You've fantasized about it: standing at the helm, casting off the lines, just letting her rip. But buying a boat is simply too daunting, right? Wrong. Here's a guide to help you find the right one at the best price with the least hassle.
Last year, Courtenay Macomber was locking up his summer cottage on Lake Michigan's Traverse Bay when he realized he had not been out on the lake all season. "I decided it was a crime to live this close to the water and not take advantage of it," the 35-year-old house builder says. He had been standing on the sidelines with some spare cash, waiting for a few investment opportunities to pan out, when he thought, Heck: Why not live a little? Why not get a boat?
This spring, Macomber began scouring the local marinas. After passing on a few older boats, he found the perfect vessel at a boatyard just down the road: a 16-foot, 2000 Boston Whaler Dauntless with a 115-horsepower engine in great condition. He paid a dealer $20,000 cash for the fully equipped boat, which would have cost more than $30,000 new. "I wanted the least hassle possible," he says. "I can just jump in and blast around, or explore the coast and find places to barbecue. I'm expecting to spend a lot of time on the water this summer."
It's hard to resist the lure of the water. On a boat, you are untethered from earthly concerns, the captain of your own little island, with as many or as few guests as you want. You ask little of the outside world and take even less from it. Some fuel, a steady wind, a splash of rum. With interest rates at their lowest in decades, there's never been a better time to buy. And if the boat has a galley, a head, and sleeping accommodations, it qualifies as a second home, meaning the loan interest is tax-deductible. But before taking the plunge, you should know that there's a right way and a wrong way to go about choosing a boat. For a small runabout like Macomber's, the buying process can be as uncomplicated as picking out a used car. But for a big express cruiser, it's more like buying a house. The major difference is, you can't wakeboard behind a house.
GETTING STARTED
if you're thinking about buying, start with the following three questions: What activities do I want to participate in? Who will be with me? And where will I be doing all this? While there are a lot of boats that can do one thing great, and others that are designed to do several things well, no boat does it all.
The first big decision is whether to opt for wind or engine power. Most sailors would define sailing as more of a calling than a choice. "I need sailboats," says Clarke Thompson, a 33-year-old naval architect from New Orleans who owns a 45-foot Morgan cruiser and a 15-foot Vanguard racer, which he sails in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. "I love to go ripping fast in the small boat with the water coming at me like it's being shot out of a fire hose. The bigger one is a cruising boat, ideal for getting away from it all." As with most sailors, what moves Thompson is the wind: how it offers an environmentally friendly sense of peace and quiet yet also drives high-thrill competition. Unlike with power boaters, who often use their machines as platforms for other activities, the attraction for sailors is the sailing. That's true whether they're on a ten-foot day sailer or a 60-foot sloop. In fact, most sailors start out buying a smaller single-sail day boat, then trade up as their seafaring skills and ambitions grow. Generally 17 feet or shorter, a day sailer is inexpensive, easy to learn on, lightweight (therefore simple to store and transport), and a lot of fun. Some people, however, prefer to jump right to the next category, the slightly larger (20- to 45-foot) cruising sailer with a single mast and sleep-aboard accommodations that make it capable of anything from an overnight trip to a long excursion in mild to rough sea conditions. After that, the truly hearty, committed sailors with deep pockets graduate to the long-distance cruiser (35 to 70 feet), a more heavily built boat with plusher accommodations that can handle anything from an afternoon jaunt to a global circumnavigation. No matter what type of sailing attracts you, understand that sailboats have a steeper initial learning curve and require more effort to operate than powerboats. But you can easily learn enough to get started at any good sailing school. (For a list, call Discover Sailing at 800-262-7245 or visit discoversailing.com.)
Excerpted from Men's Journal, August 2003. For the complete article, pick up the issue on newsstands July 15th.
By: Jim Gorant
Photograph by: Matt Gunther
(August 2003)
Copyright ©2003 by Men's Journal LLC