Current price of Hinckleys...

Hi,

I would say this applies to the full spectrum of boats not any particular brand.

As I said to someone this afternoon.

"Your boat is only worth what someone else will pay you for it."

I feel this an accurate vision of the market - regardless of how much it means to someone if they offer it to the market the market will tell them what it is actually worth.

The same rule can also be applied to real estate at the moment too.

I use the same statement but add to it..... Your boat/house is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it in a reasonable amount of time.

In addition to the San Juan fleet, you may also want to look at what Sabre Yachts and Palm Beach Motor Yachts are offering. Both of these have lobster/picnic boats in the size range you are looking for. They also have dealers on the west coast you can contact for additional information. In my view, all four companies (Hinckley, Sabre, San Juan and Palm Beach) have high quality products so it comes down to which one suits your needs and desires the best.

My previous boss who owns a 44M vessel expressed interest in a hinckely while in Newport RI last summer. The sales man delivered two different models to the marina and took the boss for a boat ride and aloud him to feel the vessels first hand while cruising around. Unfortunately for the sales people, he was not interested in the boat afterwards for personnel taste reasons but the moral of the story is, it is an option if interested to check out there boats.

Should look a this Dutch company of yachts.
They look very similar to the hinckley yachts.

Long Island Shipyards

These boats are being built in China.

They are cheaper then the hinckley and very popular in Dutch waters.

they are pod boats, everyone Ive spoken to that uses they're boat 50 or more hrs yearly wants no part of pods ,they're troublesome and seem to pull debris in instead of push it away.... Look at the number of boats ,late model for sale , all have pods , owners are absorbing the depreciation just to get rid of em ....Me Id stay away from pods
We did speak to a hinkley owner who loved his 60 flybridge and used it up and down coast when i asked about pods he said the sucking in issue had occurred but he likes the system for shallow water in bahamas and west coast fla

What are you talking about, pods or water jets..?

What sucking in issue??? Pods have a lot of benefits. They're very efficient with a lot better fuel economy in a twin pod installation. Smooth and quiet. More room in the boat if the builder designs the boat correctly around them. I would take them over jets any day of the week. They are a bit more maintenance over straight shafts, but if you're using your boat 75 hours or more a year the fuel efficiency more than makes up for the maintenance. Very easy to maneuver with pods. I have never seen or heard of this sucking in issue you're speaking about and have put over 10,000 NMs on pods both Zues and IPS. All owners I have with them, love them, because they never would have been able to run the size boat they have without them. One went from a 24' Boston whaler with a single outboard straight to a 50' Flybridge boat and can dock it proficiently.

The Hinckley's are all jets, no pods. They did a brief experiment with pods but with the acquisition of Hunt, they left the pods to Hunt.

WHOOPS.... even my wife corrected me! conversation I had was with a different guy with pods , he had an f&s express brand new has had lots of issues the guy I spoke to that had the hinkley loved the boat and gave us some advice and contact info for our next trip to bahamas!
I have seen an inordinate amount of new boats with low hours and pods for sale , as well as the capt of the f& s and a few other people who feel the pods are great for mobility but not reliable at this time ,,,, sorry for the mistake ,
PS My wife did take the chance to remind me we where on a hinkley express at the lauderdale boat show when we where looking for my present boat and SHE loved it , I was holding out for flybridge

We have delivered quite a few boats with IPS pods and had no reliability problems. One of our boats with triple IPS 1200 have made 14.000 Nm this season with an average cruising speed of 30 knots...

So ,in your opinion , why the abundance of newer boats with pods for sale? How bout what i was told that floating debris instead of being pushed away , to some extent is drawn into the pods?
whats the benefits of the pods? Capt on skillagee, that f&s really wasn't happy , he said he actually started not rotating the pods unless 100% needed

Never heard any of this before, only comments have been on service costs...

