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Mochi Craft. Italy, 1988. Detroit Diesel 8V92TI
@ 750 HP.
There are happy stories, and there are sad stories.
This is a sad one, as most stories about a "good deal"
are. In fact, we've heard quite a few sad stories about this builder
from surveyor scuttlebut over the years, but its not our policy
to spread rumors. Its an import boat, but we hadn't seen one up
close. Now we've had the opportunity to see with our own eyes.
Its hard not to be taken by racy Mediterranean
styling, designer labels, lots of polished stainless steel, lacquered
cabinetry, burled walnut, leather upholstery and all the other glitz
you find in yachts these days. You'll even find the designer's signature
right on the face of the instrument panel here. And its also hard
not to be captivated by a good deal, one where the price is 30 or
50% or so less than comparable models from domestic builders. This
example is going to show you what can go so very wrong when you
fall victim to vanity and price leaders.
Unfortunately, there is so much wrong with this
boat that its hard to know where to begin. There's no point in telling
what's right with this boat, since the negative outweighs it all.
Now on its tenth anniversary, this boat is an unmitigated disaster.
Start with the fact that so much of what looks like molded fiberglass
is really glass over wood. When you step into the cockpit from the
starboard side, there is only one place to step, and that is on
a cover panel for the sliding hatch to the aft cabin, which normally
has a cushion on it. It is glass over wood, was badly rotted on
the underside, and I was afraid my foot would go right through it.
If you have to enter from port, your only choice is to walk on the
seat cushions (Do you let your kids walk on the furniture at home?).
The rear deck, an area about 8' x 10' is all upholstery which was
water soaked and weighs a ton. Plus these cushions are raising up
blisters all over the surface.
The next step is into the cockpit deck where it
was the same thing all over again. The cockpit deck that looks like
all fiberglass is really glass over plywood panels on a wood frame
that, well, you guessed it. It was all rotten. And to make
matters worse, the deck was leaking badly, pouring water onto the
engines and electrical apparatus below. More about that in a minute.
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Most of the structures
you see here are glass or vinyl over wood. |
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This instrument panel
looks great . . . until you get some water on it. It is, after
all, an open cockpit. |
It was raining lightly, and near as I could tell,
the exterior was just more or less straining the water as it poured
through just about everywhere. The number of leaks inside
was appalling. Especially the aft cabin where much of the interior
structure was rotten, including bulkheads, cabinetry, cabin soles,
and on and on. Mostly all in places you couldn't see unless you
know where to look. But the smell of rotting wood told you it was
there somewhere. It was so bad that the furring strips holding the
vinyl headliner were rotted and the headliner was falling down.
There were mushrooms growing on the insides of cabinets; the odor
of rot was awful, despite attempts to cover it up with deodorizers.
The fact that they saved money on sump pumps by draining the two
showers directly into the bilges didn't help matters any.
There were fewer leaks in the forward cabin, with
most of these coming through the Italian style stanchion bases (shown
below) which anyone can see are going to cause trouble because the
bases are too small. Yep, there's so much leverage on those small
bases that, like a can opener, they all prized holes in the deck
where . . . . you guessed it .. . . . water is getting into the
deck core. There is a huge crack spanning across the width of the
foredeck. We couldn't determine what was happening there, but
a big crack across the deck can't be good. Then we looked
up in the anchor locker and found fungus growing out of the underside
of the deck. That pretty much tells the story.
Both of the sliding cabin doors required nearly
all my strength to open and close them. Most of the seating structures
in the cockpit were also made of wood, upholstered in vinyl, and
had already been replaced once. The present owner apparently got
a good deal on the replacements because these weren't doing too
well either. On a four-legged cabinet, they felt two legs were enough,
so the thing had already gone cockeyed. This is usually the result
of accepting the lowest estimate. Some people never learn.
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Electrical equipment
mounted in an area that traps water. Notice that someone
painted right down to the water, but didn't feel the need
to do anything about this situation. |
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The headliner in the
aft cabin fell down, revealing the glass over wood construction.
The discolored are is fungus growing, a condition found all
over the interior. |
The engine room? Granted, this engine room has
not been well maintained, but its obvious from what we see down
there that its not possible to keep it well maintained. The installation
of the systems are just an awful mess. Clearly, there was no installation
plan at all; they just put stuff in there wherever there happened
to be space for it. There could not have been a wiring plan because
the wires are strung everywhere. Even an amateur could have
done better. The plumbing is a mess, with a mish-mash of mismatched
materials. It is completely unintelligible with hoses strung everywhere.
It doesn't look like there are two hoses alike among the dozens
of them strung helter-skelter. Basically the systems look like they're
assembled from stuff obtained from a salvage yard.
