Found condition of Mary Mar

I have owned a classic (read "old") 38' Chris Craft Commander before and I found the hull to be super strong.  In fact, there is a huge following for this old classic hull. The story goes that Chris Craft, being the preeminent wooden boat builder in the 1950s going into the 1960s suddenly found itself up against a new and growing bunch of competitive boats that used this newfangled thing called FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic), commonly referred to simply as "fiberglass".  Chris Craft tried to maintain its leadership position in wood but eventually came around to the reality the FRP was a major advancement in boat building materials and techniques leaving anyone still building wood at a huge disadvantage.

Chris Craft took too long to come to this realization but when they did, they tried ease their way into the new market, as leaders of yesteryear often do, in hopes that the new way would turn out to be a fad which dies out, thus allowing them to eventually go back to being a leader at their old way of doing things.  This happens just before they finally lose their lead to those who moved first, fast and furiously.  Chris Craft's first attempt at "glass" boats was to purchase a company which was building 20' class glass boats (I think the name was "Sea Skiff").  But the small boats of this acquisition soon began to delaminate and it became a huge black eye for the ailing/trailing industry giant. 

As a result they tried to make up for lost time by throwing money at a comeback.  They hired the best boat designers and mold makers.  They used the best resins and glass cloth and they overbuilt the hulls like crazy.  Some of the models have hulls that are a full 1" thick at the bottom.  That's not glass + mystery filler + glass.  That's just pure, heavy duty resin and glass that is still in perfect shape after all these decades.  No blisters, no bubbles, no delamination, no deck rot.  If you hit this with your hand, you hurt your hand.  If you kick the hull with your foot, you better be wearing steel toe boots.  That's why we chose this underappreciated hull as a starting base for our refit.  A Bertram hull or Egg Harbor of similar all-glass vintage would have cost twice as much as we paid and still would have needed many of the retrofits that we had to do.  There is no way we could build a new hull from scratch for anything near the $18k we paid for this hull.  The materials (just glass and resin) for the bare hull alone would be at least double that amount if not more.

But this hull was cheap for a reason.  The Previous Owner (PO) had just replaced the aluminum fuel tanks and in order to do that he cut out the original deck.  Instead of doing it in a way that the original deck could be put back in and repaired, he put in a new DIY deck.  But it was way substandard and it was already in bad shape after only a short time in service.  Marine plywood was used for the deck material but the deck had a home made hatch (green arrow) which was devoid of a proper hatch with water channel.  The result was moldy, rotten wood.  Also, there were no topside water channels (blue arrow) and the cockpit drains were badly placed (red circles).  I'm sure to some way of thinking it was just fine, but my partner and I wanted something more professional.

The back wall of the saloon was also poorly implemented with a barn door style sliding door that would not hold in any air conditioning.  The teak gunwale cap was badly worn and the wood would no longer keep a finish for longer than a couple months.  The cleats were not securely fastened to the boat and there were literally no storage lockers of any kind in the entire cockpit.

The interior was very basic with hardly a galley, and the saloon featured a dirty rug covering beaten up hatch doors.  The electrical panel was ankle high next to the entry door where the sun was beating it up and the wiring was a rat's nest.  Some of the gauges were nonfunctional and the rest were old and faded.  The entire implementation was shade tree mechanic quality and that is being kind.

The interior had seen some work done to it but it was by no means refurbished to any standard of quality.  A fire had broken out in the lower helm so the prior owner just removed it.  No big loss there since we have steer by wire capability in the plan but still the only helm was in the fly bridge.  Galley counters and cabinets were nothing fancy and there were no appliances like stove top, refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker and the usual galley gear that you would expect to find on this class of boat.  The vee berth and side cabin were usable but really in need of a makeover. 

The head had a corroded sink and the walk in shower had broken/leaky shower controls.  No worries, we didn't plan to keep 1970s equipment anyway.  But it shows that minimal cash was used to keep Mary Mar afloat.  The headliner had been replaced and it looked OK in most places but had some issues in the side cabin.  There were not enough lights in the boat, especially given the availability of cheap, efficient LED based lighting these days.

