Tony,
This is a Fresh Water cruiser(Sea Ray 460 Sundancer) as opposed to a trawler. So she has not been run at Wine and Cheese speeds. She has been run on plane. The current owner has owned the boat for about 10 years and mainly uses it as a mobile weekend condo. He lives about 3 hours from the marina so he comes up for a long weekend. His takes it from the marina over to the popular island areas in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. Kelley’s Island and Put-In-Bay.
When we were on the boat doing our initial inspection, the owner was buffing and waxing the hull so we had the chance to ask him questions. I noted the discoloration on the turbos. They are in the butterscotch range and the engines have around 600 hours on them. He indicated that he runs at 2000rpm and “Does not go fast” so he would be running for about an hour to get from the inlet to his destinations after about a 7 minute idle/no wake speed out of the marina and up the channel inside the protected “East Bay”. So the engines have had a chance to get warmed up partially then run overloaded at 2K. All of this is pure conjecture as he did not seem to really know what RPM, Speed and Fuel burn he ran. He just kinda pointed the bow and got up on plane and had a nice leisurely cruise to his destination. I asked if he took long trips and he said that he did not as he does not really have the time to do that.
This is a Sea Ray so I know that the props are too big. Based on some other posts here on the forum and the response that I got from Sea Ray Customer Service, this boat came with 23×27 props. Probably need to take 2 inches out like other folks have done. The Sea Trial will tell us a lot.
I am still waiting on the maintenance records, anything other than the oil changes and impellers was done by the Marina so they are compiling the records, but I am not holding out hope that the owner had any of the Aftercooler work done. Even though this is the fresh water of Lake Erie, periodic maint of the AC is still needed as well as the HX. He said that he changes the oil on his own and the impellers every 3 years. I was not happy with that but since he runs the boat so little and he showed me the 3 impellers that he has taken out and held as spares, I let it go……..
So based on the darkish color on the turbos and piping, the assumed lack of AC maint and the over prop’d condition, we offered less than asking price by enough to mostly offset the pre-emptive replacement of the heads and the service/replacement of the Aftercoolers and the servicing of the other aspects of the cooling circuit. He owns a concrete company and he appears to take care of what he knows to take care of but falls into the category of “does not know what we know here on the forum”. I am willing to spend the money to get peace of mind and not be worried about being in the relatively remote areas of Northern Michigan and dropping a valve seat and suffering accordingly.
The boat itself and the interior are very clean and nicely cared for. It is a larger version of our current boat so we are familiar with the build and options. We are moving up from a 40Sundancer to a 460Sundancer. 10feet longer and 1.5feet wider 50% heavier. The intent is to get the boat dialed in so that we can do some long distance and long term cruising. We will be cruising the Great Lakes using Marblehead Ohio as our home port. So we will have mostly 6-8hour days of mixed running. Some of it at hull speed some at cruise which I am targeting 2200 – 2300rpm burning 13 – 15gph/engine respectively. Replacing the heads gives me a known good place to start and removing the pitch from the props after the Sea Trial will give me the fuel burn that is slightly below the 450 curve so we should be in good shape. She will not be a fast boat by any measure but based on my “Back of the napkin” estimates, we should be able to maintain the same speed that our current boat provides. I am absolutely fine with that.
This search for a bigger boat has been an education. This current market is really hot. We got into a situation where we had sold our boat at the same time the market exploded and the boats that we were looking at were being sold quickly and before we had a chance to make offers. I made a shopping list of about 10 boats and we started to go look at each of them. One after the other they were under contract and then sold. We ended up declining to offer on a couple of boats as they were too big for just me and my wife. So we arrived at this one.
I will keep a full record of the Survey info, Sea Trial data and then pictures and detail of the work that we do. Sorting the propulsion system is this year’s effort. Updated electronics and a few other items that will make cruising more comfortable/convenient for us will follow over the next couple of years.
Tony – thank you again for this forum. I have learned a ton over the years and I am really excited to put it all into practice with this larger boat.
Cheers!
.
