[GeorgeB]

Pickle,
The comment about the 42,000 pound displacement got me to thinking. This thing is north of a thousand pounds per foot LOA. Your typical 40+ footer FRP cruiseris going to weigh in somewhere under 600# per foot. I thought, “hey, this would be fun to run the numbers through my ratio calculator”. I googled “Windboats” and got a hit from a builder in England. They currently build for Oyster. Their history made no mention of Ferro-Cement, but they used to build “custom yacht builds”. I had better luck with “Endurance”. Seems that the designer was one Peter Ibold, a civil engineering professor and self taught yacht designer. He won a “best amateur yacht designer contest” in Norwich England with his Endurance 35. He was pretty prolific, ultimately designing 60 different boats that were built by over twenty different boatyards. However, He never gave up his day job in civil so i don't think he was that successful. I eventually found a 1978 brochure from Windboats for the Endurance 40+ (a.k.a. “41”?). At the time they billed themselves as a leading builder in Ferro (the picture depicted hull #2). The 40+/41 was built by various builders in wood, steel, and fiberglass in addition to the cement. The Endurance boats ceased being built in the early ‘90’s

Herein lies one of the big problems in Ferro, there are no molds or single builder so there is no consistency. Each boat is a one off construction. The Ft Meyers boat for example, is five tons heavier than the original design weight. You can only imagine the differences in construction quality. This boat in particular is a little weird, having a junk rig, unstayed masts and an 800 sq ft sail plan. This sailplan is not much bigger than my 34 footer with a large genoa up. To manage two halyards and two sheets, you get exactly two winches. But hey, one of them is self tailing! Do you need any additional information as to why this isn’t a good deal?

The used boat marketplace is pretty efficient. Both buyers and sellers tend to be equally knowledgeable and have access to the same information. And the selling prices reflect the boat’s true, relative value. You are not very likely to find a “diamond in the rough”, the market is way too efficient. If you buy a boat on the bottom part of the scale, you will often spend more out of pocket money to bring that boat up to “mid range” standards than what you would have spent if you bought the mid range boat in the first place. Boats are expensive, cruising boats more so. Think house expensive, not Kia Sportage expensive. Don’t be seduced by your dreams and pictures of pirate ships. Get knowledgeable, or better yet, find someone who is. There are consultants that can help you in this arena. Cruising Concepts in Alameda is one, for example.