1973 Morgan Out Island 36 ft

Gas

THIS IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY VESSEL FOR A COUPLE OR SMALL FAMILY WANTING TO CRUISE FULL TIME OR FOR SOMEONE LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT CARIBBEAN AND BAHAMAS ISLAND CRUISER at a small fraction of the 30 to 70 thousand dollars these sell for on the used yacht market in ready-to-sail condition. THE MORGAN OUT ISLAND 36 IS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST BOAT EVER BUILT FOR FAMILIES WITHOUT $300k TO SPEND ON A BRAND NEW CRUISING SAILBOAT. IT IS LEGENDARY FOR EASY HANDLING, STORM WORTHINESS, SHOAL DRAFT, SAIL PERFORMANCE AND INTERIOR LAYOUT AND REALLY GREAT SEA MOTION. CHARLIE MORGAN WHO DESIGNED IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE GENIUS YACHT DESIGNER AND BUILDER, AND THE OUT ISLAND SERIES ARE WELL CONSIDERED TO BE THE MASTERPIECES OF HIS LIFE-LONG PASSION AS A CRUISER AND CHAMPION SAILBOAT RACER. *****************PLEASE READ*********** PLEASE BE A FULLY INFORMED BIDDER AND READ THIS ENTIRE DESCRIPTION PRIOR TO BIDDING. I AM INCLUDING AS MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE SO THAT YOU CAN GET A TRULY ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF THE CONDITION OF THIS BOAT. I ALSO WELCOME PEOPLE TO COME AND INSPECT THE BOAT IN PERSON PRIOR TO BIDDING. I CAN MEET YOU ANY DAY YOU WANT TO COME DOWN PRIOR TO THE CLOSE OF THE AUCTION. I AM ALSO AVAILABLE BY PHONE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU HAVE OR TO ARRANGE BOAT TOURS. PLEASE CALL ME AT (970) 319-4361. THANKS, -WILLIAM Payment is required In-Full Within 24 hours of the auction close. PLEASE ONLY BID WHAT YOU HAVE ON HAND TO PAY WITHIN 24 HOURS. IT IS NOT FAIR TO OTHER LEGITIMATE BIDDERS TO BID IF YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY READY TO MAKE A PURCHASE. THANKS!! Please contact me by telephone as soon as you win the auction to discuss your plans to complete the transaction. We can accept cash in person, cashiers check or wire transfer. You will get the title in hand or over-nighted with tracking number the same day that payment is received in full. Slip fees are paid current until May 1st. My phone number again is (970) 319-4361 - William The Morgan Out Island sailboats are truly blue water cruisers. They are some of the strongest boats ever built, and the huge, cast 3/4 length keel with a protected rudder can take any abuse a storm or a grounding can dish out. Because of the huge keel that is molded into the hull itself, rather than a flimsy bolt-on fin keel, and the blue water cruising displacement of 16,000 lbs (READ IT AGAIN, YES I SAID SIXTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS OF STORM RESISTANT CRUISING POWER) and huge diameter keel-stepped mast and stout rigging and amazing stability ratio and sail area, these boats are seen in distant ports all around the world. The interior has incredible headroom for anybody shorter than NBA players and can sleep 6 people. The aft cabin is separated from the main cabin giving the privacy of a personal state room for the boat owners and the V-Berth makes a comfortable guest cabin for guests or kids, still leaving a huge salon area and galley. It also has two heads (bathrooms) with standing shower and toilet in both heads - very nice for long distance cruising with a family or two couples. The galley needs a stove installed. Currently it just has cabinets and sink and an empty space where the stove should go. IN WORKING CONDITION THESE BOATS SELL FOR $30k TO $70k. This is the very sought after 36 foot version which is easier for a couple to sail than the more common 41 foot version, but larger than the other common smaller model the 33 ft Morgan Out Island. This one needs a new motor and new electric breaker. That's both bad news and good news. Its bad news if you want a turn-key boat that is ready to go--and if you have 30 thousand or more to spend. However, it's great news if you want to get a terrific deal because the motors that these came with are the amazingly common, cheap and popular Atomic 4 motor. There are several cheap diesel swap out motors to replace the original Atomic 4s which usually eventually gave up the ghost after a couple decades of good use. There are also a ton of used Atomic 4 motors available out there for really great prices because they were the most common and most popular marine sailboat engine ever made. "Working used" Atomic 4s go for about $500. Diesel replacements that are rebuilt go for about $2000 or brand new with installation about $5k to $7k. The motor is the easiest thing to replace on a sailboat with just making a few phone calls to get quotes and then hiring a mechanic and writing a check. So if this boat sells for under $17K here on Ebay you will be saving a considerable amount of money by buying it without a working motor and then getting a new motor put in. This boat also has a really great reputation as the boat of choice for cruising in the shallow waters of the US East Coast, Florida, Bahamas and Caribbean Islands. I will write a long description about all the details of these fine cruising boats and their legendary creator Charlie Morgan as soon as I can get a longer amount of time at the computer. I will also include more photos in the next few days, especially interior photos. I realized today when I went to take photos that the zoom lens I had on my Nikon isn't nearly wide enough to give a proper sense of the interior space on this boat, and since I am only allowed to post 24 pictures in the Ebay listing, I think I better get some more taken with a wider lens another day before I take up all the available photos with close up shots. Boat comes with a clear Florida title. It can stay at the amazing marina where it is currently located if