I am looking to buy a boat around 8.5m. There are various options.

Tagit wrote: A few thoughts - Boat on trailer is definitely less work than a boat on a mooring, but can your wife and yourself easily handle a 8.5m boat at the ramp, and do you have storage space at home? On a mooring you hop in the dinghy and off you go. Benefits both ways, but the hassles of launching a large trailer boat may become an impediment to using it if all the stars don't align for a husband & wife team. Antifouling a boat that size is a simple DIY project. Can be done every 2nd year with a short lift, water blast and leg service (oil, anodes, check) on the intermediate year. Take two of you less than a day to antifoul and ~$400 - $500 + anodes. Every 2nd year whilst doing the antifoul is the time to look at doing the rubber leg boots. Other than that a stern leg is pretty similar to an outboard gear box with seals etc to check. Sternleg will cost more than an outboard leg to maintain, but gives you the option is diesel power. Safer, cheaper, better range, better torque etc, and also can be easy to self service compared to a late model outboard. In the big picture I don't think there is a huge cost difference either way. Biggest thing with a sternleg is to keep up with the maintenance each year and not just let it sit for years without being checked. Value for money wise you can get into a nice moored boat for way less than a big trailer boat. The moored boat can also be more heavily built and deliver a better ride from this. You can easily be talking sub$100k vs $200k+ for boats that deliver the same things. On the other hand, if you can manage a large trailer boat OK, it opens up trips to more remote locations by road. I just put some pictures of a 9.7m launch we are working on up in the Winter Boat Projects thread and that is a sub $100k boat. Put that on a trailer and it would be closer to $200k. If you lived close enough to the ramp you could even look at buying a 'launching trailer' to pull the moored boat out on during the winter. Spend $10k on a simple trailer and get the easy maintenance with the convenience of a moored boat.. Big trailer boats are a very nice thing, but they come with some costs in both money and ease of use that you need to consider in the trade-off with a moored boat.

Thanks Tagit, good advice as usual. So far boat launching has not led to the family court, so I was banking on that continuing. Comparing moored boats to trailer boats of similar size, I agree, there is around double the value in the moored option and there is a lot to choose from. Moored option also offers the option of shaft drive which seems less maintenance verses the stern leg, or, surface drive. I have no idea what that is.

Any older boat is going to be cheaper than a newer boat, if you compare new for new then any moored boat is going to be much more expensive than a big trailer boat. We went with the dry stack option which is a compromise and certainly reduces sun and sea wear and tear but as with everything comes at a cost. Still it is uber convenient.

We originally were looking to drop around 400K on a launch and ended up going with a big trailer boat in the dry stack for a bit more than half that. The logic was not investing so much in the boat that we felt obligated to do nothing else than use it and we were new boaties in terms of boat ownership even if we'd been around boats most of our lives so we thought a big trailer boat used as a baby launch was a wiser choice for us.

If you can do a lot of the maintenance yourselve and older launch might make sense but there do seem to be lots of launches for sale that are selling really slow so you wouldn't want to bite off more than your can chew as it may be very hard to sell on.

My 2 cents worth.Depends where you live and what facilities you have access too. Also do you want to fish a lot of different places around NZ, or are you happy cruising around up north from your marina?

$675+GST for Orams dry stack

Andee wrote: Some more thoughts Pompey. We went the trailer boat way….. As with everything there are pros and cons, and so it becomes a personal decision. It's an 8m Dickey boat on an alloy trailer. 300hp Suzuki outboard motor. We don't intend to do any trolling / game fishing, so that helped with the motor conundrum. In terms of motor longevity, well we'll see at some point won't we.  ( 60 hours so far ) We had a 100 series Landcruiser to tow with, so that again helped. Fuel wise: At 22 knots, it's using around 32 litres per hour. Ouch! More often than not, it's just my wife and I putting the boat on & off the trailer. ( I do the trailer and she puts the boat on & off ) It all becomes easier when we have an extra air of hands available though. Good ramps become important, and to be honest we have had the odd stressful moment! So far we have done some fishing / boating in Napier, Taupo, Bay Of Islands and now the Coromandel. It's that mobility which we enjoy. Finding storage has been tricky. Indoor at Opua and now Coromandel, costing around $3000 per year. If you lower the motor, the boat fits in a 10m deep shed. A 3.4m high doorway is another thing to be mindful of. Good luck with your decision. There is lots of wonderful advice available on this forum.  Like many, I've been very guilty of reading it all and never adding to the discussion.

Thanks Andee. That sounds like a great set up. A bit above my budget. Currently we do the launching and retrieval opposite to you, I drive on, but its only a 6m boat. My wife has reservations about being able to handle an 8m boat especially on a slippery ramp at low tide with some windage. Your economy sounds ok for a boat that size. Is your trailer skids or rollers and do you have guide poles? We found guide poles very helpful . I was after advice and it's great to get it, probably more confused now. 

The trailer has skids, which is a new concept to us. We've been used to a 6.8m alloy boat on a trailer with rollers.

I know we've been over some of this but reading the thread has made me want to make a few points.

My understanding of good boat design is that a length to beam ratio of 3-3.5 is the go. So trailer boats with standard 2.5m max beam are ok up to about 8.5 m or so. It is certainly true that our Tristram Grandeur likes to wander at anchor but keeping the fuel and water full helps a bit. Many boats are too beamy simply because accommodation has been made more important than seakeeping