1987 President Double Cabin Motor Yacht — Tarpon Springs, FL 34689

A 1987 President 41 Double Cabin lying at Tarpon Springs, Florida, asking $52,495 — the bottom rung of the $50k–$200k motoryacht ladder, and the rung where the arithmetic is most startling. Two staterooms, two heads, a saloon, a flybridge and a Burma teak interior, for the price of a new family SUV. President Marine of Taiwan shipped these across the Pacific by the hundred in the 1980s import wave, and the powerboat guides of the day rated the 41 one of the better ones: solid fiberglass semi-displacement hull, deep forefoot, a long keel standing guard over the running gear, marine-grade lumber where lesser imports hid scrap wood.

The layout is why these boats keep becoming somebody's address. The owner's cabin is aft — a real room, with its own head — the second cabin forward, also en suite, and the saloon between them wears more hand-fitted teak than anything built this century under $500k. Owners on the trawler forums report satisfaction with the construction and the ride in tight quarters; the same threads write the survey list with equal candor. The teak decks are screwed down over cored decks, and forty years of bungs and caulk decide whether that core is dry. The fuel tanks are black iron — steel — and rust from the outside where you cannot see. The trunk-cabin side windows are famously small and famously stubborn, and surveyors note the original electrical panel put two shore inlets behind a single 30-amp main, one of them unprotected. Good construction and a hard survey list are both true at once, and both send the moisture meter to the same decks.

The money nearby frames the choice. The same two-cabin idea with an American accent — and Chris-Craft's name on the bow — costs $14,005 more:

Spending $16,505 more buys one engine instead of two, half the speed, and an ocean-crossing hull:

And a decade-newer take on the aft-cabin promise, with glass decks and no teak to feed, asks $22,505 more:

If two real bedrooms afloat at hatchback money is the point, start where the ladder starts:

Sources: PowerBoat Guide (President 41 Double Cabin, 1982–87); Trawler Forum owner threads on the President 41 and 37; Boatshed brokerage description of the type.