you want to keep it there, or it can be moved anywhere else you like. There are several boatyards in the area where it can be hauled out to do a bottom job, which along with the new motor is the most important thing this boat needs. It has been a few years since it has been hauled out and it will be a good scraping project to get all the barnacles and algae off the bottom and then sand and re-coat with new anti-fouling bottom paint. The boat also has a really strong outboard motor mount on the back and it could be sailed as it is just by installing an outboard motor on the back. If you do this I recommend only using a "long shaft" outboard motor in the 9 to 25 horse power range. Anything with a short shaft tends to plunge in and out of the waves too much once you get in choppy water. With the outboard motor it would be good for motoring in and out of port and into Tampa Bay or for lake sailing, but to do true ocean crossings you will want an inboard motor because outboards don't work very well in stormy weather because the big waves tend to overpower the outboard, which is why the propeller shaft for the inboard is mounted far underneath the hull. However, that said, if you are a competent sailor with a competent crew and you don't expect to rely on motor power for calm wind days, once you get this boat out of the port you should be able to take it just about anywhere accessible by ocean using sail power along. However, a competent sailor in the modern age will probably also really want to have a good working motor before making a long voyage, but I have know a few old salts who love to brag about going thousands of miles without ever using the motor and that is also kind of "standard practice" for sailboat racers. But unless you have good cruising skills and a lot of experience I don't recommend that option. The auction closes on Tuesday night. I hope it goes to a good home. Please get your best bid in early or set an alarm on your phone and tune in for the final minutes of the auction if you truly want to win the boat. Often the final few minutes of the auction will determine who wins the auction. GOOD LUCK BIDDING!!! Call me if you have any questions? (970) 319-4361 -William On Apr-27-15 at 10:16:45 PDT, seller added the following information: Spent Saturday giving boat tours in the am and then went up to Davis Island Yacht Club for the 30th Annual Charity Regatta and Morgan Invasion. That was Incredible to see so many owners and fans of Morgan Sailboats all in one place. For anyone not familiar with the Annual "Morgan Invasion" this is the big once-a-year get together of folks from all around the world who own and sail or are fans of Morgan Sailboats. Charley Morgan himself attends each year to tell stories from the good ol' days of his sailboat racing glory and the decades of the 1970s and 1980s when the Morgan Out Island fleet of boats was pretty much the one and only choice for charter sailboats in Charter Companies all around the world. The spacious interiors, good performance specs, rock solid construction that could take regular abuse from amateur sailors running aground on coral reefs and docks without major issue made these boats the standard for Charter Companies until Charley sold the company and other companies like Beneteau and Jeanneau and Tartan started making inroads into the market with truly well built production boats in the 1990s. My wife Christina grew up all around the Caribbean on her families 46 foot Beneteau, and although it won many cruising races and was a good solid built "modern" wide hull boat from the decades after Charley sold the Morgan company, her stories about how uncomfortable it was in heavy seas due to the bouncing and pounding and slapping of the hull led her to the conclusion that for extended blue water sailing boats like this Morgan Out Island that have a heavy displacement keel and go a little bit slower in much greater comfort are a much better choice for anyone who actually wants to live-aboard rather than just win blue water races. Now, she and I and our two young children split our time between our permanent land home in Colorado Ski Country and our other passion of international cruising and adopting stray boats that need to find a new owner. Some people adopt stray dogs or abandoned kittens. We adopt stray boats. We already have our own cruising sailboat and we don't need another for ourselves, but from experience and in our early cruising days before we were spending half our year directly in boat yards and marinas and exotic ports, we know how hard it is to find truly worth blue-water cruisers that can be purchased on a normal middle-class income. We are relatively young folks ourselves, and part of our passion is helping other young couples and families and middle class retired folks afford the cruising life-style. We feel this is the most amazing life that Planet Earth has to offer, cruising to foreign ports by the power of the wind, learning self-reliant sea-mansship skills and cruising "homesteading" skills, learning to protect and honor the power and diversity of our oceans that host 3/4 of the life on Earth. For many, the dream of actually "cruising" seems like a dream that can never become a reality because at first it seems so costly. Who can afford to spend $150K to $500K on a new boat and another $20K on emergency equipment and then take off work and spend $1000 or more per month on food and travel expenses just to live the dream? The reality is, we have been sailing for years on much cheaper boats than that, with much tighter budgets and earning money mostly as we travel. It is a great life style and one that is in fact possible for ordinary people with a bit of strategy and hard work and planning. The first most important choice is what