Best live aboard yacht.

Gentlemen [and Ladies of course],
In the venue of this thread but somewhat different,

Firstly, I do not want to tax your patience so if there is already a thread discussing the following please guide me to it. I didn't find one.

To the point, can your wisdom guide me to a sailboat with adequate live-aboard space and design and reasonably priced in the 100 K range?
I tend to regard the 46' Island Trader as the closest to being reasonable but I'm sure someone here knows more and better then me.
Besides not having a great deal of them to chose from on the market they're so far from each other that seeing some of them may turn into a world tour in it's own right.
I am in the Israel so at $9 a gallon for diesel fuel a MY is way out of my range.
Of course I guess it would seem easier - and more reasonable - to move to The States.
(and to think about the fact that most oil comes out of this part of the world)

Thank you all
Yours,
Alf

My choice would be to find an older 53 or 58 Hatteras YF or MY with a cockpit. You should be able to buy one in the under 200K range.

Hi Boblucas.
Thank you for the wise words. I do see your point and would do as you suggest in a heartbeat but for the price of disel fuel here.
I am in the Israel so, with the prices here, at $9 a gallon for diesel fuel a MY of that size would turn me into a dock/marina or whatever kind of relevant queen or dryland duck real quick.
In general this is exactely why there are almost no MY here, plus the fact that the sea behavior in this region is very choppy so stablizers are a necessity. Ther's more but I don't want to bore you with the [political] details.
So, Im forced to look for a sail boat or motorsailer or....???

Beyond the high quality "bones", one huge advantage to a vintage Hatteras among many is the tremendous amount of support still available for these vessels, from the factory as well as their parts outlet, Sam's Marine, the latter which also sponsors a very active owners forum. An ex-hatteras guy, with over 30 years there, conducts an annual owner's school for vintage Hatts at Jarrett Bay Boatworks in North Carolina every year.

We have lived aboard our 56MY for 5 years now, and cruised her extensively up and down the entire eastern seaboard. Not a week goes by when I don't hank my lucky stars for having the good sense to buy a Hatteras. As years go by, we love and appreciate this boat more and more.

As for most older boats, the X Factor is what the prior owners did, or didn't do, to the boat. Comprehensive hull and engine surveys by people familiar with Hatts and the relevant engines (particurly older Detroit 2 strokes) are an absolute must.

Katie Krogan Manitee 36'

not a sailboat, but uses only a few gallons an hour at 5-7 kts

One of the biggest living spaces of any small-medium boat you will find.

also, not a pretty boat, but it is very good on fuel and very good on living space....

i bet you could pick up a nice one for well under 50k in this market

Hi RT,
Krogan Manitee 36',
Tue to your words, that's definitely thinking out of the box as you previously recommended.
Started looking at your suggestion.
So far, on the YW list ther are 6 Krogan Manitee 36' and the asking price is in the range of $150,000...
The interior pics suggest a roomy boat indeed. I would ask whether having the 'Master cabin' in the front does not make one sleep on a roller coaster when sailing, depending on Poseidons mood of course, but then I guess one can't have it all.
Any way you and the rest of the crew here do help expand my horizons and I am thankful for that.

Thanks for the info on the Kadey Krogan, I never considered this make, but did a search and really like the 42 pilothouse, infact, I just made an appointment to see on located new me.. it seems perfect for what i want to do.. any other insight would be most appreciated .

If you are not looking at a Krappy......er.....Kady Krogan less than ten or so years old, and you are not a KK nutcase, stay away! They were built of epoxy and cardboard and not high quality cardboard either. A friend has a 42' of eighties vintage and had to replace the entire bottom and no one could determine what material had originally been used to fab the bottom.....Another friend has a 2001 vintage 53 and he found termite infested wood epoxied into bulkheads used during construction and has already replaced the side decks and the fuel tanks. Both LOVE their boats.

Perhaps Something Certified

You may want to also consider searching for suitable Coast Guard Certifiable carter yachts.

Unfortunately, barring an act of congress this rules out the imports. I just took a quick look at what could be had in the $150 K range (allowing for the almost inevitable extra cost) and ran across a classic 53’ Hat I knew years ago (Link Below). I don’t know her current situation but she used to be a very well maintained, owner live aboard, charter boat specializing in catered corporate executions, so there are such vessels in the market within your budgets. Unfortunately, the classic 53’ Hat’s are not very suitable for fishing. I did not look for a certified 58’ Hatteras Yacht Fishes but this would basically be the 53' with a fishing cockpit. ​

Used HATTERAS Classic Motor Yacht 1972 for sale in Baltimore, MD, United States

58 Bertram.

How about a Grand Banks trawler? Yachtworld has a number of 49 footers in the $200K price range.

