1973 Morgan Rare M303 Ltd Edtn

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Gorgeous Rare M303 Fast as Lightning Tough As Nails Amazingly Spacious Proven Distance Ocean Cruiser Built in 1973 when they were still building sailboats using thick woven roving construction for extremely strong hull weight to strength ratio. A Beautiful Example of the Breed. Kept In Dry Storage for Many Years. Dry inside. Inner Fiberglass shall. Sleek hull form. Amazing Performance Vessel With Plenty of Space Inside. Rare Design Blue Water Cruiser Morgan 303 Ready to Sail Will Consider Trade for Sailboat of Equal Value Located in San Francisco Bay Area. Perfect Combo of Graceful and Rugged with a huge amount of Interior space for a 30 footer. Has as much room inside as most 38ft vessels because of the very rare and exceptionally hard to produce rounded wall topsides- We have owned over 30 sailboats and this one has the smartest and most spacious interior of any 30 foot boat we have ever known. Save Thousands - Incredible Boat for Serious Sailor Needs minor TLC and an outboard motor or inboard motor work but an incredible diamond in the rough. We hate to part with our treasured A-Bird but it is in New York City and we are in San Francisco for the next year, so kind of have to find a new owner for it since we cant take care of her properly from such a distance. I will write a more detailed description as soon as I have more time to type. Please check back soon for more info. This boat sails incredibly well and it is amazingly fast. It holds course better than any fin keel boat I've known even in huge breaking seas because of the incredible balance and position of the keel design. Feel free to call and ask questions in person. 347 675-5062 -Christina and Alder Auction closes Late Thursday Night - Just After Midnight Eastern Time. If you are serious about winning this rare jewel set your alarm and tune in for the final minutes of the auction to watch your bid. You wont regret missing a couple hours of sleep if are able to win this one. If you aren't happy with it, we would love nothing better than to buy it back from you for the same price it sells for here when we get back to New York!! On Jan-22-11 at 00:06:19 PST, seller added the following information: MORE INFO!! Hello bidders, My name is Christina and I am the owner of the boat listed for sale here. My boyfriend, Alder, will be answering most of your questions because he understands the mechanics of a boat better than I do. You can see photos of sisterships of the only other three Morgan 30/3 and 30/2 sailboats we are aware of for sale in the world by going to the yachtworld.com website. Here are the links. Similar condition to our boat, selling for $9,500: http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1972/Morgan-30-2100148/Charlevoix/MI/United-States What ours will be like if you invest some elbow grease and a couple grand in upgrades: Recently reduced to $19,900: http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1974/Morgan-30-2-2155897/Everett/WA/United-States Another in similar condition to ours for $11,650: http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1974/Morgan-30-2-2300744/Oriental/NC/United-States Buying a boat is a big investment and I know that some of you will not be able to go and inspect the boat in person before you bid even as much as I encourage interested parties to do so. Because of that we will try to provide a complete description here that includes all of the details we know about this vessel. So, before you bid, please read the entire text, even as long as it is. A boat is a serious purchase and you should know as much as possible about the one you may end up owning before you commit to purchasing it. So, even though its kind of a long description, please read all the info here and be a fully informed buyer. We wouldn't go to the trouble of all this typing except to help you have a clear picture of all the details. Also, please do not bid unless you have the money on hand to pay for the boat within 48 hours, and be sure you ask your spouse and all that before bidding. Your bid is a legally binding contract to purchase the boat, and it costs a lot of money and time for us to list the boat here, so please do the honorable and responsible thing and don't bid unless you are absolutely certain you wish to become the new owner. The boat has been a great pleasure to both of us, and we're sorry to be selling it. We are not selling it because of any fault of the boat but because an opportunity on the West Coast is causing us to be away from the New York area for long periods at a time, and we will not be able to maintain her as she deserves. I have a lot of experience with boats, including spending my childhood with my family living aboard in the Caribbean for 8 years on a Beneteau 46 and then a 62ft Custom aluminum hull cutter. Since then, I have owned several other boats between 23 and 65 ft, and this one is my very favorite of all of them. It's not a common model, and this is a great find for an enthusiastic sailor. She handles very well, and sails faster than any other boat I've owned since the large ones I lived on as a kid. She'll go in a wind that leaves a lot of other boats with luffing sails, and when you get a little more wind than that, she flies! Another great feature... THE ROOM! This boat has the interior space of a much larger vessel. She could comfortably sleep 7 (2 in the V berth, 2 in sea berths, 2 in galley berths, and 1 in an aft berth) It's a great boat for weekend trips. There's enough space that 2 people can get away in it with enough stuff to be quite comfortable without it all getting