There's a good discussion to be had round ex-charter vs. never chartered. If I had more time I'd ride a shorter response. I'm not an expert, but I can shed some light on my experience starting naive and ending up coming home yesterday after two weeks of de life on our boat.

The boats I really do prefer for long-term cruising, like sail2wind's Beneteau 40CC, tend to have larger cabins and more storage. There's a Whitby 42 for sale on St. Thomas that I've been watching that would make a nice full-time cruiser. But, you have to be honest with yourself on your usage. We're not full-time cruisers and having full-time cruising features is going to drive up the maintenance costs.

Our usage looks like lots of weekends for Jay & Deb, lots of two-week trips for me and Sweet Christine. Both of us will frequently have guests. That starts looking like a classic 2-head/3-cabin boat pretty quickly. We challenged our assumptions, talked about all the options, looked at a lot of boats, ran the numbers and bought a very specific former Moorings boat. The usage model also means that we need to keep her in the water.

Our Beneteau 40 Oceanis was in service for three years with Moorings and was purchased out of charter by a Norwegian family that cruised the boat for a year before selling it. They did a full survey and Moorings hit every issue, down to replacing rusted clamps on fresh water fittings and putting new sails on her. I'll hand it to the Moorings phase-out crew, they'll fix everything that you point out to them.

The Norwegian owners then added a solar arch and a wee dinghy (remember the dinghy). When we did the sea trial she was extremely clean. The owner had just replaced some components, after accepting our offer, because he felt there was deferred maintenance. The attitude of the owner makes a difference. We had De Life surveyed and we had all of the issues addressed and received credits for expenses at closing. We chose to replace a few things with new rather than repaired components. The work was done before closing on the sale at the yard at Nanny Cay and we were happy with the rigger and mechanic that did the work.

We liked this model boat of all that we looked at because it had reasonable roominess, good sailing characteristics and was a good value. The Cyclades models out of Moorings you see are a pretty big quality step down. The 393s you see offered have been hard used and take a good bit of refit work and the 3-cabin version has a crowded galley. We did see a nice 393 that had been well restored, but the price reflected that.

Charter boats get a lot more use than privately owned boats. They also depreciate much faster. I'm not an expert on buying boats, but surveyors with good reputations can be a big asset. A thorough survey lets you know exactly what you are in for, but that takes time and money. There's been a lot written about a proper survey, but our surveyor did a thorough job and we really didn't have any surprises. To understand if a former charter boat is the right choice you need to look at the specific boat and the time you have to dedicate to the process. If you're going to buy a boat out of the charter fleet and you're willing to camp out and supervise the phase-out process you may get a good boat for less than other options. If you're willing to wait until low season for phase out you might get a bit more attention.

caribbeangirl13, we renamed our boat in June. The ceremony was fun and the champagne flowed. We keep her at Independent Boat Yard. One of the big reasons we chose Independent is that it is sheltered and we can keep her in the slip if there is a named storm. We (Jay) need to rig storm lines, pull the sails and the canvas off the boat. The marina does close when there is a storm threat and you have to be in the slip by the time the close or you are out of luck. Independent can also take our 6'5" draft. We used Clive at BVI Yacht Sales as our buyers' broker. The boat was in Antigua when we put an offer on her, but check out sail and survey were done at Nanny Cay. Christine and I are working our plan too. My youngest is headed off to college or a gap year doing service work in August and my older daughter has a great job and is apartment hunting.

GeorgeC1, I'd love a full-size owners cabin. We might combine our two aft cabins at some point and make a large cabin with pantry/storage. But, that's not a walk around bed. After two weeks on the boat I'm pretty comfortable with what we have. But, I'm comfortable having fewer owners and less hassles. I like Capt. Jay's quote "You don't get any more fun tickets with a more expensive boat." But, you might have more fun on a hot day if the refrigerator keeps the beer cold and can run the a/c if it starts raining.

Since we bought De Life in May we've had to do some planned maintenance - haulout/bottom paint, replaced the wee dinghy with a used dinghy, ordered a new swim ladder and replacement propeller, gas grill. Unplanned? Starter, water pump, replaced a thru hull and a transmission rebuild. We have a maintenance to do list that we're working through. I need to update it with the items from our most recent cruise.

Cheers, RickG