For Sale: $500 after rebate! You pay $5000 and I give you back $1500 each time I use the boat for the next three years, totaling $4500 in rebates.

My custom trawler/research boat, Wooden Nickel, is for sale at a giveaway price under the special condition that I retain a right to use the boat for several weeks once each year for the next five years. This boat is featured in the "Boating and Cruising Guide to the St Johns River", and was used extensively in the research for the Cruising Guide.

The boat needs some work and is definitely best suited for a good do-it-yourself boater with mechanical skills. But it is no basket case project boat. It can be put in the water and taken on a cruise tomorrow. I'll probably have it in the water to demonstrate in mid November of this fall (2006). Scroll down for full details on the condition of the boat and what's needed to put it in top cruising condition.

What does the boat need now? - The many pictures found at the link at the top of this page will give you a good idea of the condition of the boat. Most of the pictures were taken in the spring of 2006. We brought the boat back from the Bahamas in 2005 because it needed some repairs to soft spots in the decks. We did those repairs and the general condition of the boat is good, as shown in the pictures.

We took the engine apart and pulled the head to check for damage. All appears to be in decent condition, though there is some surface corrosion where beads of water sat over last winter on engine surfaces even after being flushed with new oil. Our mechanic was putting the engine back together last spring (2006) and accidentally dropped a push rod into the oil pan. Every man has his "last straw" breaking point, and that was mine. I stopped work and finally accepted my wife's demand that it is time to pass this project along to someone else.

The port engine should be pulled out (not hard ), disassembled, cleaned up, and put back together after retrieving the dropped push rod. It would probably run fine and last a long time simply cleaned up and reassembled as is. There is a good argument that if you have it apart, you should do a more extensive rebuild, put in some new bearings, rebuild injectors, etc.

Best deal, of course, is if you are a mechanic yourself. If you have to pay to have this done, we know a guy who is a diesel mechanic, and aside from dropping the occasional push rod, does good work. He would charge about $2500 for the work. You could easily spend $5000 to have a regular diesel shop do the work. I've found used Perkins engines on the internet for about $6500 ready to run.

The engine also needs the cracked exhaust manifold replaced. List price from Perkins for a new one is about $2500 (!!!) ouch! Used or aftermarket are available at various lessor prices.

Wooden Nickel II is based on a 1973 Silverton Express cruiser 34' hull. I bought the boat in 1995 after it had been sitting in a yard neglected for several years. The topsides and some of the decks were badly rotted (glass over plywood factory construction). But the hull was excellent and the boat had been retrofitted with two Perkins 180HP turbo diesels in like new condition.

I tore off all the rotten cabin parts and built my own version of a pilot house trawler. I consider it a "work boat", even though much of the interior finish is pretty decent (see pictures). I drive the boat as a displacement trawler at about 8.5 MPH most of the time, even though it will plane if it is loaded light.

Since the boat is unique and home improved, it is best suited to a do it yourself home mechanic kind of couple. But we'd be glad to sell to a rich guy who wants to have everything professionally put in top shape!

If you want to go out and buy a REAL diesel trawler, you know what you can expect to spend. And if you find one for anything much under 60 to 100K, you can expect to spend more on repairs than you will on the Wooden Nickel, by far. Looking at what needs doing to put the Wooden Nickel in cruising shape, you'll invest maybe $7000 to $15,000 depending on how much you do yourself, and you'll have a real cruising boat. For the right kind of buyer, this would be a pretty good deal!

Perhaps best of all, if the right buyer comes along, I plan to be in business with you for several years to come. I will tell you everything I know about this boat before you buy. It would be stupid for me to hold any information from you. That's a good thing compared to the usual "buyer beware" boat sale.

This boat can be and will be put in the water by me next month and cruised locally with one engine. I've actually run the boat more than a thousand miles on one engine when I lost an oil cooler out in the Bahamas some years ago! It works fine if you're careful about right turns! SO a new owner who wants to play right away while they have the port engine work done can get right with it. I will deliver the boat anywhere, cruising on the existing engine if the new owner doesn't want to keep it at Gibson's, our present yard.

• Tom Kranz

The above discussion of the condition of Wooden Nickel, along with the associated picture page will give you a good general idea of the boat and its condition. Several of you have asked Meghan on the phone for an estimate of the cost of needed repairs. I've given some consideration to this question since I am at a stage in life where I don't want to do all the work myself. Following is a list of some of the repairs I would suggest if I were going to keep the boat for some years, and put it in sound cruising condition. Unless otherwise noted, I'll estimate labor costs at $35 an hour, which is what some repair guys in our yard might charge. Boat labor is often two or three times that rate, so change the figures according to what you might pay in your yard. Some of the following are duplicates and just listed as two different ways of fixing something, so check which you might want to do and start adding.

$4500 Average of several estimates for rebuilding the partially disassembled port engine. It might be less than this. You could pay more at a major diesel shop.

