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From patriotnews.com The Old Babe
My dad used to say about buying used cars that it was dumb to look for a Ford, Chevy or other particular brand. Instead, he said, "you should go for the one with the least mileage, regardless of brand." It's good advice, and a couple of times I've saved a few bucks by driving a Dodge or Plymouth. Boats are different though. Unlike cars, which all have four wheels that go round, boats use power and cover distance in a variety of ways, with each way enjoying advantages and disadvantages and serving a wide range of purposes. Most boats are a compromise favoring either speed or range and every type is affordable according to your wallet and the boat's age and condition. Brokers offer literally thousands of boats of all types and ages. If you want a particular type of boat, you can find it. That was me. I didn't want to shop around for the best deal. I knew what I wanted. I wanted a King 44 with a sound hull, solid engines and a decent price. Knowing what you want is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that it makes the search easier but bad in the sense that you will inevitably pay more than you would for a similar boat that's more widely available. And Kings were only made for a few years. Bob's Babe, with hull number 04144, was one of the first Kings built. Why the King? Kings are strong.
Kings are fast. From the beginning, Kingscraft advertising emphasized their speed. They didn't even call their craft houseboats, but rather "home cruisers." What you're looking at here is the business side of the finest large "performance" houseboat hull ever constructed. Her full length central keel gives her extraordinary straight line stability and her fine, low rise entry spreading quickly to a flat bottom makes her plane more readily than some bass boats. Her bottom is covered with 3/16th inch aluminum and her sides with 1/8th inch. Dry, with twin Chrysler 318s and a 7.5 kw Koehler generator the 44 weighs in at 14,000 pounds (Kingscraft factory image). That's somewhere between three and five tons lighter than comparable glass boats. The factory says a King 44 should run an honest 30 miles per hour at wide open throttle. How many 44 foot glass cruisers or fishermen can say the same thing? Kings are economical. I have been unable to find anything from the factory with specific mileage claims beyond, "nothing beats lightweight aluminum construction for making sure you get the most out of every gallon." Obviously, a seven ton boat with similar hull and propulsion should outperform one of ten or eleven tons. The only thing I've seen that quantified mileage was an anecdotal claim by the owner of a 41 foot King that he could make thirteen knots at fifteen hundred RPM and six gallons an hour. If I can match that with the old Babe, or even come within 25% of it, she will be perfect for my needs. How to buy a boat? There's an old Army saying that says there's a right way to do things, a wrong way to do things and the Army way to do things. I feel certain that there's likewise a right way and a wrong way to buy a boat. But I'm not going to tell you the right way. The fact is that I am no kind of marine sales expert. I only know what I did. What I'll describe here is the way I bought a boat, right or wrong ;-) I'm also not going to discuss other kinds of boats, except perhaps by way of comparing relative performance. Open cockpit boats and express cruisers come in more brands, types and at a wider range of prices than automobiles. I'm going to restrict my discussion to houseboats. In terms of getting the most bang for the buck, I'm sure that my first priority was wrong, that is, looking for not only a particular kind of boat, but for a particular brand, especially one that's been out of manufacture for more years than many readers are old. Unless, like me, you share a fascination for a particular brand of boat, you have only one basic choice to make, lake boat or river boat. River boat or lake boat? You'll have way more choice and flexibility if you just want to cruise Dale Hollow or the Tennessee/Cumberland lakes. There are literally dozens of marinas and brokers and every day there are dozens of houseboats for sale at prices from cheap to more than you paid for your house. Most are close enough that you can visit and inspect boats in five, six or more marinas in a single weekend. You'll have enough choice that you can strike an attractive deal almost anywhere you go. And they'll all be fine for the lakes. Lake boats. Typically, the older lake boats will have steel hulls and outboard power. Newer ones are often aluminum with small displacement