boat to go sailing in. This is where we like to lend our experience and connections and we occasionally find a truly capable blue-water cruising vessel at a really good savings. When we do, if there is any possible way, we try to buy it and then work to spread the word and get the boat into the hands of someone like ourselves who really needs a good deal on a great boat. Every boat is a project boat. However, some boats are more project than boat. Take a brand new half million dollar yacht from the assembly line and go cruising on the open ocean for a month and you will have an entire Santa's Christmas list of things you want to upgrade, swap out, fix, re-install or move. Buying an older boat just means there is more handy work to do than the average $500K brand new boat, but it takes the same skills and perseverance and dedication to the dream to restore an older boat as to customize and brand new one. Making all those upgrades is just part of the sailing life-style. Sailing is about self-reliance. When you are hundreds of miles from the nearest island, in a part of the ocean where there is no Home Depot or Lowes or West Marine, you better be good at fixing things and have a good idea how your boat is put together. A big problem my wife and I encounter in our travels is meeting people who got into sailing with a big checkbook and no "handy skills." They fall in love with a boat and spend the extra tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to have all sorts of complicated systems that are all working just the way they should. Then they set out sailing across oceans and inevitably something stops working. They discover in the wrong place at the wrong time, that they have no idea how it was set up to work in the first place and they have no spare parts and no skills about how to fix it even if they had the spare parts. They can't hire a mechanic wherever they are, because their boat involves so many complicated pieces that to fix anything requires a long distance consultant and sending in new parts directly from the manufacture at great expense. Cruisers with a simpler boat, and hopefully one they have already partly re-built or restored themselves are in a much better position because they already figured out how everything works when they were still in the U.S. or other ports with access to equipment and stores. They already bought spare parts for anything that they think might break while at sea. They don't have to troubleshoot long distance with a satelite phone and a distant technician because they have already worked out the bugs in their systems when they were still in a safe marina with mechanics and yachties swarming about eager to help solve any particularly weird or unusual technical problem. Buying a boat like this Out Island is for someone who wants to get to know their vessel like a cowboy knows his horse and saddle and six gun or like a surgeon knows the tools and machines in the surgery room. If you are actually planning to cross oceans, this craft is the one that you will depend upon to keep you alive on the open ocean in large storms. It is the boat that must be comfortable for lounging about when you are bored two weeks into a long calm-wind passage. It must serve your needs when you host parties or have friends and family aboard. You need to know your boat well and your boat needs to know you. To purchase a boat where every single thing is already as it should be, would be a dis-service to the active sailor because it prevents you from getting to know how everything on your boat is set up and how it works. That's fine for folks who never want to do more than weekend coastal cruising and who never get beyond the reach of a VHF distress call to the Coast Guard or a phone call to Tow Boat US or Sea Tow. But for coastal cruisers there are also about twenty dozen brands and models of boats that will serve just fine as a comfortable coastal cruiser or lake cruiser vessel. Amending the boat description with the term "Blue Water Cruiser" is a very serious upgrade and not a description to be taken lightly. That would be a more serious mistake than thinking that you can tackle a flood rutted 4X4 trail across the Colorado Rocky Mountains with a Rav4 just because the TV commercials make it look like its about at tough as a pimped out Jeep Wrangler rock crawler. Yeah, a Rav4 is technically a 4X4 just like a Jeep Patriot is technically a Jeep, and a Catalina is technically a cruising sailboat, but you don't want to be an amateur cought in a storm on the open ocean in one. A Morgan Out Island, on the other hand is truly a capable blue water vessel with no appologies. The history of two decades of their use as the nearly exclusive cruising vessel of the charter industry is proof of that, and the fact that four decades after many of these fine vessels were built they are still on the ocean making serious voyages to foreign ports of call. Now about this particular Morgan Out Island, my wife and I have spent the last few weeks cleaning it and re-finishing the teak and doing what we can to show its real potential to a new owner. However, it has been sitting neglected for a couple years and the last person who owned it used it as a comfortable live-aboard rather than actually sailing it. I am convinced of that because of the way that several things are about the boat that need to be improved before it is ready to go cruising again. I will list in as much detail as I can the things that need repaired or upgraded. If you dream of cruising but are not already familiar with how to do all the stuff on this list, its all pretty easy stuff to tweak and fix, but it is time-consuming, which is why my wife and I haven't already made all these upgrades ourselves. If you want my help and you win the auction, I