81. Dirt Cheap Fifty-Two Foot DREAM Yacht REVISITED After 1.5 Years! Did We Buy Learning the Lines

This is our boat now. Look what's behind us guys. You may remember this boat from a video we did a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. So we toured this boat a while ago before we had experienced refitting our own boat and we kind of wanted to see if our opinions have changed after experiencing what a refit is like even on a 32 foot boat because this is a 40, 52. This is a 52. So a whole 20 extra feet and that adds up because the beam is more. Everything is just more. So that video actually blew up. It's almost had a million views now and it's pretty crazy that that many people were interested in watching us just tour this boat back there. So we figured a year and a half later we wanted to see if this boat was still here. Obviously it is. It's not sold yet and it was funny because all the comments in that video were like telling us to run away, run away. Now those of you loyal subscribers know that we didn't end up purchasing this boat and we're glad we didn't do it but a lot of people actually still ask us if we still bought this boat. Maybe they haven't watched on with our videos and whatnot but we're hoping that maybe this will provide some clarification and maybe some closure to what's still going on with this boat. Let's go take a look. This is definitely what you would call a boat break from Flint, Michigan. No. Leisure time. Oh yeah. It's still the same boat. How's the deck feel? Oh wow. That flexed a lot didn't it? Can you see that? I mean do it again. Jump harder. The whole boat's moving. These decks are definitely uh definitely rotten. So we did notice that there were a couple soft areas last time we were here. Yeah but it seems like honestly it seems like the entire deck on this boat is soft. The last time we toured this boat we didn't know how much work replacing the core on a deck was and now we do and just that job recoring this deck on a 52 foot boat and then obviously repainting it would be insane. And expensive. And expensive. Another obvious thing to notice is there's no masts. This is a catch rig. There should be two masts. This whole deck needs to be redone. Everything above deck. I mean brand new core, brand new paint, brand new non-skid, brand new port lights, brand new rigging. Oh my god. Time to go down below. Is there anything for me to step on? These are very uh sketchy. Yeah. But I want to ask the office if we can take this. Probably. They'll probably sell it to us. I know. I think that's really cool. I've never seen one like that. I think this boat is in full like salvage mode. Like yeah. You can basically probably buy anything on it. I thought when we came before there was here. No it wasn't. No? Okay. It wasn't. Yeah I would find it very... I'd be very surprised if they're still trying to What do you think Randy? I still love the layout. But I mean I got a different boat. I love the layout. But like the how you like step down into this nook galley. I love it. Let's do a full walkthrough. So I'll follow you around. So we started with the galley right? For one just everything's kind of sketchy. Like none of these feel secure at all. There's like beams that are holding up these doors on the floor. The cabin sole. But like I don't trust those beams at all. So I almost feel like I shouldn't be standing here. These guys are a thing. They're like a tradition. They're always on this boat. They were here last time as well. As we've known since last year and a half there's nothing in this boat anymore. It's been pretty much gutted of electronics and appliances so. And there's been like so much water intrusion that everything is rotting. These are cute too. I wonder if we can just take all this stuff. We can't just take it. Well I mean ask. So moving forward we've got two berths. This is like yeah. Is this a Pullman style berth? I think it might be called. It's like a Pullman but it's like two single berths. So maybe two pilot berths is what it might be called. I still don't know for sure. And then this is just a regular style V berth. Obviously it had AC at one point. I kind of wanted to look at that walker though. Go for it. Oh there's some mud daubernests up here. That was there literally. That was there a year and a half ago. So that's how untouched this boat is. This teak is still, you know, redone. But that's pretty much it as far as what could be redone. Everything else is just This is the forward head. That's where the head goes. And then it has a separate shower. Look at that. Nice tile. No this this sucks. This is giving me nightmares. The one thing that really hasn't been pulled that's kind of like an appliance is the water maker and it's still there. And it's a Spectra water maker. Like that's still a company that's serviceable. Maybe we should buy that. I know. All right going aft. These weren't here last time we were here. All these all these cushions. No. I don't even think they're from this boat. No. They're just being stored here. Like as far as now I'm totally of the mentality of like thinking like scrap this thing. There are like still some good parts in here which is throwing me off a little bit. Like these doors could be useful to people. Like yeah I think they're part I think it's still just being parted out. Like I think if you wanted to buy anything on here you could just say I want that and they'll give you a price for it. Yeah it's like the cabinet doors I've seen I saw most of the drawers up front were taken but there's still drawers in the back. It's just interesting now seeing it from a different perspective too. Let's take a look at the engine compartment though. So with the Erwin 52 the engine is actually under the cabin sole. And you can see the the engine mounts are actually there's one right there and they're up there. So that's where the engine's mounted and it's very very close to the bilge. Like that's probably the bilge right there it goes a little bit deeper than the engine but it's not the best place for an engine. I mean it's it's really low on the boat and it this would be like the first place to get flooded as you can see. Yeah if water were to come in so that's really not the best design in my opinion. Moving aft we have the nav station to the right which I still love this space even though it's all messy. It'd be great to have a separate nav station like this for editing videos and obviously navigating as well. This right here is this was like an equipment compartment or something. I don't know maybe a generator or an air