. All but once to Grahams I was holding down a 9 to 5 job. I don't look at things the same since I retired. My plan was to keep my Belhaven for those quick short two week trips around the country. But I didn't do enough planning or didn't invest my 401k very well. I just simply can't have them both.

My wife tells me that if I don't scare the hell out of her out there and can make the new boat reasonably comfortable she wants to sell the house and live aboard. I can not pass that opportunity up again. I have to give it a shot. She tried to convince me two years ago to sell the house and buy a Hunter legend 37 and I held back. It's strange usually it's the guy trying to drag the woman off to live on a boat, but in our marriage it's the reverse.

If we could afford it, both boats would be the way to go for us.

Scott

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I went to a seminar with someone who had bought a time share...

That's the problem; I've rarely been to a seminar outside of my field that wasn't designed to separate a fool from his money.

The problem started when your friend went to an earlier seminar about buying timeshares ;-)

"Seminar" is a red flag word to me nowadays.

Mike

You know, it stands to reason.

These organizations framea seminar to free you from a liability and push you to make an emotional decison to act quick. Just like you did the first time when you bought it.

Time share owners seem to be a good mark for buying themselves out of the problem too.

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My plan was to keep my Belhaven for those quick short two week trips around the country. But I didn't do enough planning or didn't invest my 401k very well. I just simply can't have them both.

Scott

I wouldn't feel too bad about that Scott. That is the case with many people. Circumstances beyond our control....

My wife tells me that if I don't scare the hell out of her out there and can make the new boat reasonably comfortable she wants to sell the house and live aboard. I can not pass that opportunity up again. I have to give it a shot. She tried to convince me two years ago to sell the house and buy a Hunter legend 37 and I held back. It's strange usually it's the guy trying to drag the woman off to live on a boat, but in our marriage it's the reverse.

Scott

If you are going to live on a big boat and sell the house , then big boat in the water makes much more sense.

If I was going to do that I would consider a big boat in the water myself.

I don't think that scenario will ever be one I am confronted with though.

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Ray if I had invested in a good balanced and bond fund like I had a family member advise me to, we would have been about $200,000 better off. But I went for the big money in individual stocks and that didn't work out to good.

For the first two years we will live aboard for 4 to 6 months and after that hopefully full time.

Scott

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WOW! Maine dockage sounds like Wash D.C, slip prices 4-5K/year YEOUCH! Had my 18' runabout on a trailer up there, but . . . if you didn't show up at the launch park gate at dawn when they opened it forget it - trailer parking full. So I towed it to North Carolina, later registered it in NC way before I moved here.

My Parker is now on a trailer in a key card access storage lot. $35/mo. Compare to my previous dockage on Brices Creek at $1600/yr, plus $40/mo for a diver to clean the crud off the bottom. Seems in the moving water bottom paint dies quick. So the new plan is drag the boat to someplace nice like Beaufort and launch. One hour, 3 gallons of truck gas v. several hours and lots of boat gas. More time to play.

Soon as I get moving and build my B&B cat ketch my economy will improve. Drag it anywhere, truck won't even notice that light rig back there, and wind is free! Although I may join the Wes K pantywaist club and get a little outboard . .. :-)

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Ray if I had invested in a good balanced and bond fund like I had a family member advise me to, we would have been about $200,000 better off. But I went for the big money in individual stocks and that didn't work out to good.

For the first two years we will live aboard for 4 to 6 months and after that hopefully full time.

Scott

If you can keep invested a bit longer, you may regain some of the losses. I'm back to just above the 2008 pre-crash levels (4% up). I recently switched from 95% stocks to using low cost ETFs for 70% stocks, and have 30% in bond funds (originally at equal amounts for 10-year Treasuriers, short term Treasuries and Corporate Bonds). I'm at least ten years from retirement, so that percentage of fixed income will increase as the years go by.

The ten year Treasury fund has been growing like gangbusters, but I suspect that's about to end, so I took the gains and reduced 10-year from 10% to about 2%. When interest rates rise, the bond funds tend to fall.

BTW - a lot of people holding bonds lost money in 2008 - 2009 too. It hasn't been a good ride for people handling their own portfolios in the last few years!

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Although I may join the Wes K pantywaist club and get a little outboard . .. :-)

Unbelievable! I'm not on the forum in months and when I come back, still at it with the pantywaist stuff... :) Geez.

Anna and I are expecting another baby girl in May, so our motor won't be going away for a long time. It's just too darn handy to have the 'ol "iron wind" on hand when the kids get cranky and want to go back to the dock or an island right NOW. We especially like it in the ungodly hot middle of the Georgia summer... there's no wind at all, so we don't even rig the masts a lot of those days... just clamp on the motor and buzz over to a little cove for swimming to keep cool.

Bella will be two in February and is maturing so fast I think she may actually enjoy learning to sail with daddy this summer, so I may get to enjoy the boat more this year than I have in the last two.

Now I just have to start working on the girls early and invest wisely so I can retire living aboard a boat. Those dock fees sound brutal unless you're living aboard.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Although I may join the Wes K pantywaist club and get a little outboard . .. :-)

Unbelievable! I'm not on the forum in months and when I come back, still at it with the pantywaist stuff... :) Geez.

I'm with you on motive power, Wes. If the gods had intended us to be stuck forever with oar power they would not have allowed the invention of the internal combustion engine. There's nice sailing days, nice day for a quiet row, and days when yanking a rope and twisting the throttle gets the job done.

Congrats on you're upcoming addition. Careful now, the CS-20 might get to small for your fam . . .

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