66 ft Bruce Roberts hull to gut and renovate...is this a good deal?

Hi There -

My husband and I have run across what looks like a nice deal for a solid hull, and we're all kinds of excited to be purchasing it. We're wondering whether our excitement is short circuiting other parts of our collective brain.

Because this is my first post, the forum software stopped me from submitting a link. If you go to ebay.com, it's item number 200394919354.

The seller is knowledgeable and willing to help us get it to Chesapeake bay to a haul out where we can gut it and work on renovation over the next year.

What would be a reasonable price to pay for such a hull? I've worked in boatyards and done a lot of construction, so I'm not afraid of the renovation or work. We have a flexible schedule so we can devote a lot of time to it over the next couple of years.

The current plan is to get it to a point where we can liveaboard, then add the sails in a year or so.

We were going to buy a house to renovate, but this looks like it will ultimately be more wonderful, and we've been talking about doing it for a few years now.

Are we nuts? Is it even reasonable to think about doing this?

The second question, besides our questionable sanity, has to do with building the interior so that we can charter it later on. How do I find out the regulations for that? I used to work on a schooner, and the captain told me that she had been built for charter, which made it more expensive - if he sold it, it would go for something like $160k whereas a similar boat without the charter building would run around $80k. Since we're gutting it, I think it would be wise to look into doing that for this size boat.

What other due diligence will I need to do?