in the way. She's very tight. We've had her almost 2 years now, and never had her hauled out since we bought her and put on a five coats of bottom paint. We've found that we never have to run a bilge pump. She barely leaks at all. In almost 3 months without touching the bilge, we had less than one inch of water in the bilge. Not many boats can brag that kind of tightness. When we brought her up from Annapolis, MD where we bought her, to Brooklyn, we had the time to test her in all kinds of weather. For much of the way, there was almost no wind. You can still sail her. And as we were coming into Sheepshead Bay, we encountered 30 knot winds and 6 foot seas, and she was great. She's heavy enough that she doesn't bounce off the waves like some lightweight boats do. The 5000 lb of lead ballast gives it that amazing combo of being very stiff and stable, but because it is lead rather than iron ballast the keel is still very sleek with minimal surface friction. By todays metal costs this vessel probably has several thousand dollars worth of lead in the keel--which may be why so few boats have the luxury of a lead keel, because cast iron is so much cheaper to get the same weight--but also bulkier and slows a boat down considerably. If I had a responsible choice, I would not sell this boat. If I ever have the opportunity to buy another Morgan 30/3, or 30/2 I will not hesitate to do so. Best 30 footer there is but nearly impossible to find in any condition for under $10K. We will miss our lovely A-Bird. I hope it she goes to a good home where she will get to spread her wings on the water often as she deserves. My boyfriend has a more technical and mechanical description of the boat below, and if anyone has questions, he'll be the one to answer the technical stuff. ***** Alder here now. Here's all the details I can think of about the boat. What makes the boat special more than anything is the hull shape and the form of the keel. The keel is solid lead as Christina mentioned, bolted into a very solid fiberglass mini keel that is part of the moulded hull. This makes it enormously strong and hard to break in the event of grounding out in heavy weather where the bouncing action of the waves might otherwise fracture the hull attachment of a cheaper design fin keel. It is also bolted in with huge stainless steel bolts which prevent corrosion like happens with non stainless iron bolts as most cheaper boats are made with. This gives the boat the speed of a racing style deep fin keel vessel with the durable rugged quality of a vessel designed to survive huge storms and groundings in coral reefs and sand bars and still keep on sailing rather than breaking the keel off and sinking. Charley Morgan, who designed this vessel, is a world class yachtsman and built some of the most revolutionary racing and cruising boats ever made. The international races won by Morgan boats are too long to list, but you can check him out here: http://www.charleymorgan.com/ His Out-Islander series boats are some of the most rugged, durable and spacious cruising boats in the world. However, the Out-Islanders will never win a race unless it is against another O.I.. because they are build of heavily laid super strong fiberglass and have a heavy full keel and bluff bow that makes them good vessels for transporting tanks and soldiers onto enemy beaches under heavy artillery fire...or surviving hurricanes...take your pick! They are the perfect vessel for inexperienced sailors to use to improve their anchoring techniques during huge tropical storms, when dragging anchor may be cause for conducting the unintended experiment of trying to break apart large underwater rocks on a leeward shore using only a fiberglass hull. If you want to live through that mistake and try a better technique again another day, a Morgan is your boat. This boat is built using the same type of heavily laid hull, but with a very fast and agile fin keel design that deepens the draft to a full five feet, increasing performance exponentially, but still keeping the legendary Morgan "durability" and and roomy interior. Why is the interior so spacious? Here's why. The beam is a full 11 feet four inches on a thirty foot boat. That's incredible. The flat surfboard style racing boats like J-boats and Farrs and Mirages have a wide beam like that for planing down the front of ocean waves and exceeding hull speed, but they are so flat you have to stoop over all the time you are inside. This boat uses this ultra-wide beam and sharp V tip point to utilize the racing/planing technique of keeping most of the hull above the water so it glides like a wind-surfboard across the top of the water instead of dragging down through the water with large resistance. Also, the deeper the body of the hull goes down into the water the greater the resistance becomes because the water pressure of being several feet down increases the surface tension from all the weight of the water above it--same principal that tries to crush a submarine from all sides and prevents scuba divers from going below a couple hundred feet without a huge pressure resistant suit. The Morgan 30/3 increases the height of the cabin interior to give plenty of headroom but with the same ultra wide hull using by strictly racing sailboats. This makes for a huge and roomy interior and where most 30ft sailboats have berths on the sides and then a wall behind, this boat puts a second side berth behind the first in the extra width. This gives you the ability to have two extra crew people sleep aboard or as we sail it, we stash all our gear up and supplies in the second berths and keep the front berths open for sitting at the folding table in