Buying, Owning & Maintaining a Boat or Yacht

Hatteras Yachts

A long with Bertram and Hinckley, Hatteras has the distinction of being one of the first three production fiberglass boat builders to start up in around 1960.

Oddly enough all three survive today, although Bertram may yet go by the wayside. The company was started in 1959 by North Carolina knitting mill owner Willis Slane who, as word has it, just wanted to build a good strong boat for himself for fishing the outer banks. What followed is one of the unparalleled success stories of the fiberglass boat building industry. Read more.

Tiara 3100 Open

Tiara has produced a line of open boats that has been enormously successful over the years. Starting out it was a high end boat, and over the years has only gotten more so.

The initiation fee to this level of quality for a new boat is stiff, to say the least. But the good news for used boat buyers is that one can easily gain entry for half-price or better, depending on how old you care to go. Read more.

Drive System Alignment

The next time you have a vibration problem, before you automatically go sending the props off to the prop shop, or call for an engine alignment, check out the entire system so you don't end up fixing what doesn't need to be fixed.

Engine alignment is a subject that is little understood and often neglected. Most boat owners aren't even aware that engine alignment is one of those things that requires occasional maintenance, and is one of the last things to be considered when some kind of drive system problem develops. Read more.

Gas Engines

Of all the questions we are asked, one of the most frequent is which gas engine is best.

I have some very definite opinions about that because I perform a lot of gas engine surveys, as well as engine failure analysis for insurance companies, meaning that my perspective is not based on the "virtual reality" of dockside chat, but what happens to this vital machinery in the real world based on thousands of surveys. So let's get to it. Read more.

Corrosion in Marinas

Not necessarily, and the reason why is due to a general lack of understanding of what happens in a marina full of boats. After all, this is not an easy thing to understand, and it took a lot of research to find out what was going on here. Yes, the marina’s wiring is involved with all such corrosion problems, but it may or may not be the cause. Read more.

Maintaining Stern Drives

Anyone who has owned a stern drive boat or two knows how troublesome and costly stern drives can be.

A typical drive replacement runs $2,500 or more, and with a twin engine boat you've got more than $5,000 worth of machinery hanging off the back of the boat. Read more.