|
Our survey model was a 1992 model located in
South Florida where it has had five years worth of all-season
use. There were no engine hour meters, but judging by the fact that
it had been mostly dry stored and had little wear and tear, it didn't
look like this boat had been used much.
Style wise, this is your basic cocktail cruiser
with a wide beam all devoted to giving maximum interior space. The
cockpit is set up as a lounge with an L-shaped settee aft and to
starboard with small wet bar opposite with a removable table that
just about makes getting in and out of the lounge impossible, not
to mention docking or other operations. This thoughtful design gives
you three options of boarding: (1) via the built in swim platform,
(2) walking over your lounge seating and falling over the table,
and (3) stepping into the wet bar sink. Very clever, these designers.
We were also amused by the low-to-the-water swim platform with its
door opening without a door shown at left.
 |
Stopping or backing down out in the open ocean should
be a real thrill in this one with the open stern only a few
inches above the water line. Hopefully, the engines
won't ever crap out in a nasty inlet or out at sea. Its got
a lift up, swing out stainless steel gate that someone apparently
decided to add to keep little tykes from wandering out there,
that otherwise is a useless annoyance. |
A starboard lounge seat facing a helm station wide
enough for three so you can have an arm around each of your friends
when you're running on autopilot while the folks sitting opposite
have a bird's eye view of whatever it is that you're doing is cool.
This is not a cruising layout for sure, and why anyone would
create a three-man helm seat is beyond me. Actually, the helm set
up is fairly comfortable for both standing and sitting operation,
which is unusual. Except that you can't see a thing ahead of you
while you're sitting down. At the rate boat collisions are occurring
these days, looking where you're going doesn't seem to be much of
a priority anyway, so why worry about that. The automobile-imitating
bubble dash is not so good because you can't mount anything on the
bubble, forcing you to try to place large instruments up under
the swept-back windshield, essentially limiting you to small instruments;
you won't get any large video recorders or radar units in this space.
You're stuck with sprinkling your instruments around standing up
like tin soldiers without the option of building anything in, and
there's no space to add much of anything to the dash. The vinyl
upholstery is thin and cheap.
|
|
| An otherwise decent helm set up is
ruined by your basic automobile bubble dash on which you can't
mount anything conveniently. The steering wheel looks more
fit for a go-cart. |
Some of the typical shoddy wiring.
Here we have a bundle of wires with taped connection located
under the head vanity. |
The exterior glass work is very good and the general
detail good - no unwanted bumps, lumps or ripples. The thing about
Chris Craft is that they always make sure their products look good.
The foredeck, cockpit and hull sides are fairly solid and we didn't
find any stress cracks anywhere. But then we don't believe that
this boat was used hard, either. The cleats are attached without
backup plates on the underside. Hopefully there is no plywood core
here where the handrails also bolted through. This boat has one
of those wonderful bubble decks that darn near killed me because
you can't stand up on them and I slipped and fell. For more details
on this point, click on Bubble Decks
here.
The wrap-around windshield is nicely styled and
sturdy enough, but then they went and ruined a good thing by finishing
it off with - get this - foam rubber moldings on the outside.
What's wrong with that, you might ask? Well, sunlight, for
one thing. Already the stuff had shrunk and all pulled loose and
looked terrible; there's nothing to do but to replace them with
more of the same. The Italian Faria engine gauges look great, too,
until you realize that the bezels are painted aluminum and are corroding
badly, ruining a helm set up that at least looks nifty. Then there
was the matter of all those interior grade rocker switches on the
dash (15 of them), five of which weren't working because water got
in them. And never mind that the painted on lettering wore off in
a few years. At least someone had the vision to realize that this
would happen and so put on an extra set of engraved name plates.
The interior uses a full fiberglass inner liner
which is nice if you simply want ease of cleaning because it certainly
gives you that. Again, the glass molding work is good. But it also
gives you a ride like a boxcar. There is no sound deadening in this
one and it creaked and groaned something awful. Sitting at the dock,
you can hear every oyster clicking and clacking on the bottom because
the hull acts like a loud speaker, magnified by the liner. The two
legged pedestal table was hopelessly wobbly and the coarse weave
seating fabric was not holding up well.
For a 30 footer, the interior is large, but that's
because the boat doesn't have any bulkheads up forward, the nearest
one being the engine compartment, which is in the stern. Surely
this contributes to wracking of the hull and much of the interior
noise which is decidedly excessive. The deck is screwed to the hull
but at least there is a wood backing strip on the back side. Through
the hawse pipe for anchor rode, we could see that the foredeck is
plywood cored and the laminate was completely separated at this
point and soaking up water. Its too bad it wasn't rough the
day we did the sea trial; it would be interesting to see what some
wave action would do to this boat.