inboards and outdrives. Because these boats are designed to operate in quiet pools and lakes, they are often considerably larger than river boats. Some are simply huge, featuring amenities including hot tubs and water slides. None of these boats would be safe on the Mississippi below St. Louis or on any other fast flowing river. River boats. River houseboats are a distinct type. And since form follows function, they usually look alike, especially in silhouette. They range upward from 36 feet or so to around 55 feet. They generally have a raised salon with a step down to the galley, head and rear cabin. They often have cuddies under the foredeck. They're usually powered by twin V8s with Vee drives. The Kingscraft was the first of the type to feature all aluminum construction. Burnscraft and Nautaline may have been the first glass boats of the type. The Nautaline, like the Kingscraft, featured a modified vee hull with a fine entry giving way to a flat planing bottom. The Burnscraft used a modified tri-hull entry with a fast flat bottom. Modern boats of the type can be easily mistaken for the earlier boats. The Holiday Mansion and Harbormaster lines are based on the Burnscraft hull. The Pluckebaum yachts being sold today ride on a hull that's pretty much identical to the King's and its general appearance, minus the flush deck, is still very much like the earlier boats. All of these boats, old and new, are powerful enough to be capable of safely navigating the Mississippi at high water and of attaining cruiser like speeds of 30 miles per hour or more. Any one of these boats, with sufficient fuel and good water, is capable of easily running from St Louis to Paducah in six hours. Finding your houseboat. Once you've decided what type of boat you want, you'll face one more very basic but very difficult choice ... glass or metal? If you want a river boat, it's really a choice between glass and aluminum. Though boats of this type with steel hulls can be found, the early River Queens, for example, they are simply too heavy for rapid passages over long distances. If you have plenty of money, your choice will probably resolve to a new glass Gibson or a new aluminum Pluckebaum. The best place to shop. The best place to shop is always in your backyard, if you have water close by. If not, the internet offers the best chance for a thorough search, whether you're looking for a particular brand or simply the most bang for the buck. If you're buying a lake boat, remember that you're stuck there and that moving a boat from Dale Hollow to the closest point on the Tennessee River (I priced it) is close to three thousand dollars to move a little more than a hundred miles. If you're buying a boat that's located on the river, and are willing to move it (on the river system) if necessary to get where you want to be, you have a little more latitude. The boat I finally bought is in Portage Des Sioux, Missouri, about five hours away from my home in Muncie, Indiana. Since I plan on spending a lot of time underway, St. Louis is an excellent starting point for my travels, offering perhaps the best river boating in the country, with the Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri all within a few minutes of home port, and the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee all within a day's run. Know what you want to spend. Know what you want to spend. Know how much you can afford to spend. And whether you're buying a new boat or an older boat, plan on spending more than you anticipated, especially if you are enamoured of a particular brand or type. I had planned to spend twenty to twenty five thousand to buy my boat and to invest another ten thousand in repairs and renovations. When I take final delivery, hopefully next week, I will have spent a little more than fifty thousand. On the one hand, that's more than I planned on spending. On the other hand, the boat's mechanicals should be as strong as a new boat. In the end, I have my Kingscraft 44, with a sound bottom and solid engines and I spent about twenty five percent more than I'd planned. I don't usually do as well buying cars ;-) Use a broker. Brokers are like wide area car dealers. They offer not only boats in or near their harbors but also boats in distant ports all across the country. If you don't see what you want on their internet pages, send them email telling them what you want. They'll find it for you. Don't let anyone tell you that "all brokers are dishonest." While I'm sure that some are I'd guess they are a small minority since it's not in their best interests to deliberately screw you over or to withhold information you should know. Unlike cars, which disperse all over the city