Originally Posted by
st.tully
Last year I went thru a similar search and looked at Hatts, Berts and Vikings from 41 to 48 feet with a total budget of 300k. I'm in North Carolina and looked at examples from Maryland to Florida.
I chose a 1986 45 Hatt that had been repowered with QSM 11 535hp. Her longtime owner had rebuild the 692's once and when they were ready for another he went for a repower and refit. The work was done by Sonny Middleton at Dog River Marine in 2001/2002.
I can not tell you how happy I have been with my choice. Performance wise I have a 25/26 knot cruise burning 36 gph - top at 30/31 burning 52 gph. My run to the Gulfstream from Wrightsville Beach is about 65 miles - for a full 15 hour day we seem to always burn about 200 gal's and we are running as fast as the conditions will allow.
The QSM11 535hp engines are supposed to be 10,000 hours before rebuild. No smoke and a vastly quieter than the DD's. When I first bought the boat I thought that I wanted the 660hp engines and looked into the upgrade - the cost was $5000 per - and involved injectors, turbos and computer programing. I'm glad that I stayed at 535 as I couldn't actually use the extra speed and don't want to burn any more fuel.
If I had to do it all over again, I would do it exactly the same. I'm coming up on one year of ownership and have absolutely no remorse. We fished almost every NC Marlin Tournament plus a month up at Oregon Inlet and plan on the same for 2009.
Good luck in your search!!!