New Albin 27 owner

[Dale]

We dearly love our 89 Albin 27 "No Hurry". We are presently in Little Washington, NC after traveling from Orange Beach, Alabama off and on over two years. When the weather gets too hot or too cold, we find a good marina and leave her until we start the next leg of our journey. When the weather is bad or the weekend too crowded, we hole up at an anchorage or marina for the duration. After meeting a bunch of C-Dory owners, I envy the ability to "pull up stakes" and go somewhere else when the weather gets bad rather than having to hole up. For that reason, I would prefer to have a C-Dory 25, an Albin 25, an Adventurecraft houseboat, or a Nimble Nomad to trailer around. The big sacrifice is comfort for mobility. So, when I sell "No Hurry", I will never get back what I have invested in parts and labor restoring her. My hope is to find someone who has already looked at a bunch of project boats and is willing to pay for a restored Albin 27 that is already cruising up the coast to the Chesapeake and beyond. There are not many restored Albin 27s to choose from and few good ones for sale. I spent a long time restoring "No Hurry" and, looking back, I wish I had looked (and paid) for one that was well restored. At 68 yo, money is less important than time (but, don't tell my wife).

[JT48348]

I've seen a lot if boats "restored" and sold as such but unfortunately that's a very broad term folks toss around at time for re-sale. A lot of people confuse a refitting with a restoration. Refitting is required at intervals on all boats. A restoration might happen once in a boat's lifetime. They are not the same thing. In addition a partial restoration is not the same as a full restoration. And there's differences in quality of said restoration. This forum has done a very good job of documenting various issues affecting Albin 27s. I would submit to you that without addressing all these issues a boat can't be considered fully restored.

I'm very particular about how things are done and how a boat is outfitted. In my experience getting what you want is usually a case of doing it yourself. So in that case get solid bones as cheap as possible and start from scratch. Absent that an owner selling a "restored" boat would have to have superior documentation showing how the restoration was done and to what degree.

That's why the A27 buyers guide proffers that fewer than 10% of the A27s on the market at a given time might actually command top their "restoration" prices. That means if you don't have at least 10 boats on the market you might not have any meeting that requirement at a given time.

My opinion may be a minority but that's how things get figured with classic cars, planes, motorcycles etc

[smacksman]

The old gaffer in my avatar is a fishing smack built in 1885. I bought her as a hulk for £1000 and did her up to get sailing and had a lot of fun. I 'restored' her from a hulk to sailing again but she still had many faults.
Sold her to an enthusiast for £15000 who then demolished her and had her rebuilt for £230,000 with maybe half a dozen bits of her original wood included. A 'grandfather's axe' job, as the saying goes. She's now lovely and good for another hundred years.
But is that a restoration?

[JT48348]

Yes that is a restoration.

[kerrye]

I'd all it more like a reincarnation where only the soul moves from one body to another.