I would suggest a few factors that contribute to the wide disparity in experiences and comments on pods. Delta designed with pods and has a generally sophisticated and experienced clientele. There are many pods bing put in boats not initially designed for pods and not perhaps modified adequately to take advantage of them. Then on top of that many pods in the US are sold to the least experienced boaters. They're told how easy pods are to dock and fall in love. They aren't told that they lack the experience for pods or other drives and are likely to run aground and otherwise cause a lot of damage. I would then say boating areas and service plays a role as well. The number of mechanics and yards with pod experience and knowledge is minimal compared to traditional drives. It's better than it was 5 years ago, but then a lot of the negative reports come from some years ago.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Delta with a pod if that's the boat I otherwise wanted. I wouldn't, on the other hand, by Prestige, Princess and others with pods. Our most recent purchase was a Sunseeker ande it was available with pods or traditional. We chose traditional. First, the boat used traditional long before pods, so experience in build. Second, we bought the boat to loop. Many areas we use it, I'd be far more concerned about finding pod expertise.

Why an abundance of newer boats with pods for sale? I don't know it's any more than anything else, but, if so, I'd attribute it to the owner, lacking experience before buying, and the builder not being on top of the level of support needed.

The concept of pods is nothing new. Been in the commercial world for ages. The concept of pods in recreational boats is no longer even new. It's been a good while now. I think like any form of propulsion, they have their advantages and disadvantages. Overall, I'm not a fan, but that's simply personal preference. I am a fan of jets, but not of surface drives. Those are all just personal preferences, don't mean one is better than the other, just different.

Back to Hinckley a moment. I love their uniqueness and beauty, love their jet drives. We thought a long time about some of their boats.

The Capt of the F+S sounds like a crackpot. If you have 1' of water under your boat where you dock, any form of propulsion is going to suck crap up and stir up the bottom. The pods do move a lot of water around the slip if you're in-experienced and really lay on the joystick when docking, same with traditional propulsion. I have a friend that runs a 50' F+S flybridge with pods that loved them and they put a lot of miles on them.

I'll tell you right off the bat, I have never been a Volvo fan in my life. They seem to have their own set of weird nuances other motors don't have. Do the pods need a little more specialized care than traditional shafts, YES. As for the yards being unknowledgable as Olderboater said, I disagree with that highly. Pods themselves are very very similar to stern drives that have been around since the 60's and every pod boat I deal with at the yard, I or them have Volvo come out and service the pods, not the yard. I prefer the zues system over the Volvo, but Zues is a very small percentage of the market, Volvo's are ok too.

Advantages- In a twin engine installation you're seeing a 30-40% increase in fuel economy. A lot more room in the engine room and inside of the boat. A lot less vibration, quieter, no visible smoke and greatly increased maneuverability when docking are all pluses. The DPS system (optional on Volvo) allows you to hit a button and sit in the same spot virtually endlessly which is great for waiting on bridges, or getting lines ready.

The old 40' Cabo was available with shafts and zues pods. With 800hp mans cruise speed (80% load) was 31 knots at 64 GPH. With the 600 HP Cummins Zues pods cruise speed (80% load) was 32.5 knots at 45 GPH of fuel. Not only was the pod boat faster at cruise, it was a heck of a lot more fuel efficient.

Most all of the builders install the pods correctly and they run right in boats builders install traditional shafts in.

Most POD buyers are inexperienced new buyers. They don't quite realize the huge expense of boat ownership. Another reason is half of the new boat dealers do a really crappy job of after the sale customer service. One owner I deal with has a new 50' Prestige, everytime he has a problem the dealer doesn't acknowledge it, gives him a bogus excuse, and tries to make him pay for it when it should be under warranty. Then I have to get involved, emails, go back and forth, and then they finally cover it or half of it, for things that are warrantable items. BUT, he has lots of frustration from the dealers real crappy warranty service and was really close to trading his new boat on something else and losing a fortune to just get out of it.