will happily spend a full day with you going through the boat and showing you exactly how to do everything to the boat that needs to be done to restore it to its former glory. For folks who are new to sailboat repairs I also have a list I have compiled of places to get expensive stuff for cheap, all the best books on sailboat restoration, where to find You_tube videos about all the details of various projects etc.. I can provide this to you if you win the boat and I can email it to other people who ask me for it who are working on restoring other sailboats. This list is as complete as I can think of sitting here at the computer and having spent now many hours on the boat, but that said, the vessel is being sold "As Is" and I may have missed little things that are not mentioned here, but hopefully I haven't missed any serious issues, and I don't think that I have. The only three major projects for this boat I have already mentioned. (1) It needs the bottom scraped to remove algae and barnacles and then sanded and re-painted with anti-fouling paint. I have already contacted a diver who will scrape the bottom of the boat while it is still in the water, and I have decided that I will pay that expense from the sale of the boat. I would have had him do it already except that he can't get to it for a week or two, so unless you want to move the boat right away, I am officially adding in one in-the-water bottom cleaning for free. However, before too long, it should also really be hauled out of the water and sanded and re-painted with new bottom paint, which will cost about $500 if you do the work yourself or about $1000 if you pay someone else to do the work. That part is not included for free. (2) Second major project is getting a new motor installed or else buying a good long-shaft outboard motor for the outboard motor bracket on the back. Again, get the inboard motor replaced before going on the open ocean, but the outboard option would be fine for bay sailing and getting in and out of port in mild weather. (3) The boat needs a new electric panel installed. You can see the hole in the bulkhead behind the ice-box in one of the kitchen pictures where the circuit breaker used to be. The former owner was upgrading it, but apparently never got the new box and thereby never re-installed it. This is a simple project with very basic electrical skills, but it will take a number of hours with a voltage probe and alligator clips and a 12 volt marine battery to figure out which wires power what and then re-connecting them to the breakers in the new box. For an expert electrician its probably a one or two day project. For someone who is reading Nigel Calder's book on marine electrical wiring as they go and who has never done anything like that before estimate it may take you five days or a week. The good news is that 95% of it can be done by anyone who is smart enough to have ever made a B in Algebra or Chemistry (Did I make a "B", I cant remember?) The other 5% may be complicated circuits that you can't figure out and that you will want to leave till last and then hire a professional marine electrician for a couple hours to help you get it sorted out. The good news is that once you have done this work yourself you will have a much b better idea what wires go to what and how the electrical system in your boat works so that if you ever have to fix something while cruising you will know just how to do it. Other than these three big costly and/or time-consuming projects the rest of the stuff is pretty minor and the boat can be be used just fine while you are tacking little projects here and there. The first project is the exception because even though it is a small project and is super easy, it needs to be done before I consider the boat safe to sail. Someone put cotter pins in all the turnbuckles and didn't cut them off short or bend them out of the way. This is a big hazzard because as you walk around deck you can catch your clothing or skin on these cotter pin tips and make tears in your clothing or in your skin. This is dangerous when sailing, so all the cotter pins need to be unbent, removed with needle nose pliers and trimmed to the right length and re-inserted so they don't catch clothes or cut people. While you are at it the side stay turn-buckles need to be tightened because the side stays (which are very solid and stout stainless standing rigging in good condition by the way) all need to be tightened until they are good and "twangy" like a guitar string. The roller furler needs a new plastic cover. This is just a matter of removing screws and taking the old one off and replacing it with the new part ordered from Harken out of their parts catalogue. This is more cosmetic than functional, but it will help the boat look better. I have noticed that the toilet in the back head and maybe also the one in the front head have plastic tubes disconnected. It looks like the previous owner was upgrading to brand new clear plastic flex tube but never completed the task. The good news is the pipes look mostly clean and new which is much better than having a bunch of old s#@tty (pardon the French) pipes, but bad news is you can't flush till you get that re-connected. Also, I said before that both heads have showers. Upon closer look, I see that the front head is set up with a shower floor to be able to install or re-install a shower, but the shower itself has never yet been plumbed in. So at least till that upgrade is made the boat has two toilets but only one stand up shower. Ropes and sails all need scrubbing. The sails need to be taken down, spread on the dock or mowed lawn and scrubbed with detergent water and a Scotch Brite pad and so do about half of the ropes because their is algae that has discolored them since they