conditioner or different equipment went in here but maybe compressors for the ice boxes just different equipment but it's a pretty big equipment little compartment. And then up here as you can see everything's just kind of been cut out and then moving aft to the cabin. Would these stairs work for us? Would the stairs work? Look they're in the tub. Well let's go into the actually I'm not gonna try. Okay. But yeah here's the I've had a pretty pretty good size head again separate shower and just wash my hands right here real quick. This is a this is a household faucet. I grew up my childhood home had this exact faucet in it. These are cedar line. Those are cedar line? Yeah. Nice. Can we take the cedar? I want that hook too. A little tri-fold hook you can fold it flat. Okay. But yeah I mean a lot of these doors and everything all these just need to re-varnish and they they look great. Yeah some people have taken some up front but they just didn't get all the way back here. And this is where I mean that's almost a queen-size bed right there. Yeah it's definitely like a double. At least a double. But and a big mirror so you can look at yourself while you're sleeping. Sleeping. It's kind of weird. All right so there's down there's the rotor and the rotor stuffing box looks like. You can literally tell when it's raining hard this direction comes right in that or like. Oh yeah. Splash. Yeah like why is everything open? I don't know. Well I guess I figure it might have helped with evaporation. I don't know. It's just everything's getting drenched though. And TV would go right here. Oh yeah. You never know what you're gonna find with these boats man. There we go. That's that's mold. Oh whoa that's really bad then. All right let's look at this mold guys. Probably gonna die. Look at all of that disgusting mold. Holy crap. That is that is you know respiratory issue. We should probably get out of here at some point black mold. And this is where the water heater was because you can see that's hot you know. Oh yeah. Hot and cold water line. A mixer I guess or something. I don't even know. But this is this gotta be where the water heater was. I that's my guess. Even the cabin sole on the interior is really soft. I imagine the cabin sole might be cored as well and that even might need to be re-cored. And if that needs to be re-cored then you have to think about the structural members that are actually you know in the hull that might need to be re-cored. You know it's it's so so much that it this is it's way too. I mean you would be way better off buying a brand new boat than trying to redo this one. I mean it's crazy. It's crazy how how far gone this boat is. So that's the whole boat. What do you think Randi? Yeah I wouldn't take this project on now. I still do like the layout but I wouldn't do this boat. It's way too much work and just way too much unknowns. Like this has been sitting with water in it for over a year and a half and the mold and disgust would be a real problem. So we're also battling wasps right now trying to avoid them and not fall in the bilge which is open. So yeah I don't know. It's cool. It has nice features but the project that it is it's insane. It would probably be like I would say by the time you're all said and done you could probably easily drop half a million into this boat. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to add is you know when we first walked through this boat we really liked the size of it. We really like the size and the layout of it but after doing more research on Irwin boats it's they're not really the best brand as far as quality goes. So the quality would be questionable. A lot of people do swear by Irwins though and do say they're good ocean boats. However you know there's that perception there that they're not good quality. So resale value would be very very low in comparison to like what you put into it. So let's say if you put a half a million dollars into this boat and you made it amazing you might only sell it for two or three hundred. Yeah. So it's just not there. The value isn't there. And you'd spend so much time like we've already spent a year refitting freebie and we probably have a year left of work. If we were working on this boat. 10 years. It would probably take us 10 years. Yeah. Easy. Just reading through all the comments on the last Irwin video we did a year and a half ago really made us think about all these things. Yes. So as we were going about and you know learning by doing and learning from experience through refitting freebie. I mean it's all clear. I mean everybody that said run away from this boat was very wise to say that. So we thank you guys for potentially preventing us from making a huge mistake. Although I don't think we would have bought the boat anyway. I just but it's we we definitely thought about it. Yeah. And we're definitely not thinking about it anymore. So walking through this boat a year and a half later it's definitely evident like how much our opinions have changed. Yes. How much we've learned and you know it was cool to do this. I'm glad the boat was still here and I'm glad we can kind of walk through it again and show you guys it's it's still here. Maybe give some people closure that you know we're kind of wondering whether we bought it or not. And so yeah. And even settle lingering doubts in our minds like this is not something we want to do. Yeah this is this is definitely not something we want to do. We really we don't want another big project that we have to live on as well. Like that's the biggest problem. Yes. Living aboard what you're trying to actually do. You're always living in a construction zone. I mean even though this boat's big. I mean look at it though. Like could you imagine trying to just just sleep right there. You know or sleep back there. It's just there's dust everywhere. There's yeah there's your everything's always dirty. It's impossible to keep everything clean. You're always going to smell bad. So it just is what it is. There's wasps in here. Like yeah. I can't imagine how many bugs and critters are hanging out in here. Anyways as always guys if you liked this video go ahead and leave a like and a comment down below. And if you haven't already go ahead and hit that subscribe button to follow along with our journey. And if you want to know each and every time we upload a video hit that notification bell. Also if you like tours of dilapidated old abandoned boats let us know in the comments. Yeah. We can always do some more of these so. There are plenty. There are definitely plenty. See you guys. Bye.