$2500 Cost of a new Perkins exhaust manifold - might find one cheaper

$500 cost to remove and replace engine; the engines come straight up out of the cockpit hatch and are extremely easy to replace. I can have one ready to come out in two hours, then 20 minutes of crane time and it is out.

$250 likely labor cost of properly aligning port prop strut - a necessary repair

$2500 - this is what a guy who does some work on the boat for us would charge to paint the hull nice and shiny, remove and refinish all the mahogany exterior trim. The boat would look very sharp. This is obviously a very optional expense.

$500 - cost of replacing the very weathered plywood on the exterior rear wall of the cabin. This is about the only exterior structural part of the boat that needs attention soon. Everything else has been pretty recently repaired.

$200 - cost of building a proper brace for the deck under the rear cabin door. This has slowly settled over time and is no immediate problem, but something I would fix to improve the strength of the deck in this high traffic area. (OK - I lied in the above paragraph - this is one more needed structural repair - and I may think of others when I am standing on the boat!)

$6500 - the cost of a used Perkins diesel found from one used engine supplier on the internet, as an alternative to repairing the existing port engine.

$400 Replace fresh water tank and upgrade plumbing to sinks; better a do it yourself upgrade, but here's a figure to use if you're trying to put together a master plan and budget to have other people do the work. Meghan and I actually planned on our last trip to remove the existing old cracked fresh water tank and build a simple below decks rack for jerry cans of water and run our fresh water pump hose into these jerry cans. It would be a simple and flexible way to take care of fresh water storage. (at a cost of maybe $50) This is a good example of my cruising style - $50 jerry can solution instead of installing fancy water tank and plumbing.

$1000 cost of having outside labor do some basic rewiring and upgrading of the fuse panel. I started this, but a lot of my wiring is what I thought of as "temporary" ten years ago! You could spend as much as you wanted on wiring work. Hopefully the new owner will be handy with wiring and do it over time himself. Electrical work is something that is very expensive to pay a yard for, but cheap for materials if you do it yourself.

$200 to reroute the fuel tank vent line. This is a minor job that I've never bothered with. The existing vent line has low spots and tends to get moisture trapped in the low points. When this happens, if you fill the fuel tank, after a while the air built up in the tank "burps" back through the filler, spilling fuel. I get around this by refueling directly into a port on the fuel tank. This is a good example of the kind of minor "character flaws" the boat has that can be dealt with, but ought to be fixed.

Discussion of long term motor options:

The boat will run fine now on just the Starboard engine, and with a repair of the port engine you will be good to go for some time. Full size diesels (not little Yanmars, etc) tend to run forever if you change the oil and service them. The Perkins engines in Wooden Nickel have never let me down with any kind of internal breakdown in 12 years and many thousands of miles.

But I have had motor problems. Always they are related to the plumbing for external engine accessories like the turbo chargers, intercoolers, oil coolers, etc. A good example is the current port engine problem; the exhaust manifold cracked from age or whatever and leaked water even though the engine was still running just fine.

When I first got Wooden Nickel I was all excited that I owned "twin 354 engines with turbos and intercooling". Hi tech!

But if I could start from scratch for a boat like this that is a cruising boat rather than a speed boat, I would want a pair of normally aspirated very plain Jane diesels. The same Perkins I have with no Turbo's has very little extra plumbing to wear out or leak. If I could find a surplus engine dealer with a pair of them, I'd trade these turbo engines in a heartbeat. I have found a similar Perkins used on the internet for $6500. If you found a pair and offered to trade what we have, I imagine you might pay $10,000 for a pair of running used diesels. If I was planning to run the boat for ten more years, that would be a worthwhile investment

$120 for a pair of 6 volt golf cart batteries for cabin power. The batteries in the boat were holding a charge last spring but they are almost five years old and I would replace them. They are not expensive.

$75 for a good starting battery. The existing battery is pretty new, but I bought it in the Bahamas and it was all that was available - I would want one with a little hgher cranking amps.

$160 for new transmission cooler hoses. The current tranny hoses are not leaking but came with the boat and it is time to replace them as preventative maintenance. Probalby $150 labor if you can't do it yourself.

$400 - optional expense to replace existing traditional stuffing boxes on the prop shafts with dripless shaft seals. I have always had trouble with the stuffing boxes leaking more than I would like. They are fussy to adjust. If you get them too tight, they will score the shaft (see below).

$400 for new port prop shaft. That's about the going rate for a new stainless prop shaft if you break one. The port shaft is slightly scored where the stuffing box got too tight. It makes it leak a little more than ideal. It has never been worth my while to replace it - I just fiddle with the stuffing box. But this listing will give you an idea of a typical repair expense you might run into.

$250 to $500 - typical cost of a new prop. The existing props are fine, but they have been straightened several times and each time they get thinner. The time will come when you bend one and the prop shop tells you they can't fix it and you need a new one.

Fuel and oil filters - NAPA auto parts carries all the fuel and oil filters for these engines and they are not expensive. One of the few bright spots in the maintenance expense list!

I may add to this list of repair and maintenace expenses over the coming days - check back here.