Free Boat

[gaha_1]

A friend is trying to give away a 1965 24' columbia Please save her

[jared]

Free boats usually aren't worth the cost of a match to burn them. Compared to a well-maintained boat at market value (which isn't much for a 40+ year old daysailor) a free boat usually has no working engine, extensive hull or deck or keel or rudder damage (often all of that) rigging damage, and no sails or sails so old they should have been used as funeral shrouds.
Often putting a "free boat" into market condition will cost as much as buying two of them ready to go. And if it can't be marketed...your friend may be giving it away because the alternative, and the biggest problem for the next owner, is that you have to pay for "toxic waste" disposal rates if you want to get rid of four tons of dead old boat.

On the other hand...if you expect anyone to look further, you might want to post information including all the known and suspected problems with the boat.

[pupperino]

Actually Jared,
There are several important reasons to save old boats. 1. It is environmentally smart to "recycle" the materials salvaged boats are made from.
It damages the environment every time a tree is cut down, or a gallon of fiberglass resin is made in a factory in China. 2. It is fun to restore an old boat. 3.You learn from repairing old boats, a lot more than just cruising in one. 4. If you do find an old boat that is really a goner. there is a big market for the sails, the motors, the winches, ballast lead (.20 cents a ton as of October 16th, 2006) all the little pieces of hardware like bronze cabinet hinges, and all the other cool stuff.

Just have a look on E-bay to see what people are getting for salvaged gear! But back to the basics. It is FUN to find and save for whatever reason an old boat. There are a lot of POSITIVE things to think about.

[pacifichigh]

Has anyone taken a columbia 28 offshore or coastal cruising?

[Radicalcy]

I'm not sure about the 28 but I know of at least one 29 that made a West coast to Hawaii passage, and a couple of Columbia 8.7's have done Atlantic crossings. As with all boats, if you do some basic improvements to the hull strength, and rigging, just about any boat can go coastal.

[mjname]

I have a columbia 29 and the previous owner used to blue water a lot from boston to Bermuda and beyond and up to Maine. However the only problem, rather horror story is the time high swells kept flooding the **** pit, ran the battery down using the bilge pump constantly. Couldn't get the motor started from inside the boat... but actually I think they were to busy holding on to think.

Once I take the inboard motor out and get rid of the gas tank I plan on putting about 2 to 3, 3" thru hulls going from the back of the **** pit straight out the back horizontally. This will increase drainage. Their main problem was the **** pit filled with water and the little 1/2 drains couldn't get rid of the water fast enough, and the water kept splashing up against the hatch boards letting water flood in.

But people coastal and blue water in smaller boats all the time, and columbia's are pretty sturdy.

matthew

[hellosailor]

Pupperino, you can't "recycle" an old boat. You can send it to the breakers, you can scrap it, you can restore it, but there's no way to "recycle" an old FRP hull. Economically or not.

Throwing good money after bad is simply foolish, FRP resins and glass will always be available and if the market cost of new is cheaper than salvaging old, that's what you do.

You may have had good luck stripping some old bones or scrapping them. There's certainly *some* money to be made that way *some* times. But as a practical matter?

By the time a boat is being given away, it usually will cost twice as much to repair and refit, as it would to simply buy a functional boat. The folks who fall for a "free boat" usually are newbies with little or no idea how expensive all those repairs will be, and many get badly burned. If the boat was worth the price of the match and pint of kerosene needed to burn it...the PO would have put it up for sale instead of giving it away. (With the really rare exception of "Oh, my uncle can't get out of bed anymore so he's giving me his boat" and such.)

[cassycc36]

I'll take it