2001 Bayliner 3988 Command Bridge Motoryacht — Fort Myers, FL 33901

A 2001 Bayliner 3988 Command Bridge Motoryacht at Fort Myers, Florida, asking $89,988 — the top of this ladder, and the boat whose price is an essay on reputation. Bayliner's name was damaged in the 1980s by cheap runabouts, and owners of the motoryacht series have spent decades pointing out, correctly by most accounts, that the big boats never deserved the tar. The market never fully listened, which is the buyer's opportunity: the 3988 (built 1995–2002) delivers two staterooms, two heads, a step-up galley with a proper three-burner oven, a salon that seats six, and helm stations both below and on the bridge, at money that buys considerably less boat wearing prouder badges. Many carried twin Cummins diesels from the factory — establish what this one carries before anything else, because it moves the value by a wide margin.

The owner community documents the model's habits with unusual honesty. Overpropped boats — a known factory tendency — run hot and have cooked head gaskets; the owners' fix is a pitch down from 22x24 to 22x21, and surveyors check WOT rpm for exactly this. Early hulls had a flybridge floor weakness, largely sorted by this 2001 build. Boats with the larger engines drew reports of exhaust soot on the transom, which actual owners then disputed — a genuine collision in the record, and the cheap resolution is a sea trial long enough to look at your own wake. The hull is tall-sided and takes beam winds personally around docks, and it is a coastal cruiser, not a passagemaker: honest at what it is.

What sits below it on the ladder is the argument for and against stretching. The same two-stateroom promise without the second helm, four years older, costs $14,988 less:

The opposite philosophy — half the speed, ten times the horizon — costs $20,988 less:

And the fast, low, gasoline version of forty-one feet costs $34,993 less:

If the plan is a floating home with a view from the bridge and diesel range for the whole coast, spend the badge prejudice — it is the discount that pays for the boat:

Sources: Bayliner Owners Club threads on the 3988 (propping, flybridge floors, soot reports); boats.com and brokerage walkthroughs of the 3988 layout; Trawler Forum discussion of the model.