were last used. My wife and I have scrubbed and cleaned about half the ropes but the other half still need to be done. There are some stains on the gel-coat ceiling that need scrubbing or bleaching. The previous owner used a hull cleaner with a purple dye in it to spray onto the ceiling and didn't wipe it off properly as they were supposed to do. This led to colored drips of purple dye that dried on the gel-coat ceilings and it takes a lot of elbow grease with a scotch brite pad and Simple Green spray to remove these. That's the bad news. The good news is that the ceilings inside the boat are all gel-coat fiberglass that is really easyto maintain and doesn't trap mildew or mold the way the plywood ceilings in many sailboats do. Also the cushion covers have small stains and could be taken off and washed or dry cleaned. Cushion covers all look to be in good shape but just slightly stained. The salon table can be taken apart with quick release system and turned into a third double bed when necessary. However, the salon cushions make up most of the cushions for this bed but it looks to me that there needs to be another cushion made to fill the gap in the middle if you use the dining table for a third bed because the salon cushions alone will not cover the entire bed. This is only an issue if you want the boat to be able to sleep 6 rather than four. Also I have noticed that for starlit sleeping on deck or napping during passages the cockpit is formed so that two people five foot eleven or shorter can easily stretch out fully and sleep on the blue cushions in the cockpit (up on deck). The electric anchor windlass has a really nice length of anchor chain which you can see in one of the V-Berth photos. It looks like a great anchor chain for serious cruising, a very important and costly upgrade when you consider that West Marine charges $300 for an anchor that size with only 15 feet of chain (highly inadequate for cruising FYI). The electric windlass on deck is like a $1000 or $2000 system new and it comes with a plus-in remote control that is practically brand new and still has its box. However, the on-deck switches for using the windlass without the remote control look like they will work and the buttons depress, but the red rubber diaphrams that keep water out of the switches have deteriorated in the ultraviolet light. That should be replaced before doing cruising in salt water where the water will splash on deck because salt water inside the switches cant be a good thing. This should be just a replacement part from the electric windlass company I think. A couple pieces of waterproof aluminum foil tape from Home Depot duct-work section would do the trick to keep the salt water out until you get new diaphrams ordered. Again, since the electric system has no breaker box I have not been able to test any of the electronics and everything is sold as is. Everything seems in good shape from a visual inspection but you wont know for sure till you get a new breaker installed and test each thing out. As for the electronics package it is untested, but the equipment looks practically brand new. There is a huge, (like 300 page) manual about all the electronic systems of radar, depth sounder, wind indicator and all that and the package that all that gear came in is still in the aft cabin. All the electronics look really good though and they seem to have been kept inside their water-proof covers since they were installed. This is about a $8000 electronics package if you purchased it new and installed it as it looks like the previous owner did. All told, if everything works, it looks like there is about $15K worth of essential cruising equipment already installed on the boat if you were to have to pay for it new. This includes newish water cooling system, singer air conditioner (at least I think that is what thas thing is), radar and radar display, wind indicator and wind vane, depth sounder, VHF Marine Radio, Harken Roller Furling System and Electric Anchor Windlass. The latches on the bathroom doors were removed and the doors need new latches. The lockers all need to be scrubbed out to get rid of mildew and perhaps painted with marine white paint to freshen them up. There are stains on the kitchen counters and also rust circles where someone left varnish cans sitting on shelves and the moisture made the cans rust and leave stains. You can use your discretion how much of this needs new paint or new counter-tops since it is mostly a cosmetic issue rather than a practical problem. Also, the hull cleaner with the dye in it was spilled and got on the door frames of the wet locker closet by the V-Berth. You can see that in the photos. Those door frames will need to be sanded down and re-stained to remove the stains from the spilled hull-cleaner with the dye. There may be a few other minor issues that I haven't noticed or forgot to mention, but I think this is most of the important stuff so that everyone can be fully informed bidders. Like I said before, every boat is a project boat, and this boat has a few projects that need to be done, but compared to many boats that have serious structural issues or problems with mast or rigging or rotten decks and things like that, everything here seems pretty easy to tackle. Again, its not a perfect boat. It has its imperfections and minor issues to fix up, but it is a great solid world cruiser that is worth the investment of time and money to do a full restoration of her. That cannot be said of all old sailboats, and it's not even true of all newer sailboats. So I hope this fine diamond in the rough goes to a loving new owner who will take care of her with the pride and care that a great ocean going vessel truly deserves. Thanks again for looking, and good luck bidding. All the best, William