Greencoast Albin 25 - was help with offer

[greencoast]

We're 7 kt kind off people anyway. We'll baby it and hope for hundreds and hundreds of hours to come. By the way, it's ours! Offer accepted and joy in the household this a.m. Again, many thanks for all the input and thinking points. Greatly appreciated. See you around the marinas!

[kerrye]

Congratulations.

[DesertAlbin736]

Ah Bellingham, one of my favorite places. If I could afford it I'd keep an Albin 36 or CHB 34 trawler up there as a summer home, spend summers cruising the Salish Sea and winters basking in sunshine down here in Arizona (forecast high today of 74 degrees and sunshine, 90+ days and counting since last measurable precipitation).

Back in 2012 when first considering switching from sail to power we looked at this Albin 25, which I believe was a 1977. It had just been re-powered with a new or near new 40 HP Volvo, but I don't recall now what the model number of that engine was.

Albin (1280x960).jpg

He wanted $17K which we thought was too much. We went so far as to take it out on the lake for a test run, using my truck to tow it from the yard where the seller kept it stored & launch it on the lake. The re-power job had been done at a yard in San Diego, and apparently had not been test run since, because when we went to run it around the lake it vibrated so badly we could not go above idle. I don't mean a little vibration, we're talking bone shaking vibration. Long story short, the owner refused to drop his price below $16K so we walked. Not just the engine was an issue, but cabin cushions, lack of holding tank for the head, none of the electronics were hooked up or working, including the radar dome, etc, etc. We could have easily sunk another $3K in the boat just fixing those issues besides fixing what was wrong with the engine. I'm no fan of Volvos, having many bitter memories of a 1966 Volvo 122S sedan that I owned in the early 70s that was the worst hangar queen imaginable. After we walked away from the deal the boat sold two weeks later to someone from out of state, Oregon I think. Would be funny if this was the same boat you're looking at. One way to tell is that it had a 2 burner stove with oven installed in a cutout of the galley cabinet.

But I suppose if the engine is good & everything else is in good shape $20K is not bad. Run over to Tri-County Marine Diesel by the railroad tracks across from Squalicum Harbor and ask those guys what they think that engine is worth, and if you're serious, maybe ask them to do an inspection. Yes Volvo parts are expensive, but so are Yanmar parts.

So anyway, the above boat was the first I'd heard of Albin 25's, and so two years later searched in earnest for another one and found the one we have now up in Idaho, driving 850 miles each way to get it & renamed it "La Dolce Vita". We paid more than $20K for it, though it did come with a nice aluminum trailer and hard shell dinghy. But the 1986 Yanmar it came with was far from new, at least 2,000 hours on it, close to 3,000 on it now.

I track all my spending in Quicken, and I can tell you, above and beyond the purchase price since taking ownership in 2014, I've spent $16K on repairs and upgrades for our boat, and another $3,500 in repairs, (some welding, replacing brakes & tires etc) on the trailer. That said, we've trailered at least 14,600 road miles, including initial pick up in Idaho, twice to Bellingham, once to the East coast and back, and once to Los Angeles and back. Those repair and upgrade costs include fabricating a new hard top with teak hatches, sewing a new cockpit enclosure, upgrading the holding tank for the head, new batteries, wiring, on board smart charger, new alternator, general engine maintenance, bottom paint, lift davits for the dinghy, new dinghy, and most recently new VHF radio and chartplotter. Those last two items alone were $994. And that's me doing all the labor myself, except for some welding repairs on the trailer. And it only costs us $50 a month to park the boat on the trailer when we're not traveling. Money which is very unlikely to recover in event of selling the boat someday. That's not counting storage costs, insurance, transient slips, fuel, and general boating costs. But the memories and good times we've had with this boat, especially our cruises in the San Juans and Gulf Islands are priceless.

aboat1.jpg

So it's all a matter of how much such a boat is worth to you and how set you are on the 25. A matter of what the traffic will bear as it were. And your budget and intended use as well. If you don't intend to trailer, then a 27FC might be found in the $20K range or less. Albin 25's are unique and well built. We paid perhaps more than we should have, but at the time there were only two other A25's that I could find listed for sale anywhere in the country, one in Florida and the other in Texas. There were a couple up in British Columbia, but one was a project boat and neither came with trailers. Outside of a sailboat the Albin 25 is probably the most fuel efficient cruising boat of that size. Only a Nimble Nomad could come close, and you'd be lucky to find one of those under $30K. Ditto with C-Dorys. The 40HP Volvo may burn more than some A25's with smaller engines like ours, but probably no more than 0.75 GPH at 8 or 10 knots, in the 12 to 13 MPG range.

You'd have to weigh that price against what you could do with the Albin 25 and where you could go. For instance we hope to return next summer and cruise as far up as Desolation Sound. We used to launch from Bellingham when they had the 60 day free parking in the overflow lot behind the Redden Marine store, but I've heard that's no longer available, so we'll probably launch from Blaine where they still have that parking deal available.