There was an air conditioner in the bilge but it was not working, had old school mechanical dial controls and was incorrectly installed; the air intake sucked in from the bilge and blew it into the saloon.  Mmm mmm good!  Nothing like increasing the odds that we will die in our sleep from generator exhaust fumes/carbon monoxide.  Of course this was not an issue for the prior owner since he had no generator on the boat.  There was a pad for a generator but it was empty.  Of course the house battery was a normal car battery and there was no inverter.  The electrical system can be pretty much summed up by the image below.  Wires just running wherever, not properly fastened, etc.  The engine batteries and house batteries were in rickety wooden home made "boxes".  Again, for some people this is just fine and I am just being too picky.  After all, the boat is 45 years old, right?  That's fine. We don't care to debate them.  We just don't want it on Third Wave.

Some things, like the state of the water system, are really shame on us for not catching during the inspection. But we were in Virginia in February and were told that everything was winterized (i.e. "you can't see it working, sorry 'bout that...") but that the fresh water system was in good condition.  We took someone's word for it and we got burned.  Both of the 80 gallon tanks, we found later on, were corroded through.  They leaked quickly enough that it is questionable how anyone could not know this....

The bow area was in fair shape.  The toe rail wood was in need of being cleaned up (at the very least) and the main Samson post was rounded off and weathered but still very sturdy.  The hatches were functional but the built in aluminum hinges were corroded and metal was missing in places making them pretty fragile looking.  But the main issue up there was that the ground tackle was old and not sufficient for a boat of this size.  Also, we found later on, the wood up there underneath the deck surface was soaking wet due to leaky hawse pipes and other careless hardware installation (like screwing those cheap anchor chocks into the deck).

On the plus side, the hull was blister free and had fresh bottom paint.  Struts and shafts looked great and straight. The tri blade props were in good shape and the boat came with a spare set of 4 blade wheels.  The through hull fittings above the waterline were serviceable even though most of the seacocks below waterline were in need of replacement.  Of course we expected to have to upgrade all of them because bad through hulls are among the leading causes of boats sinking at the dock.

Importantly, the engines were in good shape visually and mechanically.  The counter rotating stbd unit had just been replaced and only had a couple hours on it.  The port unit had about 680 hours on it.  These were Crusader model 454 XL (throttle body injection).  They started and ran well and there is no better marine gas engine than Crusader.  Super heavy blocks, 4 bolt mains, etc.  Read more about this on the David Pascoe (long time marine surveyor may he R.I.P.) web site.

The gel coat was still in fair shape even after all these years but we knew that there were going to be enough hull and deck enhancements and changes that we would never be able to match the gel coat so we knew that it would all have to be sprayed with new gel coat at some point.


The flybridge had minimal electronics, all of them low end consumer grade like the Garmin GPSMap 498 combo fish finder/gps.  The gauges were old and faded and a couple of them were not working.   The boat had good Seastar 3 line (i.e. reservoir type) hydraulic steering.  The helm seat was in fair condition except that the wooden seat cushion based was rotting and there was a side chair that was custom made for the boat but again done in a shade tree way using steel staples that were rusting, etc.  The seat, of course, had been screwed into the flybridge sole even though it was causing leaks to do so.  I'll never understand why people install seating with wooden bases outside.  It never worked in the past and is not likely to ever work in the future.  And screwing through the fiberglass that makes up the roof of a boat is simply begging for hidden leaks and mold.  In short, don't do it unless there is really no other option.

The volcano bases for the flybridge handrail stanchions were in need of re-chroming (expensive).  The stitching on the Bimini was weak even though the cloth was in fair shape and the boat had full curtains on the flybridge.  These are needed in Virginia but not so much in the Bahamas.  There was a big hole where the foot-well should have been below the steering wheel.  There were not enough electrical switches on the console to do much more than the basics.  The mechanical throttle and transmission controls were in good shape but we are replacing them with electronic engine controls.





This is the condition that Mary Mar was in when we bought her.