Centre-cockpit cruiser for liveaboard sailing

Duncan Kent, yacht tester for 25 years, checks out the used boat market

At the Southampton Boat Show this year I spoke to some old cruising friends who I hadn’t seen in a while. Both couples currently keep sub-30 footers on the East Coast, but plan to retire reasonably soon and sail further afield for a few years. We got around to discussing what boats they’d like to do it in and, once we’d put any ideas of shelling out half a million pounds or more on a newish Oyster or Discovery aside, the subject moved on to finding a seaworthy boat for much less and refitting it to how each couple wanted. In the end, we all agreed that we would be looking for something between 36ft and 42ft, with a centre cockpit for comfort (and a large owners’ cabin), and it would need to come in at somewhere under £150,000.

While there are plenty of folk sailing around the world in 30-year-old boats, they’re often found in boatyards fixing stuff or doing odd jobs to raise money to replace broken bits. Those with a more limited time span for cruising