Jets are a disaster in maintenance in a boat that sits in saltwater all of the time. They're worse than stern drives when it comes to that. Also they're the least efficient form of propulsion pretty much. They're efficient at their targeted design speed. Any speed below or above that, highly in-efficient.

Rather than further bog down a Hinckley thread with pod-talk, I direct you to an accounting of my positive pod drive ownership experience here should you be interested. Cannot speak to why so many appear on the market these days but given their proliferation over the past eight years it really doesn't seem surprising to me.

Steering the jetstick back to Hinckley for a moment, a good friend of mine who oversees a private fleet recently ran his boss's new build of a T43 from New England to the Chesapeake, a stunning vessel and spectacular design IMHO. Reports from the voyage were all glowing.

that creaking sound you hear is my mind being opened ,,, lol ,, I appreciate the lesson on pods and won't condemn them unless I get some 1st hand knowledge , fuel efficiency was never really a thought , my c18s in a 50 hart burn 75 gph at cruise 100 at wide open ,,,, but my disire to have more range and less expense so I can rack up more travels is starting to make me think of economic fuel efficiency as being a priority , although my cats have been very good to me

Don't overlook initial cost as pods will cost more in most cases. Now, to be fair, getting joystick and DPS on a traditional drive will make that up. So same capability very little price difference.

On the other hand, the additional maintenance costs of IPS will eat into the fuel savings.

It's all trade-offs and ultimately personal choice.

Few words about pod or IPS system :
1) main aspect is the hull : a hull must be made either for shaft, or for surface or for IPS.
Be very careful if a boat builder offers his boat with multiple choice of propulsion, for sure some of them will not work properly.
2) with IPS you need more lift at stern, which means that you will never see a boat mounting IPS with more than 18-19° at transom (which means a bit harder impact in case of rough sea)
3) this bring us to consumption : for sure IPS might be slightly better than shaft, but not as much as Volvo advertises. Mainly the differences in consumption come from the shape of the hull : more you increase the deadrise more you increase the consumption, and difference with the same hull between IPS and shaft is no more than 5% (and remember that fuel consumption it is not the voice that bring high the general running cost of a boat)
4) about joystick : if you have a bow and stern thrust you can have a joystick also with shaft (Xena or Yachtcontroller for example), so zero difference in maneuvering.
5) IPS are much more expensive in maintenance, almost double than shaft.
6) IPS is like a big hook under your boat : system detaches in case of hitting against something, so you will not sink, but you remain without the pod........
7) IPS tend to produce a unpleasant rolling on the way (and this is why Volvo bought Humphree, in fact now Volvo pushes to sell IPS together with automatic intruders which balance the rolling tendency of the boat)
So why yards use more and more IPS ?
1) more space under
2) easy installation (no rudders, no shafts, just install the IPS and go, so no need to make complicate studies in order to optimize the installation), which means that yes IPS are a bit more expensive to buy, but the yards save tons of money.
3) no vibrations and much less noise (to obtain the same with shaft the yards should isolate the engine room much better and making zero mistake in studying the shaft line)
So, personally I will never choose a boat with IPS, because I like my boat having a deep hull (not less than 21°) for more comfort in rough sea, because I never had problems in maneuvering (bow thrust and engines were always more than enough for me, but getting older now I installed a stern, which make things super simple) and because I feel safer either with shaft or with jet or with surface. But again......this is my personal taste.
About IPS........well it is a lot about marketing, a lot because yards save money and a lot because people want more big houses able to navigate than boats.
Few more words about the choice of some yards to build boats with triple IPS : this means that the boat must be flat under....the result will be horrible in rough sea, but if you use your boat only with 1 foot wave or less you are fine. Just remember : the sea changes quickly (for sure the med where I go boating), and if you have to go from land to islands, with few hours navigation, even if you check weather forecast properly, you might suddenly face 6 feet of waves, nothing terrible of course, but if you have a deep V you will be able to keep going easily over 20 knots, if you have a flat or medium flat V you will have to slow down to 10 if you do not want to demolish your boat......