And speaking of bulkheads, the cockpit icemaker
was leaking water onto the engine compartment bulkhead and it was
starting to rot. The plywood was clearly marked C-D, meaning a roof
sheathing grade material, complete with unfilled knots in the wood.
Real garbage material that doesn't belong in a boat.
Installing the electric panel immediately inside
the companionway door is a great way to get a dose of salt water
in it, or on that inevitable day when you get caught by rain with
the top down. Ah, well, its only the electric panel. And speaking
of electrical, there is only one way to describe the wiring in this
boat: a mess. Beneath that beautifully sculpted fiberglass inner
liner there are wires helter-skelter every-which-way. A nice knob
of taped-up wire connections was sticking out of a hole under the
head vanity, ready to get wet and short out the first time something
develops a leak around all that plumbing down there. Then we found
a bundle of wires being pinched between a partition and the hull
side with sharp edges cutting through the insulation. Plus there
was lots of wiring laying on top of the fuel tanks. Hopefully none
of these ever shorts out!
|
|
| Wires here, wires there, wires everywhere.
Here's a peek at what's behind the style and glamour. Many
of these wires are in contact with the fuel tank. |
Engine compartment has fairly decent
access, although the engines are jammed so close together
you'll have a lot of fun changing sparkplugs and oil filters.
And of course the bilge pump is under there too. |
Then there was a 125 VAC electrical outlet under
the aft berth just 4" above the bilge, into which the 12,000
BTU Cruisair airconditioner was plugged with a standard household
connection. Guess what happens when the bilge pump fails? There
are two shorepower inlet receptacles but no switching or circuit
breakers on the main panel. We could only conclude that this shorepower
was wired directly to the aforementioned outlet powering the A/C
without benefit of circuit protection. As near as we can tell, this
is a factory installation. Add to this the fact that the A/C condensation
drain wasn't draining and the A/C wiring was being submerged in
the deep drip pan. You could say that the owner should have cleaned
this out, but the problem is that it is nearly impossible to reach.
Interested in the engine compartment? Well there's
enough room that you can get in there to change oil and spark plugs
without killing yourself, except that you can't reach them anyway.
The engines are jammed together so that getting the inboard plugs
out will be a lot of fun. If they had installed the Kohler
generator off to one side instead of centered smack in front of
the engines, you'd have a lot better access: you could actually
have a place to sit down. The bilge pump, of course, was under the
engines where you couldn't reach it.
The OMC 5.7 liter engines with stern drives had
already had both risers and exhaust manifolds replaced on these
sea water cooled engines. For those of you who wonder whether fresh
water cooling is preferable, here's your answer. There were flush
out ports installed, but let's be realistic: people don't change
their oil (this one hadn't) yet alone take the time to do a flush
out after every use. You've already got enough to do. Although there
is adequate space, the designers didn't make the best use of it,
and the systems installations are not exactly what I'd call "well
done." Adequate might be a better adjective. As for the plumbing,
its just plain sloppy with hoses strung helter-skelter.
One of the first things I'd do is replace the plastic,
single lever OMC engine controls. Felt like the things were going
to break off in your hand as you worked the controls. Not particularly
smooth, either. Performance-wise this is a light boat and feels
like a light boat, ergo it goes fast enough to break things in a
hurry. The bottom is a moderate vee with a 6" wide flat spot
along the keel which gets it up on step fast at the expense of a
smooth ride from the moderately deep vee. A two foot sea will hold
you back pretty good in this one.
Altogether this is a good looking boat that, beneath
the exterior beauty is essentially your basic entry-level boat.
If you know your way around boats and quality means something to
you, you aren't likely to be happy with this one. Otherwise, to
the unknowing it may be bliss. At least until the big repair bills
start rolling in. This particular boat has led a sheltered life,
but we suspect one with a little more use, say one which sat outside,
afloat for 5 years, wouldn't have fared quite so well.
| These
are "reviews", not surveys, and bear no resemblance
to our survey reports.
We do not publish the results of the surveys that we perform.
Please note that the purpose of these reviews is educational,
to help you discern the differences in quality among boats
generally. They are not offered as a means to help you evaluate
any particular boat builder. We have no other reviews than
those posted. |
Posted January 25, 1998
|
