Thanks, passing on your advice/suggestions, and best of luck in doing the same. Please link us to your blog, if you decide to have one once things get underway.
I don’t blog, but I do hang out here a lot. I help run a Sea Scout Ship and lost my house in a divorce.
I’m actually pretty happy about it, since the boat thing makes more sense for me long term anyway.
As for long-term health, yeah, boats have issues I guess, but so do stairs in a house or showers.
Depending on the vessel, they do sell pretty well depending on what you get.
There is a class of boats that are older that you can get for a song. They tend to be monohull vessels. Cats, if kept right, retain their value incredibly well.
However, many of those folks will say, “I sunk $50,000 in this two years ago, and another $16,000 in that last year, and another $75,000 in sails and halyards and tuned rigging this year which I haven’t included in the price and I can’t recover.”
To that I say, “Duh!” You HAVE to spend about 10% EACH YEAR replacing system components. You might as well call it a cost of living.
There are cats out there that are 2008 selling for $195,000 and they’re a bargain. They are solid boats made with good systems and common propulsion models that you can find parts for worldwide. New ones might be twice that, and of course you can find them for almost $1M at 44 feet.
Go to any marina, however and you can get a 33 foot monohull in pretty good shape for under $20K.