the center of the salon. If you go and buy a 38 foot boat what you are paying for, aside from the extra 8 feet of boat length on your slip fee every month, you also usually get two extra berths--often as an aft cabin. This Morgan gives you the two extra berths all in a 30 foot design and you can save a lot of money by renting a cheaper slip because boats over 30 feet are usually put in the longer premium priced slips at marinas while the 30 and under slips are usually much cheaper. Also you save money for every other marina service that is charged by length, which is just about everything. On race boats the super wide beam makes for very fast sailing but normally it also makes for a bouncy ride in choppy water when sailing toward the wind. However, the brilliant thing about this Morgan design is that they used a curved hull mold that gives the topsides of the boat rounded "Hips" for lack of a better word. This made the boats expensive to produce, because getting a hull out of a curved mold that is smaller at the top than on the sides is a real engineering feat. Out of hundreds of other sailboat brands, the only other boats I know that used such a beautiful rounded side form was one model of a Sparkman and Stevens 36 footer which molds were later bought by Catalina and given a new deck configuration and became a mid 80s C36. Those were the most beautiful Catalinas vessels ever produced in my opinion. But Catalina, as well as most other cheaper sailboat brands, used a resin mix using a resin to glass mix that is far too high. Lots of brands do this to build up an adequate hull thickness, because the resin is the cheap part and the glass is expensive. However, its the glass that gives a boat the strength against hull fractures. The resin is just there to hold the glass together. Todays ultra-cheap sprayed chip fiberglass construction methods are completely bogus because they use way too much resin and don't even have the strength of long interwoven strands of fiberglass as you do with the old fashioned technique of interwoven layers of "long-strand" glass matting inter-laid with alternating layers of fiberglass cloth and matt. And in the case of the Morgan's, where they wiped off the excess resin between each layer, this technique produces a hull that is pretty much bulletproof in strength. So these boats have a super-strong hull that has purebred racing performance bloodlines in a combo that offers a huge interior--and the ride is smooth and not bouncy because the "hips" make it very graceful in the waves and rough water won't pitch and toss it the way a flatter race boat with square edges will be tossed about. The final piece of incredible chemistry that makes these probably the finest 30 foot sailboat design ever made is the balance point of the keel. Unlike most fin keels which come straight down from an attachment point slightly ahead of the mast, the keel of this boat uses an amazing parallellogram shape so that the keel attaches very far forward, (see the photos of the boat side on out of the water) and yet the center of the weight of it at the lowest center of gravity is actually behind the mast. Wow! I don't know why this type of keel wasn't adopted as the standard style for all sailboats. It makes perfect sense. It is perfectly balanced so that the weight at the leading edge enables the boat to sail very close to the wind and hold its course amazingly well. It also enables the boat to balance on a point of sail flying only a head-sail where most boats have to have both sails flying to keep from being squirrely. But because the trailing end of the keel at its lowest point is so far back it enables a huge amount of sail to be flown without submerging the bow when going downwind. Thus, the boat can carry an extra tall mast and hold a very long boom giving an absolutely huge sail area for such a small vessel without sacrificing stability in the least. In my opinion it is the worlds perfect keel design, and yet as far as I have seen, from looking at thousands of other boats in various boatyards, I have never seen another vessel with this same style except for custom one-off designs. The closest is the keel on the clipper 30 which made that boat super fast for its weight, but it was also a very flimsy boat with a very short mast and only a 9 foot beam. But this kind of keel is so amazingly cool it almost would make a Clipper 30 worth owning if you can't buy a Morgan. Another really nice thing is that the interior of the boat is made out of a glossy cast fiberglass inner shell unlike most sailboats that have an interior made out of plywood. In this one only the bulkheads and cabinets are plywood, but the entire ceiling and structural aspects of the interior are all glossy fiberglass. This keeps moisture from causing mildew. It also makes the interior very sparkling shiny clean just wiping it with a damp rag. And most important of all, it adds tremendous hull strength to the entire boat because it is really one boat within another boat. The second inner layer helps keep it cool in summer and warmer in winter and it gives the hull amazing rigidity to withstand flex in prolonged ocean storms that might otherwise slowly weaken the hull over thousands of miles of crashing waves causing catastrophic hull failure at the worst possible time. Of course for coastal sailors and lake sailors this extra strength is total overkill and the only real advantage to this inner hull lining is just how pretty and clean and comfortable it make the boat inside, but for a serious ocean sailor planning to be thousands of miles away from the nearest safe harbor, such things can be the difference between life and