Curious what the upper limit is for boats that can be hauled over-the-road. Would anyone happen to know? Thanks, Bart
It's semi-flexible. Many can dismount the flying bridge to get under highway bridges. Maybe better to start with boat ideas first, then work out how to get it there from here. -Chris
Thanks for the reply Chris. We've been looking at our options the last few years but are now mostly focused on a Post 43 or 46. The 47 and 46 are basically the same boat so I put 47 in the title but it could be any one of those different boats. Being on the east coast we've seen some used boats available that were born and raised on fresh water and my buddy/captain/mentor has expressed it's worth it to truck a fresh water boat to the coast if the option presents itself. There's a 47 in the Chicago area that we're curious about but it was a NY boat that was moved inland not too many years ago. So who knows!
Keep in mind that any Great Lakes boat can be run on it's own bottom to the coast. (Relatively speaking)
Doing some back of the envelope estimating last night, I figured it would be maybe $20k in fuel and eight to ten days from Chicago to coastal New Jersey. How off would you reckon that to be? I priced a Luhrs 34 from the Central MI to NJ last year and it was about $6300. I thought maybe the larger boat would be in the $10k range and would try to factor that into the offer we'd be willing to make.
Not familiar with the boats, but assuming flying bridge? If so, then a question to the group here might be who is familiar with dismounting/remounting Post flybridges. (I've also read it's often best to have the same guy who dismounted it come to your location to remount after transit.) And then who can recommend a trucking company with relevant experience so you can ask them for estimates. We moved our current boat from Ft. Myers to Annapolis in 2021, 1123 NM, costs $11.5K fuel and marina fees. That was 18 days, on plane mostly, plus two lay days for weather and crew pickup -- not entirely leisurely but not a full-on "delivery" speed throughout. I could likely have done it for half that at "smell the coffee" speed... vacationing along the way. In this case, July/Aug '21, my Admiral was worried about more hurricanes and so forth... so I didn't have as much discretion as usual. In the grand scheme of things, I passed on all the Great Lakes and Tennessee boats... 'cause to me the condition was only potentially better, the asking prices at the time were too high for what they were, and none of those available floated my boat. In the end, just buying a mid-Atlantic or Northeast boat could have been less painful. -Chris
Chris, I checked your miles with google maps and came up with about the same number you quoted. Doing the same thing with Chicago to NJ, I got about 1225 NM. What was the cost for a gallon of diesel in 2021 when you did your trip and what is the typical marina charging for diesel today? Thanks for the reply, real world info is very helpful. The boat has a fly bridge, I'd probably go out for the removal to help and keep track of things so I could reattach it back home. There are a few 46's closer to home that I'm going to go look at in the next couple of weeks. The 47 is Chicago is 5 or 6 yrs newer than anything else we've considered and it's got lower time running gear so it has my attention but it would strain our budget and I'm not sure I have the availability to do the process of repositioning it. But we'll see, thanks again for the help. Bart
Looks like our average diesel cost/gallon was $3.29 at that time. Don't know current prices, but it was approx $6.00/gallon when we filled up last November (end of last season, for us). Gak! It's sometimes possible to "deliver" a boat in stages. For example, move from Chicago to Port Clinton (or similar) and leave it there for a while. Resume later, move it to the Erie Canal system somewhere, leave it. Eventually get it where you want in NJ. Something like that... But then you'd want to compare that to cost of a delivery captain and crew. With our without you doing a ride-along for some parts of it. Either approach might seem like a chunk of time or a chunk of expense... but could well be worth it for the right boat. -Chris
That's a great point Chris, maybe do it in stages. We've got a lot going on so we were going to put it on hard stands until at least next summer which would also give me time to go through everything and learn the systems before we commit to a slip and start spending time on it. So there's no hurry to get it home I guess.
If you go with the Chicago boat and leave it in the area, go north on the west shore of Lake Michigan or cross the lake to store it. Anything south of Manitowoc on the Wisconsin/Illinois side is stupid money for storage.
Thanks for that. I'm hoping it will be sold before I can get out there later this month to look at it!