silly question>?? General Forum Forums

Ok here it goes..

both those boats as listed look nice... I couldn't find a water maker listed for either... so I'm not sure where  you saw that.

they both seem to have fairly comparable setups for electronics or other features.. the one has radar which is nice if your going to be sailing in areas that get fog or limited visibility a lot.

The big difference is the rig.. the one is a ketch with two masts. This is what we were talking about earlier in the other thread. instead of one big mainsail you end up with a smaller mainsail and a mizzen sail on the mizzen mast which is the aftmost mast.

Then you still have a the Jib all the way out at the end of the bowsprit and a staysail just aft of the bow. So that would give you a standard 4 sail, sail plan. The other boat is a Bermudan cutter rig.. with one mainsail on one mast.. it is just a bigger sail and the jib and staysail on the bowsprit and bow.

your differences are going to be easier sail handling due to sail size on the ketch but increased complexity in lines and rigging. Ketch rigs are also known to not point quite as high in general as a Bermuda/sloop rig with one mast. I haven't sailed on the DE Ketch rig so can't confirm or deny this in specific.

Sails in decent shape and a large sail inventory is a nice thing to get in buying a boat also. If you have to buy new sails it will hit the pocket book pretty hard.. The sails for our boats could cost between 5 and 9 grand each for nothing special just decent sails.

I would visit both boats and see if you can go for test sails on them. test all the electronics get a feel for the layout.. crawl into the berths and lay down and just see how you feel about the boat.. then if you decide your serious ask around for a good surveyor... get several recommendations for a good one.. not all surveyors are made equal.. and pay for a survey of the boat. The brokers/owners are asking top dollar for those two boats.. To get what or near what they are asking it needs to be in spectacular shape. If it is then you might have a great deal and a great boat.

survey is a great way to go.. we bought our boat from family without a survey. We had sailed on it for years so knew it pretty well. However to be honest we have found a few suprises along the way that a good survey would have found and helped us know some of what we were getting into.

Warning.. i was serious about  getting a surveyor with a good reputation... I have seen some take your money give a report that everyone wants to hear and then you find out after buying that there were blisters on the hull or the engine was on its last legs etc....

any one problem with the hull, rigging, engine, electrical can cost you 100's to 1000's to fix. If you spend all you have on buying the boat and then find that you have to spend thousands more just to use it then your in trouble. Or you have to spend your cruising budget to fix it. Or you have to sell it for a fraction of what you bought it as the next buyer will have to fix it to get what you thought you were getting.. This is not to disuade you.. just to give you a blunt assessment of what can happen if you don't know the  boat really well or have a really good survey done.

Just go online and price some sails.. it is serious sticker shock if you get decent bluewater sails. Just dacron... If you get any kind of special materials the prices just skyrocket even higher.

I'm sure there are good surveyors out there. I just haven't met any. It's not so much that they know or dont know sailboats but that they seem to just be fairly incompetent and out to get your money. I have yet to see any survey of anyones boat that I know that was worth the paper it was written on. Just my personal experience. Like I said I am sure there are good surveyors. It's kinda like the field I'm in, computer repair. There are a few good shops that are very few and far between.. The rest of them your always feeling the messed the computer up a liittle so you will be calling them again next week.

scott

ps... ok i looked up sails at fxsails who is a fairly bargain generic loft... offshore jib for a de38 wouldbe between 3000 and 4500, the main would be between 2500 and 3500 though you would get a 10% discount if you ordered more than one at the time so.. you could get two sails for between 5500 and 8000 dollars. I would expect north sails or one of the other name brands to start about 30% higher.