That would work for a liveaboard and b&b boat (and it has character, so I think it would particularly appeal as a b&b operation), but if you wanted to leave the dock it's not US built so you couldn't do an OUPV charter (I think the OP has a long way to go to achieve this anyway).

The classic Hatteras FDMYs are great liveaboards, and with little to no exterior wood would require less maintenance. But a lot of them have old 32V electrical components (pumps, heads, etc) and parts are scarce and expensive. You can switch to 12v gear if you know what you're doing and can DIY, but I don't think the OP would quite fall into this category and yard bills would kill.

I hate to piss in anyone's cornflakes, but combining a home and a business operation and a moving boat operation when you don't have experience in any of these areas sounds like a "bad idea" (tm).

32 volt parts are pretty much the same price as 12 and 24 volt parts, and yes you can pretty much still get anything you want or need.

Sorry, that's simply not true - 32v pumps for heads are very hard to find. Sure you can source things like bulbs, but you can't just walk into your local WM and grab a 32v windlass. And wiring sized for 32v loads isn't necessarily going to be adequate for 12v replacements.

I think the 50/53/58 Hatteras boats are a tremendous value, but I wanted to point out that one of the reasons the entry cost is so low is that they can be expensive to maintain - particularly to the level required for charter operation. AC? Stabilizers? Dinghy crane? Windlass? All of these items are expensive sub-systems in their own right.

One common rule of thumb that I might give the OP is that you should reserve (on average) 10% of the boat's purchase price for annual maintenance (including replacing aging equipment). Sure, you can debate that figure or do lots of DIY work, but it's not a bad place to start. With one of these older Hatts I would up that figure significantly.

The OP was talking about using his boat as a liveaboard and business, and that's also going to increase costs.

Er, in my opinion - of course! <smile>

First off, nobody should ever convert a 50-53' Hatteras to 12 volts, it would be well highly un-recommended by many people. Converting to 24 volt yes, the 32 volt wiring in those Hatteras' is oversized and you should be able to convert most everything to 24 volt without pulling wires.

You're not going to find any yacht heads or windlesses in stock at ANY West Marine, save possibly the Fort Lauderdale Mega Store........And, if you're in Fort Lauderdale anyways, you can get a 32 volt head system.......The 32volt windlesses, davit system, head pumps and other standard equipment found on those Hatteras' can almost always be rebuilt. The davit motors have always been 120 volt anyways.

You can also get step down transformers cheap to run a vaccuuflush toilet if you want to convert, that's what we did......

Navydave

Dave,

If you are still looking for a livable under $200,000, look at the Pacemaker. The 46 ft MY designed by Tom Martin. It was started in the early 1970's. It has a enclosed upper salon and a flybridge also. Comes with diesels also. After Pacemaker sold/? the mold to Uniflite they continued to make the same mold for several years. Some of thoes years had blister problems from a "new" product they tryed because the Navy was turning to flame retardent hulls and they were a big builder for the Navy. They went out of buisness and Chris Craft bought/took that same mold and continued to make the same boat untill the late 1980's. CC also made the 50 ft Constalation which had the same hull with an extension on the transon. Mr. Martin made that design in 1970 and it carried thur till 1989 I think. Says something for the design. They are priced from $55,000 to about $180,000 in the range you are looking for. Sometimes you can find one in a repo deal cheap.

Good Luck.

Fair enough. I probably should have just made a general observation that the OP carefully evaluate the systems on these older boats because they can be more expensive to maintain than one would otherwise expect. He mentioned operating in FL, so the spares and expertise may be more available than my location in the PNW, where the yard manager who works on my boat had commented on the surprise expenses he'd encountered on the Hatterases he's worked on. A friend in my club was selling a 61 (actually a stretched 53) because he moved up to a 72, and I was thinking about buying it. I decided that I prefered the maintenance of my 44 trawler which fits under our covered moorage. <smile>

You didn't need to do even that, the 24v VF pumps work fine on 32, per Sealand and personal observation. Step down transformers do come in handy and I have a couple on board for miscellaneous electronics. Or on the 48+ foot Hatts, there is plenty of room to add 24v or 12v banks, such as I have to power the thruster or start the generator etc. I have thought about general 24v conversion but just can't make the time and effort and dollars work out benefit wise and have discovered that there is plenty of 32v equipment still available at no particular premium.

What type of older boat does make a difference, a huge benefit of the Hatteras is that you can still get support from the factory, including manuals drawings and wiring schematics, and a detail on how your specific hull # left the factory, plus parts and expertise from Sam's Marine, a spin off of their parts department with outlets in NC and Ft. Lauderdale. Sam's has my hull number on file and can tell me exactly what I need, be it windshield wiper parts, system monitor senders, etc etc. There is also a very active vintage Hatt owners forum. Try getting any of that easily for a Trojan or Pacemaker or even a Chris Craft or old Bertram.