There are no expansion joints in the exhaust system
so the heavy hose and piping are breaking the two halves of the
turbochargers apart, resulting heavy black exhaust soot damage throughout
the engine room. It would have looked like a coal bin, except
that they tried to paint over the soot. And of course no one will
ever get that stuff out of there. The rear of the engines were a
ball of rust because the gutters around the engine hatches are wood
and not properly constructed. Never mind that they are also rotted.
Add to this the fact that they glued foam insulation all over the
place, foam that is now aged and crumbing and falling all over everything,
and what you have here is an engine room that looks more like that
of a 50 year old tug boat. And with the cockpit deck pouring water
all over everything, corrosion has taken a major toll on the engines
and electrical components. It really couldn't be much worse if they
had just taken the systems and thrown them in through the hatch,
its that sloppy.
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Does this look like a professional
installation? With systems installed like this, repairing
anything becomes a costly nightmare. There are so many standards
violations here we couldn't begin to count them all. |
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The most important
aspect of rail stanchion bases is that they must be stylish
and look good. It is of no importance that they can-opener
holes in the deck and ruin the boat's interior. Some extra
caulking applied here didn't save the day, what with stanchions
that still wiggle. |
The electrical system is a veritable nightmare,
as you can see in the photo above. You know, they have an electric
code for homes that does not permit a builder to make a sloppy electrical
installation. They don't permit the routing of wiring with water
pipes, yet alone fuel or oil lines. They require conduits for exposed
wiring. So why is it that when it comes to yachts, which go to sea
(at least we've heard that they do) builders feel that they
can just string wires wherever they feel like? Never mind that boats
slam off waves and all that stuff can get damaged as a result of
high G forces. The wiring installation on this boat ranks among
the worst I've ever seen on a production boat. Its so bad that there
is no possibility of ever tracing out a circuit. So naturally, with
such a bad system, as things went wrong, the only thing the owner
could do was clip wires and string new ones. And it was obvious
from the dozens of dead end wires and splices all over the place
that a lot had gone wrong. A lot.
Another interesting feature was that the dual shore
power receptacles are mounted on the angled face of the transom.
What this means is that the shorepower receptacles, which angle
upward, trap water inside the connectors and short them out.
That's probably why only one side of the dual leg shore system worked.
And the generator, well it was right under one
of those nice cockpit deck leaks and was kaput.
We never got as far as a sea trial because the
client rejected the boat before the survey was finished.
And the batteries? Well they just stuck 'em down
there outboard of the engine with no boxes or covers, so the deck
leaks water onto them also, and shorts them out across the terminals.
What the heck, they're only $300 a pop.
There is a deck located outboard of, and below
the tops of the stringers that forms sort of a well. Pumps,
motors and other electrical apparatus were mounted in this area.
Problem is, there are no limber holes so that water leaking from
the deck above filled up the well and submerged all this electrical
equipment. Including the autopilot drive motor. Neat,
huh?
Much of the interior hull was not accessible, but
it could be seen that in many places interior grade plywood was
used for framing. Yes, you heard right; plywood made with water
soluable glue. In places where there were holes cut in the plywood,
or the plywood was exposed, it was found it to be badly delaminated
and/or rotting. In the aft section, a delaminated section of hull
stringer was found. Oops again.
Ten years does not for an old boat make, but this
one is already destined for the boneyard. What happens with boats
like this is that people buy them because they get a good price
on it, only to find that the thing eats them alive with never-ending
problems. There's no way to straighten things out and do it right,
because basically nothing is done right. The problems are endless.
The only thing to do is to rip everything out and start over again.
And so it goes into an accelerating downward spiral and becomes
a black hole for dollars for everyone who owns it. By the time its
10 years old, its already had 4 or 5 owners, and all the haphazard
repairs and all the jury-rigging that goes along with such a situation.
The Magnum 52 is a comparably sized and styled
boat to this. It sells for at least double the price, new or used.
Get the picture? You get what you pay for. Oh, I know, you think
that for 250 grand you should be getting a lot for you money. Not
so.
This is the true story of a good deal.
Post Script:
Many people get into boats like this thinking that
it would make a fairly simple refurbishing project. The fact is,
we never see anyone who tries something like this successfully complete
the job. They underestimate the extent of the job, and when they
start tearing things out, much to their chagrin they discover how
truly massive and costly the project really is. What happens
is that every problem leads to the discovery of another problem,
and the degree of difficulty snowballs to the point where the owner
is financially overwhelmed. For anyone interested in a project,
beware that you need to start with a well-designed and constructed
boat in the first place. For the most part, boats that are built
as shabbily as this one, it is not economically practical to attempt
to correct all the problems.
| These
are "reviews", not surveys, and bear no resemblance
to our survey reports.
We do not publish the results of the surveys that we perform.
Please note that the purpose of these reviews is educational,
to help you discern the differences in quality among boats generally.
They are not offered as a means to help you evaluate any particular
boat builder. We have no other reviews than those posted. |
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