and state after purchase, boats, especially big boats, tend to locate in one of several small, local and insular communities of boat owners from whence he will inevitably draw future customers and sales ... or not. My boat, for example, is going back to her original harbor where she's well known. This isn't to say that you should not be cautious. Caveat Emptor always applies when you're contemplating the expenditure of thousands of dollars. But really, if you don't know anything at all about what you're purchasing and what it costs on the market, you should probably put your money in CDs and rent a boat rather than buying one. I spent about six months looking at boats on the internet. My available funds limited me to older boats or smaller boats. I inquired about three or four Burnscrafts, a couple of Nautalines and two or three Kings, all handled by different brokers. In every case my inquiries were promptly answered and no one tried to sell me more boat than I wanted or to steer me to a different type of boat. And none sent me tons of email once I'd decided to move on. Bob's Babe was brokered by Luttrell Marine, located at the St. Louis Yacht Club. I dealt with Dick Luttrell (email), a very helpful gentleman about whom my only complaint is that he drives too fast for a one-eyed old man to comfortably keep up on the back roads between marinas ;-) Knowing that I was coming from Indiana, he offered to meet me at the airport. When I told him I'd drive instead, he made an appointment and was Johnny on the spot, ready to do business. He was business like, answered all my questions and after I made a deposit on the boat made sure that when I came down with the final check that he had all the paperwork completed and ready. If you're looking for a boat of any kind, let me recommend that you check in with Dick at Luttrell Marine. Have the boat surveyed. If you're like the average large boat buyer you probably don't know a lot about mechanical systems, propulsion systems, sanitary systems, electrical systems and the like. If that's you, regardless of the price of the boat you should have it surveyed to cover your own shortcomings. Even if you're comfortable with your own expertise, if you're buying an older boat have it surveyed in order to avoid problems with insurance. You can find surveyors listed on the internet. If you're buying from a broker or dealer, they'll know several who are handy and qualified. My boat was surveyed by David Haas, of Attitude Adjusters Yacht Survey in St. Louis. His work was prompt, complete and I had no problem securing the level of insurance coverage I wanted to purchase. David doesn't have a website yet, but you can reach him at 314-705-3785. Now that you've bought it, fix it! It would be unreasonable to expect a thirty five year old boat to be in perfect mechanical condition. I had no such expectation and had in fact planned to spend ten thousand dollars or so "refreshing" the boat's mechanicals. The survey had noted several items that on first glance looked to be within my budget. Dick Luttrell had already spoken to John Bloch, of Bloch Marine, to arrange an estimate to repair the items noted by the surveyor. Before meeting with John we'd had the boat out for a water test. Both engines and the generator started promptly and ran strongly. We brought her up on plane and ran her for fifteen minutes or so with no signs of problems. When I met with John a short time later, I had in hand the survey he had used as a starting point. There were four major items, the vee drives, the flybridge steering and a bottom job. The survey suggested, John assumed, and I concurred, since I'd just run the boat fairly hard, that the problems with the leaking vee drives were just worn seals, at about fifteen hundred bucks each. Likewise the survey suggested, John assumed and I concurred, that the steering problem could be solved with a new cable, also at about fifteen hundred bucks. I left for Muncie confident that my boat was in good hands and that I was on schedule for the spring season well within my budget.
Then Murphy showed up. I'd expected him of course and wasn't too surprised when it turned out that the port vee drive was bad. But I was disappointed when it turned out that the starboard side was likewise not economically repairable. By the time I got that news I'd already spent a good many hours convincing myself that were no used "Precision Vee-Glide" drives available anywhere in the United States. (Recently, after examining the very complete maintenance records that were in the boat's file cabinet, I found that the previous owner had been faced with the same problem in 1994, and had luckily found a used drive).