death. There are so many things in the Morgan 30/3 that were added to make it truly a seaworthy passage making vessel. I have to wonder if perhaps the reason there were so few boats made of this type of quality from other manufacturers might be because it costs so much to build a boat like this with the solid lead keel, hips in the hull form and all the other construction improvements, that there isn't much profit margin for a company that invests so much in building a masterpiece and then has to compete in the marketplace with cheap junky brands that cut so many corners in the manufacturing process. OK, so now you folks have read all this poetry and you probably want to know the scoop on the condition of this particular Morgan 30/3. All in all its in pretty good shape. It does need the teak sanded and varnished and a good scrubbing. It could use new main sheet and jib sheet. The old ropes work OK and the hardware is in good condition but the ropes are dirty and getting a bit fuzzy. The paint job when Christina bought it had just has a $4500 Awlgrip paint job in dark navy blue. Sadly, some fool in Annapolis who didn't anchor properly in a mooring field dragged and his white hull bumped up against the bow of ours for a few minutes before friends of ours noticed and separated the vessels. Fortunately it was very light winds and so it only resulted in having a few white scuffs on our glossy paint job rather than big scratches or gouges. The white streaks may rub out with with a buffing wheel and some wax or it is possible you might need to get a bit of the matching Awlgrip color and touch it up by hand or give it a quick one pass spray to put the paint job back the way it was. At a distance though it still looks like pretty much a shiny brand new boat. The deck had some mildew in the photos. Its been washed and scrubbed since then and it cleans up pretty well. The boat has several sails. I can't remember how many exactly. They aren't new but they work fine. They could probably stand to be scrubbed and bleached to whiten them up. I think I remember there being a very expensive assymetrical spinnaker, if memory serves me right, which is probably a $2000 sail. But don't hold me too that if its a lesser sail. We never flew it though. We just used the main and the genoa. We never expected to sell the boat or we would have made a more complete list of equipment on board. The rigging is super tough, heavy duty stainless cables that tie into heavy stainless plate steel that is buried deep into the heavily laid hull. This is exactly the sort of rigging you want to hold your boat and mast together then you get slammed by heavy ocean weather. It would take some huge forces of nature to ever break the rigging or tear out any of the connection points. The mast likewise is huge and strong for a boat this size and mounts sturdily into the keel. This mast and rigging is probably four or five times stronger than the mast and rigging for the average mass produced 30 foot sailboat. The rear stay has an amazing racing tensioning system on it that you can see in the photos to tweak mast tension for increased sailing performance. There are several other advanced mechanical systems like this for sail handling that are usually pretty costly after market ad ons. One example are the rolling blocks you can see in the photo with the bird. To buy them they are a few hundred dollars each. There is also a nice strong and long spinnaker pole and I think also perhaps even a second shorter whisker pole. The electronics and radio are untested and sold as-is. We use handheld GPS and handheld radio. As far as I can tell all the electric wiring and lights work fine, but again its all sold 'As Is" with no guarantees. The boat needs a new compass and depth finder though. The status on the engine is that when Christina bought the boat we were told that fresh rain water had gotten into the bottom of the motor when the scuppers got clogged with leaves one season and water flowed into the bilge from the cockpit. The boat was on jack-stands in the yard at the time. From the slight water stains on the fiberglass inner shell you can see how high the water got and to me I wonder if it even got high enough to reach the oil pan or the dipstick hole. There aren't terrible oil/y water stains as you would expect if water got so high that the oil floated out of the engine dipstick hole and contaminated the entire bilge. Anyway, we are both sailors more than motor mechanics, and I am not a big fan of getting greasy, so we just put a good strong outboard motor bracket on the transom and put our trusty 6hp Mercury outboard on the back for the cruise from Annapolis up to New York. The motor bracket is included in the auction but we are keeping the outbboard motor. I have never tested the inboard Atomic 4 motor that's in the boat to even see if the crankshaft turns. We figured the outboard worked fine for us, so we would just wait and have the motor tested by a pro and either fixed or replaced sometime in the future if it wouldn't run after just putting in new oil and clean fuel. So because we have really no idea the condition of the motor we are describing the boat as needing motor work. However, you may find that it can be made to run just with an oil change and fresh gas or in a worse case it may be rusted up from water intrusion and you need to drop a new motor in it. Fortunately, in the worst case scenario, there are many affordable diesel replacements for the Atomic 4 or you can get a rebuilt Atomic 4 pretty cheap and have a mechanic install it. The companionway is wide enough to make the swap out super easy with a crane at any marina. We checked in