Best cruising grounds to buy a boat in?

[B dock]

Retirement planning:

Seems reasonable to buy a boat already in a nice cruising area.

As a US citizen there must be better/easier places than others.
Considerations:
Taxes
Registration/Insurance
refit/repair ease
sailing conditions
security
resale ease

Assume newby cruiser/experienced sailor, 200 k purchase budget, world wide location, cooler locales acceptable. Most likely 3 - 5 year 1/2 time commitment, maybe longer.

Does buying into charter boat system work better for a plan like this?

Thanks for the input

 

[SemiSalt]

Note: sailing conditions must include seasonality.

 

[Bull City]

I would be reluctant to buy a boat that has been in a high UV environment for a long time.

 

[Zonker]

Does buying into charter boat system work better for a plan like this?

Seldom. Charter boats are like used rental cars, but with the more expensive things worn out.

Buying somewhere in the Caribbean (Trinidad/Grenada because typical summer hurricane grounds) and refit is relatively easy in some of the Caribbean islands or even take it back to Florida.

Also SE Asia (Thailand and Malaysia) because lots of people sail across the Pacific, do some time in SE Asia and don't want to cross the Indian Ocean and complete a lap.

Boats in W. Mexico do appear to be high priced, but they sit for a long time because owners price them unreasonably high. Make a low offer or wait for a year and watch the price slowly go down.

 

[toddster]

Yeah, lots of boats get abandoned down-range and are available at very attractive prices. Kids get enough of cruising on the down-wind leg and leave it for someone else to go back up-wind (or go on around).

I am six months in to the “new“ 20 year old boat. Sadly, just like the “old” 50 year old boat, once you start using it, shit turns out to be worn out. Even shit that worked fine on sea trials and survey, once you start using it daily, it gives up. I spend more time fixing shit and waiting for parts to come in than sailing or any thing else. Except I have to move the boat every three days because all the derelicts have spawned “no-live aboard” rules. And it takes a day to rest up from that and a day to prepare to go on.

Now, imagine that same boat 5000 miles down-range. Parts are even harder to come by. Although maybe the locale is more relaxed and they haven’t yet invented the 72-hour mooring limit. It still might turn out to be a Sisyphean task.

But it might be a fun vacation to fly out and shop, if you don’t take it too seriously.

That said, my cozy old 30-footer in a very attractive, if relatively unknown cruising locale is currently for sale at a fraction of your budget.…

 

[B dock]

You see some cruisers for sale in Mexico that are well outfitted but may have been on the hard for a year or 2. Does being in dry dock that long keep the boats reasonably well preserved? or are a lot of these potential dried and roasted extended ($$$) refit candidates?

 

[Crash]

The real answer is the Great Lakes. Fresh water, short season equal way less wear and tear on boats...

 

[dougweibel]

Toddster makes a point. I figure if you buy a boat you need a minimum of a year of time aboard to get everything sorted out. You can't even figure out what is wrong without spending time using all the systems in all the various ways they can be used. Parts are a pain in the ass to get lots of places. You can't just drop an order with Amazon everywhere. I've got an oil pressure sensor that I had to ship to the nephew of a cruising buddy cause he (my buddy) is flying back to the US this week and I should be able to rendezvous with that oil pressure sensor in a couple weeks. Or I could have it shipped to the Caribbean. With fees for a freight forwarder, customs broker, etc. the $30 sensor would cost me $200, maybe $300 depending on the island.

I would expect if I bought a boat somewhere where parts are difficult to get there are probably a lot of systems that are somewhat broke and a lot of deferred maintenance.

 

[mckenzie.keith]

I have no experience with charter fleets. There is kind of a reputation that ex-charter boats are beat to shit due to being used hard and put-up wet. On the other hand, they probably do receive more maintenance than other boats purely from necessity.

But I will say that buying a boat far from home, especially in the low end price range like you are talking about (I am not throwing shade, you have more budget than I do) but you can quickly rack up a lot of expenses after buying a boat for 200k, then trying to either remotely orchestrate repairs/remediations for various problems, or constantly traveling back-and-forth to get the boat fixed up.

When the boat is 500k or 1 million, those incidentals seem more like an incidental. But for a 200k boat, a 20k saildrive installation is a little more impactful, for example.

In general, no used boat will be turnkey. Never turnkey. They just vary in how much work is needed, how badly it is needed, and whether you discover it before survey or after.

To be honest with you, if you just want to sail a few times a year in some nice place, and you don't want to make ocean passages, maybe you should just charter. I mean, not buy into charter, but just charter a boat through a charter company.

 

[Willin']

I'd search Savu Savu, Fiji Islands. Lots of circumnavigators enter the Lau Group and never leave. Savu Savu is where they put up they're boats and/or get serviced while away making money. You might find a few distress sales there.

Even if you don't find a boat, the Savu Savu Yacht Club tee shirt is worth the trip.

 

[Dogscout]

Oakland CA today if you want a project.

