Beneteau first 285... what did I miss?

[jbarros]

it looks like a nice boat from the 80''s. I like the acomidations, and hopefully the build quality will be decent... Thats good and all, but can anyone think of any reason this is a $50,000 boat???

Or have I just been blinded by the less expensive older boats I''ve been looking at. Is this going rate for boats around that age/size?

What did I miss?

Thanks.

-- James

[sailingfool]

New boats are expensive.

For that matter, old boats are expensive too, the difference is, you only pay a small part of the expense up front as the purchse price - the rest of ther expense you pay in yearly installments, until you can no longer deny you''ve been screwed, so that you sell that boat, only to do the whole thing over agaion.

[JDAM]

A friend had a 28.5. It was a reasonable weekend cruiser for 2, but sailed like a DOG. He complained continously as to weather helm, and the fact that he was easily overpowered. In addition, he had a cast iron keel with paint peeling off, and repeated seam cracks.

He NEVER finished in the hunt on the race course, and eventually even the sailmaker was reluctant to take his $$ for new sails.He sold his several years ago and it was priced in the 30,000 area. $50,000 is absurd . There are far better and more seaworthy boats out there for this amount of money.