Some might have titled this page, "why I would never buy a new boat again." When I bought my first boat in 1989, a 1976 Luhrs 280, it had been generally well maintained. Although it needed several replacements of electronics and equipment like anchors, when I first acquired it, throughout my ownership, it was shipshape most of the time. When it wasn't, there was just one item outstanding.
While I expected some bugs would have to be worked out with a new boat, having watched my father purchase and debug a new RV with similar adventures, I never expected so many things all at once. Many are little but are annoying. My dealer said that it takes about a year or two to work through them. I though he was right on target with this estimate, but it actually is going on four years now and original defects are still appearing. In other words, by the time it is debugged and shipshape, your boat will look like it is a several year oud used boat. You begin to feel like you never had a new boat. The new boat disappeared before it became fully functional. Used to my old boat, which was shipshape most of the time, the first year was quite frustrating. I performed many repairs myself because it was faster and allowed me to become familiar with the workings of the boat. A constant frustration for both the dealer and myself has been finding and getting the parts in a timely manner.
You might think that this is a Mainship quality problem, but I've heard that all of the larger production boats have a period of infant failures and bugs including names like Sabreline. Your mileage may vary, but here are some of the issues that have arisen to date. Some of these issues relate to the design of the boat, some to the manufacturing, some to the OEM equipment installed by the factory, some to the additional equipment I selected, some are acts of God, some are my own mistakes and some are learning a new set of procedures. One thing that becomes very clear, it is a very complicated boat to operate and maintain, but it also can be very comfortable to use when (almost) everything is working properly.
The first two links are mostly in order straight from the captain's log with a few stories thrown in. The remaining links index into these pages by topic summarized in the lists below. The smilely, :-) , follows those problems that were successfully resolved and I'm happy with the resolution. The unhappy face, :-( is for items that I am unhappy about or that are unresolved. The * means it was recently updated.
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