Want to buy a 30-40m used yacht. Which yards are good?

Hi, if I translate your question into cars, you are suggesting as different as Rolls Royce, Lancia, Cadillac, Opel or BMW. If you think of these cars as 10 to 40 years old, it is even more difficult to give an advice.

Most of the yachts in this size are custom built and owned by individuals which have put their signatures both on the interior and maintenance records.

A good yacht broker can pick a few examples for you to inspect, then you may change your ideas and narrow down the search until you find your dreamboat.

Most of what you mentioned would only have trans-Atlantic range and capability on the back of another boat. Do you even want to carry that much fuel? Also, the older the boat, the less space they'll have for toys. Going back 40 years most of the toys were carried on deck with boats that size. RU looking more for distance, speed, passenger capacity, seakeeping ability, toys, etc. Is your intention for a family cruiser or charter, expidition or dock queen? You have to give from one end to take from another. You don't want to carry 3 weeks fuel if you won't be away from fuel sources for more than a week at a time. If range and seakeeping are your main concerns you may want to get a bit smaller with something like a Nordhaven or Delta. If size, play and coastal cruising are the priority you can probably do with far less fuel capacity. On a 40 yr. old steel boat you may spend much of your budget replating, etc. Give more thought to your desired task.

A surveyor can. All I can say is that Christensen is fibreglass.

Each has their pluses and minuses. Often you'll be looking at a steel hull with aluminum house. Steel all the way is very heavy (excessive fuel burn) and may even be a bit top heavy. Many, if not most of the boats you've referenced will be either steel/alum. or composite (fiberglass). Trinity does a lot of work in all Alumnimum, and have for awhile. Much of Trinity's history is in commercial boats (dinner boats, crewboats, etc.). Feadship is the oldest name you mentioned. Loooong history in ship building. Steal and steel/alum. DK if I'd want a 40 yr. old fiberglass near that size. Even a 2,000nm range might be pushing it a bit you may be more realistically looking more toward 1,200 to 1,500 at 8 to 12 kts.

Back in the early 90's Christensen was trying to push the envelope on how big they could go with composites. Can't personally say if the results from that time were good or not. I'd consider them fancier than Trinitys from the same time, but that's really not saying anything. The Trinitys should be all aluminum which can bring their own unique problems (noise, electrolisis,etc.) if they weren't properly cared for. Steel is of course your strongest, and probably easiest to repair, but you'll give up range due to the weight.

Look for a good Burger or Feadship. be patient anmd do not settle for less, though a nice Stephens is nothing to laugh at, I have one, 1974 and still same hull plate thickness as when launched...

That is completely untrue. If it is a true displacement hull, you give up very little range to weight. I cut my teeth on a custom 97' motoryacht that was all steel. It drew 8.5 feet of water. It was powered by twin 250hp gardeners that burned a combined total of 14 gph at cruise speed with was around 10 knots. The boat held 6,000 gallons of fuel and came over from England to the US on it's own bottom and had a range of just under 4,000 NM at cruise. The speed was the same on that yacht whether we were carrying 30,000lbs of fuel or 3,000lbs of fuel. Most yachts of this size from that era were displacements hulls (Feadship, Trinity) save for the Browards and even those usually will have a range of at least 2500NM at 10 knots if not closer to 4,000NM. There are a lot of yachts from that era in that size that have at least a range when run at 10 knots. As for carrying around the weight in fuel, you could choose not to by running the vessel with a few of the tanks empty if you did not need the capacity and didn't want the weight on board but at least you have the capacity to carry it if you need it.

Anyways, given your location I think that steel would be the easiest to maintain with the most yards in the area having the proper knowledge to maintain it. Aluminum from that era would be an OK choice if you learned how they needed to repair it and could instruct them and also knew how to audiogage it. I think a Feadship from that era would be my first choice. I am not too familiar with the older Trinities or Christensens and their build quality from that era, but they should be solid boats. Browards quality is seen to be less in the industry and there are some good Browards around and some not so good ones that have been neglected. Feadships, Trinity's and Christensens tend to get better maintanence over the years.

It might be worth a notice that at this age, you're better off choosing a boat, not brand. You can stumble upon a particulary solid and well-maintained ship from one of "generally inferior" names just as readily as upon a neglected or otherwise problematic Feadship.

Therefore, to narrow down your choices it could probably be wise to prioritize by how the "paper specs" meet your needs and what kind of history the boat had, rather then focusing on brand. Then you can start visiting boats from top to bottom, and when initially satisfied, bringing a surveyor.

Obviously it is realistic to expect "better" brands turn out better shape, but going back to car metaphor, think of it as choosing between 40-year Rolls-Royce and 20-year Cadillac. You won't be able to tell "which one is better" in abstract: depends too much on what you prefer AND exact conditions of each particular one.