That used drive accounts for another expensive problem that developed soon after the engines were pulled, one that required a new prop shaft to safely remedy. It appears that the boat's previous owner did his own maintenance. He even constructed and installed the flybridge. But when he installed the replacement vee drive it had a longer jack shaft that he compensated for with a collar so long that it blocked the shaft packing, requiring that the boat be pulled to repack the shaft. The double whammy of the vee drives and the new prop shaft was the one thing I hadn't counted on. But it became a triple whammy. The steering cable for a boat this size was no longer available. An estimated $4,500 worth of repairs had become instead $10,500. And my budget was irretrievably busted. That wasn't my worst worry, though. From the beginning I didn't worry about the engines. Chrysler 318s are ubiquitous in the large houseboat and cruiser world. There's hardly a marina in America unable to answer any problem to be encountered with the engines. The drives are different. The engine down angle and shaft up angles must meet in precision alignment. The slightest deviation can result in catastrophic failures. Moreover, there are only a handful of manufacturers of similar drives these days and none that I'd found on my own looked even remotely adaptable to my boat or affordable to my wallet. I was afraid I'd run into a problem only soluble by extensive custom machining beyond my ability to finance. It's also the kind of job a lot of shops would shun going in, judging it to be beyond their capabilities. For that reason alone it's fortunate that my boat was at Bloch Marine. Had it been elsewhere I might have had to tow it there at even more expense. It took John a day or two but he found a source for affordable Crusader vees and was able to fabricate mounts suitable to the angles. I saw the installations a couple of weeks ago and they are pristine. In fact, while there I looked over everything done up to this point and found nothing of which to complain. All the work was neatly and professionally done. I can't recommend Bloch Marine too highly. John's been in this business for a long, long time. He doesn't know it yet, but he was mentioned in a Venetian Harbor Newsletter I found in my boat's files as a hero of sorts during the 1992 floods, largely responsible for saving Venetian's repair facilities and preserving customer vessels. I've had a number of previous incarnations, including three years as a casualty insurance adjustor, responsible for negotiating mechanical repairs of all kinds in dozens of shops of all kinds all around Indiana. John Bloch and his staff are as professional as any I've encountered. I'm ready to float my boat. When I last spoke with John, he thought he could complete the job by the fifteenth of June. That's this coming Wednesday and I hope he makes it and that the weather is good. I haven't heard to the contrary and don't want to jinx the date by calling to confirm his progress ;-) I guess that in closing, I should point out that, vee drives and steering aside, a lot of what I've had done would probably fit comfortably within the category of overkill, or excess caution. The engines and drives had to be pulled do deal with fluid leaks and the generator as well, to attend to the greasy bilge. But with an eye toward outwitting Murphy and circumventing his law, I decided that since the pans had to come off to replace the gaskets, that would be a good time to invest a few hundred bucks extra to replace the oil pumps. Likewise with the raw water pumps and fuel pumps ... better to do it now than break down underway and those items are items that inevitably fail in every application. Likewise, as a safety measure, I installed automatic extinguishers in the engine compartment and between the fuel tanks. Not necessary, but not huge expenditures and certainly desirable. I estimate that some four thousand dollars of my bill falls into that category.
I'll report again after I've taken delivery of the boat and run some performance tests. You'll find those comments, pictures and other items in the Logbook of Bob's Babe in upcoming weeks. The first trip I propose to undertake is a cruise from St. Louis to the Kaskaskia river. If you're a boat owner or enthusiast, especially one living in the St. Louis area, please feel free to join our "Mississippi Mud" boating forum. It's a brand new state of the art place to meet and share information about boating in general, and of particular interest to me, a rookie riverman, boating around St. Louis. I'll need all the help I can get trying to stay out of trouble.
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MUNCIE, Ind. (patriotnews.com) If you're in the market for a houseboat or large cruiser, or even thinking about being in the market, you might want to read on. This website will chronicle the process whereby I became the proud owner of what many folks in the early seventies thought was a mythical creature, a houseboat that would run fast enough to pull skiers, cover 200 or more miles a day and economical enough to do it on a single fill up.
Why the King? I heard someone say once that "they're built like tanks." He meant that they're immensely strong, constructed entirely of marine grade aluminum. But they're not built like tanks. Their construction is more ship like, with massive welded aluminum stringers and cross members and a heavy central keel supporting a deck platform of sturdy welded aluminum (Kingscraft factory image). There's no glass encapsulated wood to wick up water from a scratch through the gel coat and rot, trashing the integrity of the hull. 
Bear in mind that I'd told John that my purpose was extended cruising and that I wanted to fix anything mechanical that looked like potential trouble underway. 
There remains only a bit more to be done to complete every detail. The superstructure needs to be repainted. I trust that with three brothers and four sons, surely I shoud be able to arrange that little chore over a weekend of good weather. As for the cabin, I don't think I'll do much with it this season, if at all. It's adequate and needs only a good cleaning and some wood polish on the paneling. (Note the foot rail and arm rail on the bar ... real brass). I also count two daughters, two nieces and six granddaughters among my offspring. I likewise trust that I can count on at least a couple of them to take care of the elbow work in the cabin ;-)