New to the forum

[Wjames]

Hi my name is William I am looking at buying a 79' tri cabin down in florida. This will be my first boat and was looking for some helpful insight anybody has to offer. I would appreciate any help or information you have to offer. Thanks

[larryeddington]

Welcome aboard, just bout a tri cabin now I have an F28 to sell. All here in Texas in Fresh water.

[P-Dogg]

looking for some helpful insight anybody has to offer

Before I bought my boat, I read every post on the forum. Of course, there was only about 119 pages then. At least search tricabin and read up. I also bought "midsize powerboats" and "surveying fiberglass power boats" from http://pascoe.com/ He has some good online articles too.

Get a survey from someone not affiliated with the broker. Attend the survey. Write down a list of questions to ask when you call the seller: Has it ever been wrecked? Is the owner a chain cigar smoker*? What doesn't work? When were the stanchions re-bedded? The cleats? etc. Buy yourself a moisture meter and a circuit tester (the kind that you plug into an outlet and it tells you if the ground or neutral is bad, etc.) Buy a clamp-on ammeter. Place the clamp over the each shore power cord. Check the current through each shore power cord as you turn every appliance on. Write it down. You should read next to zero amps, because what goes in in the hot, should go out through the neutral. If the ammeter doesn't read near zero, the current is going somewhere it shouldn't be, like into the water. The best maintenance dollars that you can spend are those that keep you from buying a POS. I looked at 11, yup, 11 1981-1987 tricabs before I bought the one that I have now. There is a lot of crap out there, so shop carefully. http://www.thehulltruth.com is also a good resource, especially for local references such as a surveyor, as that forum is much bigger. Ask all the questions that you want here. And feel free to post pictures of your candidate boat here for others to chime in on. Good luck on your purchase. I love my tri.


*flew from DC to Memphis roundtrip in a day in order to learn to ask that question.

[Moderator]

Welcome to the forum , what is your interned use for the boat ? Its a lot of boat for a first timer .

[Wjames]

I have been around boats and the water my entire life, grew up on a 36' Piver tri. I am looking for a liveaboard, initially I wanted a sailboat but my job won't allow me to take off and sail for a month at a time and the practicality of a cabin cruiser as a liveaboard makes more sense to me. this is one of the ones locally I have found. I have done a bit of research , and I really haven't heard a bad review of these boats. Thank you for the information, I will continue to do my homework before I go jumping into anything. I am a little skeptical of this one in particular, found her on craigslist so I'm going to do a very thorough inspection myself and if I feel it's worth it, pay for a professional inspection as I don't have all the knowledge or tools to do it myself. Again thank you for the help, I'm going to look at her for the first time Friday, I will post some pictures and some info about her.

[prowlersfish]

Great boat for a live aboard and cruising . Yes you need to check her out , but remember at her age she won't be perfect . Good Luck

[bjanakos]

Wealcome.

[k9th]

Welcome aboard.

We love our '79 Tri-cabin and have spent a lot of time and some money getting it just the way we want it. It is a great boat for travelling and really amazing in the waves. We boat on the Great Lakes where storms can come up quickly and have found that it is quite stable. It is also very spacious on the inside. We spend every weekend aboard during boating season and usually two weeks each summer aboard cruising the Great Lakes and usually heading into Ontario to the North Channel. She burns about 25GPH at 20kts cruise and ours has 250 gallons of fuel in the tanks so we can cruise for nine hours or more if we want before putting in for fuel.

We have family visitors on a regular basis and it is big enough that no one feels crowded, even with grand kids on-board for a sleep-over. I am not sure you can find a better value for the dollar. We were quite fortunate to find one that was very well taken care of and very sound. We are the third owners, have owned it for six years and love it.

I agree with the others who have said make sure you do your homework and get good survey. Good luck in your search.