Annapolis before we bought the boat and found rebuilt Atomic 4 motors for between $500 to $1200 and several people willing to do the swap out for about $500 to $700. That was Annapolis though. What someone would charge in NY I don't know. We wanted to put a bimini on the boat for shade protection because it doesn't have one. You can see the make-shift one we made with a tarp and some rope to keep Christina and I from getting sunburned on the way up from Annapolis. That would be a nice improvement to make. The cushions inside are in good shape as far as I can remember. The boat is nice and dry inside without any mildew to speak of. There are a few small stains from drips on the side walls in the V-berth but thats about it. We still have some clothes and books and other things left on the boat and I think I left my good set of marine binoculars. After the boat sells we will either fly back home and retrieve our personal things off the boat or perhaps if you are a kind buyer you can put them in a box for us until we come back to new york in a few more weeks for a brief visit home. Basically anything that is boat related, other than the binoculars, goes with the vessel and anything that is personal possessions we would appreciate having returned to us. The long and short of this boat, A Bird, is that it is one of those rare finds where it does need some minor work, and because it is not a completely glossy ready to go vessel you can save many thousands of dollars by investing some TLC yourself. The bones of it are really in very fine condition which is the only thing that really matters to true sailors. If you bought some supplies and got a handheld GPS and VHF Radio, and put an outboard motor on the back, this boat could cross an ocean easily on sail power in its current condition. The only thing I would really recommend from a safety standpoint would be to test all the lights, get a new battery and solar panel and new ropes for the sheets before making any long distance cruises. Other than that the major things that keep this boat from being a $20 thousand dollar vessel are that it needs some spit and polish, a few modern electronics, a bimini and to either get the inboard engine running or replace it. Even if the engine is totally shot, you could get all of that done if you do your own labor for about $2K. If it sells for $8K or less here on Ebay, that means you are able to get a $20K boat for $10K or less by investing a bit of sweat equity. The boat is currently located on a mooring ball in Sheepshead bay at the Miramar Yacht Club, where we were members in 2010. You will need to take a inflatable dingy or kayak or something to get out to it. In the spring the Yacht Club has tender service seven days a week until 10pm. Its really a great boat club full of wonderful people. If you are in NY we would highly recommend that you consider keeping the boat at Miramar and join the club. Yearly dues are right around $2000 and you get access to the terrific clubhouse and many private parties and the shuttle service and locker and dingy dock etc with gated security and free street parking. Its a great value and a great way to be a member of the local boating community. If you want to keep the boat at Miramar you will need to pay 50% of the yearly dues before the end of January and the other half by March I think. You will also want to apply for a city issued permit for your own permanent mooring ball and buy a mushroom anchor and tackle. The folks at Miramar are very helpful and can help you get your own permanent mooring at Sheepshead Bay. The sailing outside of Sheepshead Bay is the finest wind in the entire New York sailing area. Its really a great community. If you want to move the boat somewhere else, or keep it local and get it hauled out on jack-stands you can put an outboard motor on the bracket and take the boat to Gateway Marina which is a full service marina just outside the mouth of Sheepshead Bay. We will be happy to give you as many pointers and tips on boating services and facilities in the New York area also. Very Important though--If you do want to keep the boat where it is you will need to join the Miramar Yacht Club and pay their membership fee. The boat is currently on a guest mooring of theirs until spring when new mooring permits are assigned by the city of Brooklyn, and it would be highly inappropriate to try to leave the boat there without joining the club. Again, if you want to ask any questions in person please give us a call. Please leave a message if you don't reach us at first because we are on the Pacific coast where cell phone service is spotty at best. 347 675-5062 Good luck bidding! -Alder P.S. A couple more websites of interest. One of the great things about owning a Morgan is being a part of the loyal group of Morgan Sailboat owners who are some of the finest folks in the world. Morgan Owners Group: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~kklein/ And here's a biography on Charley Morgan who started it all: http://www.morganboat.org/southwinds.html On Jan-22-11 at 13:16:49 PST, seller added the following information: CORRECTION: We just received notice from E-bay that their policies do not allow anything to be offered for trade on their site, and we had noted that we might consider trading for a boat in San Francisco area. We are hereby officially retracting that statement, especially considering that the boat already has so many bidders. It would be inappropriate to consider a trade for it when other people are willing to pay cash. So please disregard that statement and rest assured that it will sell for the cash price listed at the close of the auction. Thanks!