[DesertAlbin736]

Update: I just noticed your post that you got the boat. Congratulations! This wouldn't be the estate sale posted below by 'nineducks' would it? My dream is a Pacific NW Albin 25 flotilla next year, as many as we can get together to do the Gulf Islands and even as far as Desolation Sound. Yes the winters are wet and snotty up there, but for summer cruising you are in the best cruising grounds anywhere on the West coast, if not in all the US. Just offhand I can think of at least five Albin 25's, you, me, WillieC, Mike Almvig in La Connor, and dkirsop on S. Pender Island, not to mention all those others with Albineers of BC.

By the way, in 2016 we spotted this A25 with sail rig in Friday Harbor. The owner wasn't around, so we didn't get to meet him or her, so that's another one up there. The transom was painted green with the name "Gladness" in large letters. Anyone know this guy?

[kerrye]

That's what I was referencing, Nineducks boat. She told me her boat had a Volvo D2-40 engine installed by Sea Power, Sydney, BC

[Beta Don]

Hull speed for a 25' boat is 6.7 knots so anything higher than that is going to be a result of pushing the boat onto plane.

That's not necessarily correct

Hull speed is 1.34 times the square root of the waterline length so if your 25 foot boat also has a 25 foot waterline (which would be a bit unusual) then you're correct - It's 6.7 knots

But an A25 has a LWL of 22 feet, so 6.3 knots would be a more accurate figure

Don

[kerrye]

Correct. I was rounding

[WillieC]

Congratulations, greencoast! Hope to catch up with you one of these days.

[dkirsop]

Congratulations on your new (to you) boat. These boats are a lot of fun and there is a large number of owners in these waters who are a valuable source of information and advice. May she give you many years of pleasure.

[DesertAlbin736]

Going back over this thread, greencoast do you have any photos to post yet? I know everyone is busy getting ready for the holidays. Hope we do get to see you around when we cruise up there next summer. Anxious to see what that engine looks like & some shots of the interior. Would be funny coincidence if it was the same boat we looked at down here in 2012, since there can't be too many A25's around with new 40HP Volvos installed, especially West Coast.

[greencoast]

2017-12-02 11.12.18.jpg

No good pics yet, just these taken in the heated garage on Camano Island where she's been living the past 2 years. We're bringing her home to Bellingham after the Holidays. Not sure yet if we're going to moor her in Squalicum Harbor immediately or keep her on the trailer until spring. Been reading a lot about the joys of winter cruising on the Salish Sea, and like the idea. I'm not sure if she's the same boat you saw, as the repower didn't take place until 2013.

[kerrye]

Nice. Is that a second rub rail below the gunwale? Haven't seen that on an A25 before.

[WillieC]

Looking good, greencoast. I'll have to look you up next time we're in Bham.
Too bad the garage doesn't come with it.

[DesertAlbin736]

That's not either of the boats I was thinking of, not the one we looked at down here in 2012 nor the one we saw docked in Friday Harbor in 2016. But looks nice from what can be seen in the photos. I'm jealous, front cabin window nice & clear, not all crack-crazed & sun-fried to near opaqueness like ours. Sure would be nice to have a climate controlled RV garage or boat house to park a boat in. Corrosion, bottom growth, winterizing, and weathering issues would be a thing of the past.
Let us know about winter cruising on the Salish Sea. I've seen videos on YouTube of WA State ferries crossing in rough winter seas with waves breaking over the bow & inundating cars on the main deck near the front.

Update: Link to rough ferry ride in the San Juans from March, 2015. 55 - 60 MPH winds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy9VHZTfNl0

Ummm, you sure you want to be out in stuff like this?

[WillieC]

Bellingham Bay can be regularly frisky. Drove up Chuckanut Drive over Thanksgiving and pulled out every vista reliving our summer voyage up there. I think it was much windier this time than last summer, but the pattern was the same. East wind blowing out of Samish Bay made for some pretty good chop. Not too many boats out, but a few insane kayakers.
I have been thinking about the manifold issue of the D2-40. Surely somebody has solved those issues. Apparently the HX is part of the manifold, not sure as I haven't seen it up close and in person. If these are rebadged perkins, there must be a tractor or truck manifold somewhere that would bolt on and then go back to the separate heat exchanger, the old standby Sendure that many of us geezers inherited from the olden days. Just thinking our loud. Maybe I am thinking about it all wrong...plain old exhaust manifolds don't usually have coolant running through them, do they? Or is it a diesel thing? I spent way too many years with 36 and 40 horse VWs. We don't need no stinkin' water.
hmmm... Maybe the stock manifold could be modified to remove the heat exchanger, weld it up, provide hose ports, and then use a remote HX...dkirsop has nothing to do this winter. The guy does magic with his AD21. He could figure this out.

BTW, greencoast, have you inquired about the outstanding recall on this engine?