Howdy YachtForums! I am 42 years old and have been living aboard my Spencer 42 sailboat for the last 8 years, sailing the Puget Sound all the way to Alaska and back as well as having done quite a bit of work to my own boat and several others during that time. While I do love sailing living on a sailboat is getting a bit cramped for my liking and now that I find myself with a small SASS company coming together and thus I am also starting to look at getting myself into a bigger boat now that I will be able to afford it. Recently I have stumbled upon Burger Yachts and in the older models between the 60's and 80's I am finding the designs to be quite beautiful. There is something about the lines drawn by Jack Hargrave that just speak to me and with his no nonsense motto of " above all else, a boat must be seaworthy" makes him someone in line with my own thinking where I find many of the modern day yachts produced to seem fragile and void of the features that make for a good sea keeping boat. Very specifically what I am looking at is picking up one of the 80-90' boats built between 1965 and 1990, right now I am seeing several examples on the market for 289-750k, I am estimating that my budget for purchase will be around 350-500k. With these boats I am expecting to wind up with a pair of either Cat 343's or some Detroit 12V71's. After I got out of the Navy in 2003 I became a trucker so I have quite a bit of experience with diesel engines and from this I know those 343's are so ancient that finding parts for them when they need it may become impossible requiring either custom machining, or replacement of the engines. The Detroits IMHO suck too much fuel to be considered a long term option and I have never really been a Detroit fan. What my thought process is, is to acquire a pair of 2WS3406E Cat's which I do have a ton of experience with and build them to be ~650hp with the C16 crank which gives them a longer stroke and better torque, then install them in the boat. This is where I am not sure what to do, I have found a couple of virtual tours, showing the engine rooms, and I am not seeing a pathway to get the engines out that isn't going to involve cutting holes in the boat. It looks to me like going up on the forward pilot house is a non option as the engine would being removed through the galley. On the rear pilot house it seems as though it would be coming up through the pilot house it's self. Looking at them it seems as though the best option would be cutting a hole in the side of the hull into the engine room and removing them that way? If anyone has any experience with this I would greatly appreciate hearing how you went about it? Ideally my plan would be to strip everything out of the engine room while the engines were out and give it a good pressure washing if not blasting it with dry ice then applying a good epoxy paint and new sound insulation. Also what I am seeing is that the boats in the 80' range generally hold between 2500 and 4600 gallons of diesel, if I were able to tune those Cats properly I would be looking at hopefully around 5-7 gph at 10-11 knots if my guesswork is correct. If I say 12gph at 10 knots, that would give her 383 hours of run time, which would mean making 3,830nm giving her a healthy range. As well what I am looking at for saving fuel and extending her legs is switching all of the lighting and equipment over to 12v, then building a 48v lithium battery bank that can invert to 110v for the appliances such as refrigerators that need it, then spinning a 48v alternator on the engines and routing that to the charging buss and putting 12-1600w of solar over the fly bridge on a hard top and having a Cerbo call the generators as needed rather than running them all the time now that the Victron gear can do that and handle the switching automatically. Another thought I have is that several of these I have seen have a water tank that is listed between 1000 and 1500 gallons, and that the tank material is Aluminum, I am considering turning that tank into a diesel tank, then building a welded UHMW water tank that is about 500 gallons and installing a pair of 60gph water makers. Curious if anyone else has done something similar. Ultimately my goal is to have a motor yacht that is well equipped for making long trips, capable of crossing to Hawaii or the Atlantic, or possibly making the Siberian Sushi run out the Aleutians to Japan. Any thoughts or information you have to offer would be greatly appreciated! — Nick
Hi Nick: I am in the process of refitting my 1972 82' Burger RPH. It has v12 Cummins 475 per side. 8-9kts cruise @ 18 gals total. 12kts 26GPH total. You have chosen a great boat. we love ours. And yes the good stuff costs money. I was told I should replace my teak decks. 125K estimate. I kept them. Resealed refasten and plugged a gazillion screws. Carefully sand them flat. Took me 400 hrs. WELL worth the trouble. I have a friend of mine that had his Detroit's(871) removed and replaced with 1271's. This was years ago, but they did cut the hull open to do it. when finished you could not tell it had been done . Most efficient way to repower the older Burgers. I am doing the solar thing but at a much smaller level. I hold 5300 gals of fuel in 4 Tanks. 2400 mile range est. Water is 900Gals. I have 11 AC units. Was quoted 100K to replace them. I refurbed and serviced each one as needed. Nice and cool year round with heat when I need it. It has two 30KW Westerbeaks. Perkins 4/236 engines. They have appox. 3K hours on second in frame overhaul with pistons and sleeves. They come in kits. The v12's also have in frame overhaul kits. . I refurbed them and serviced them as needed. Was also told to expect 125K plus to replace them. They are performing like they should. . The point I want to make is if you buy one of these older beauty Queens don't believe everything you hear about needing to replace everything because it it old. These were made to be rebuilt again and again. That's how the boat repair industry makes a lot of money. Nothing wrong with that just saying these are high grade yachts and were made and equipped to last and be repairable. If you go that route do your home work. I would tell you that these are not for the passive weekend warrior. You get the one in seaworthy condition and it will repay with an awesome yacht you will be proud of.
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