 

[TheDragon]

I'd search Savu Savu, Fiji Islands. Lots of circumnavigators enter the Lau Group and never leave. Savu Savu is where they put up they're boats and/or get serviced while away making money. You might find a few distress sales there.

Even if you don't find a boat, the Savu Savu Yacht Club tee shirt is worth the trip.

From my experience last year, Vuda Point marina in Fiji has more boats for sale than Savusavu. If you are adventurous then Fiji is a playground you could spend many seasons in. Same for French Polynesia, and lots of boats for sale there too, and it is even more amazing. Tonga probably too but it was closed.

I bought mine in Panama, all set to go, for 40k. Covid set me back two years, and so had to replace batteries, and vhf, but otherwise sailed like that to Fiji. But all the trips to Panama, plus storage for two years, plus all the other things, exhausted my 80k boat budget by the time I set sail. So left with original sails and standing rigging, both of which are now failing. If you did not want to cross oceans, the nearby San Blas islands keep some folks busy for years. A local friend just got back from Bocas del Torres in Panama, another small cruising ground, where he bought a nice boat for 27k, plans to sail it there for a couple of seasons before maybe venturing further.

In Panama you could easily find a really nice boat for 100k and have more than enough budget to fix things and pay all the other costs for a few years.

See description in first video here.

https://www.youtube.com/@SVSeaChange

 

[El Borracho]

Greater SE Asia. Many cruisers having done the safe and low-worry milk run across the Pacific arrive here with a reluctance to continue on a more problematic Indian Ocean and RTW cruise. And the return to North America seems to them zero fun.

Your considerations:

Taxes: I found no administrative interest in taxes or transfer processes. Could vary … kinda doubt it though.

Registration/Insurance: Boat will already be Canadian, US, EU or whatever. So that is a non-issue. Insurance is a problem everywhere.

refit/repair ease: Boats will have some depreciation, certainly. Same as anywhere. Well tested though? Good yards and labor are common enough.

sailing conditions: Excellent.

security: Excellent.

resale ease: Likely more difficult.

Other: You will already be in what may be the largest, uncrowned and finest cruising grounds in the world. As it straddles the equator there are ways to minimize tropical depression risks.

 

[TheDragon]

And just in case you find my boat interesting, here's an incredibly clean one of similar vintage but hugely updated for sale in England for 100k. But mine came fully loaded with everything one could imagine, all of which would have cost near the purchase price to get.

 

[Latadjust]

Anyone want to chime in on buying a new boat into Moorings/etc? Most boats sit much more than the initially enthusiastic owners envision, so 12 weeks a year probably realistic...sell at the end of the term?

 

[Crash]

Anyone want to chime in on buying a new boat into Moorings/etc? Most boats sit much more than the initially enthusiastic owners envision, so 12 weeks a year probably realistic...sell at the end of the term?

It's a great deal for Moorings, that's why they do it. For you? At the end, you get a beat to shit (see above) boat to sell or refit. Think I'd skip it....

 

[Latadjust]

Also, paging B.J. Porter...

 

[Willin']

Anyone want to chime in on buying a new boat into Moorings/etc? Most boats sit much more than the initially enthusiastic owners envision, so 12 weeks a year probably realistic...sell at the end of the term?

My buddy bought into a Moorings 38 ft Beneteau when they were originally located in Puerto Escondido, Baja Calif. (Now in La Paz). Virtually first charter the boat dragged in a Chubasco and was destroyed on the beach (charter patrons survived unharmed) and Moorings provided a new boat for free several months later. My buddy still has an aluminum clete from the first boat on his mantle.

Sorry, I just love telling that story.

My real point is that charter boats retain more value in dry climates like Baja, where the wooden trim bits aren't subjected to seasonal swelling and fungi. I believe the Greek Islands have a similar climate.

Just a point to consider if that Moorings boat in the BVI or Tonga seems too good to be true.

 

[Zonker]

"The Moorings and sister company Sunsail are part of Travelopia, which in turn is owned by KKR, a global investment firm with 148.5 billion dollars in assets under management"

If you have that kind of capital, your choice is:

(a) buy the boats yourselves with cash or a loan. You can probably get way better loan terms than choice (b)

OR

(b) asking many hundred private owners to pay up front via cash or a loan.

This is of course a big administrative headache to them. Why do they do that? Two reasons I can see:

- they don't have to borrow money. You do. This saves them millions in interest and doesn't tie up their own capital. They are using your money to earn income.

- at the end of the charter term they don't own a heavily depreciated asset. The private owner does. They don't have to sell it. The private owner just is told to come take away your boat. We're done with it.

It's an amazing business model for them, but I don't think it's a good business plan for the private owner.

 

[toddster]

Some friends of mine bought a big MoBo on the charter model, back in the 90’s.
What happened was that the charters were constantly damaging it. Sometimes seriously. No problem - the charter company took care of all the repairs. Except that the boat sat half (well, a significant fraction of) the year in the yard being repaired, and not earning any money. So it didn’t cover the loan payments, which had been the fundamental premise of the whole deal.