www.iFourWinns.com

For the last month or two I've been considering selling our boat in favor of a larger boat. About two weeks ago I went ahead and posted the boat on Craig's list. I got a handful of responses including two pretty serious ones. One of the responders flew in to Chicago this weekend and left a deposit on the boat. He seems to be very serious and I'm pretty sure my beautiful boat is sold.

I've loved every minute of our boat. We have a 1 year old daughter and frequently are out during the week with friends in the evening. The design of an express has some challenges for my wife and I. Firstly is that it's difficult for my wife to spend much time below deck and my daughter (like every little kid I've ever had on the boat) wants to spend all of her time below deck. When she goes to sleep there's really not a good spot for her to sleep and we're likely to disturb her while she's trying to sleep.

We've made an offer on a Cruisers 4450. It's basically a cross breed between an aft cabin motor yacht and an express. It's a 3 bedroom, two head layout. One of the best things to me about the boat is that it's a 45' boat with a 15' 6" beam. That wide beam makes for nice accommodations throughout the boat.

I couldn't be happier with the boat Four Winns built. They build a great boat and stand behind their product extremely well. I'm hopeful that I'll be as happy with Cruisers' boat as I have been with the Four Winns boat.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

A 4450? Wow, man, that's a house! What year is it? Did you get a good deal? Post pics when you take ownership.

Congratulations on finding a buyer for your 358

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Insane Desire - My 2000 328 Vista...and my state of mind

Thanks for the congrats. It's looking like the most likely candidate is a 2002. I'll be sure to post pics as soon as I take possession. I think I'm going to be able to get a pretty decent deal. These boats have been out there long enough that the first owners have taken a pretty huge depreciation hit already.

I forgot to say that the boat sold incredibly quickly and easily. I think it's a testament to the boat Four Winns builds.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

Does the one you're looking at come with the lower helm station? My wife fell in love with a trawler (Mainship 40), but would only consider it if it had the additional lower helm station. I haven't had the heart...or the nerve...to tell her I'm not really interested in a floating condo at this stage in my life. The 4450 kind of looks like a cross between a large cruiser and a trawler, which I could definitely see myself in.

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Insane Desire - My 2000 328 Vista...and my state of mind

Because of the fairly "express-like" design of the 4450 the only helm is the upper helm. With the design of the boat that helm station isn't all that high. I'm hopeful that this style of boat will serve our various needs and desires well. My wife isn't wild about moving too quickly and we spend much of our time on the Chicago River which is a no wake zone. The big diesels are at their happiest in this type of environment so I'm thinking that should work out well.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

How's the new boat working out this season?

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Great,

We've owned the boat for about 13 months now. In that time I've put just over 400 hours on the engines with very few issues. The biggest was the beginning of this season blowing an exhaust elbow which caused hot exhaust gases to hit the fire suppression system in the engine room and deploy it. That was a fun evening...

The layout of the boat is fantastic. We have a two year old and with the three stateroom layout she has her own room, we have our room and still have a queen stateroom for others to come along. We've taken a couple of week long trips on her and it's worked out really well. Much as I liked my Four Winns the size of this boat just works really well for us. One of the things we were looking for when we moved up was some salon space with decent light and windows so that you could spend time in the salon while underway if necessary. That has worked very well for us, especially when our daughter is napping or needs some time to unwind. She can watch TV or just roll around on the carpet with impunity.

Having now made the conversion from gas to diesel I can tell you that diesel engines are really wonderful things. My 49' long 15' beam inboard boat gets almost the same fuel economy as my stern drive 358 did. The difference in maneuverability is tremendous.

In making the move we went from a 2007 boat to a 2001. I knew that I'd be taking on some additional issues and indeed I did. Since I bought the boat I've had to put a new compressor in the forward state room AC unit (the boat has four AC units so I'll probably get to do that again at some point), replaced the cockpit carpet (went to PlasDeck, a faux teak product), new canvas (man the boat has a lot of canvas), new carpet runners in the salon, new salon TV and a ton of other small updating throughout. With that done I still have a list of things that need doing or fixing... the freshwater and waste tank gauges are erratic (two of each type of tank so four total gauges), the KVH tracvision dish is currently InOp, the salon carpeting probably needs replacing, the caulk has mildew spots in a number of places, bunches of window trim rubber has dried out and needs to replaced, etc. etc. It's an almost nine year old boat now with tons of systems and things to break and need maintenance. It's a labor of love for me but a labor none-the-less.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

sounds like a beauty....would love to see some pics.

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Walter

2003 248 Vista - VP 5.0 GXi
2009 Toyota Tundra SR5 5.7L 4x4

Not sure how old this listing is, but is this the new beauty?

http://www.windycityyachts.com/79.html

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-Tom
2003 298 Vista

That's actually not the boat I bought. I looked at that boat first when I decided a 4450 would be my next boat. Unfortunately that boat isn't in great shape and isn't very seriously marketed. It's been on the market for almost two years with no movement in price. I'll see if I can dig up the listing from my boat. I bought mine in NC and ran it here.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

Great, would love to see the pics. It seems our local market here is very inflated for no apparent reason. The below boat was for sale when I bought mine in August of '07. Still priced higher then what I bought mine for, and mine was in beautiful condition. I think he was at $95,000 back then, completely out of his mind. Our negotiations got a bit heated when I itemized his monthly payments and storage costs and said I bet you don't sell this boat in the next 2 years. I've been very tempted to email them again.

http://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/pl_boat_detail.jsp?&units=Feet&id=1654354&lang=en&slim=broker&&hosturl=eliteyachtbrokerage&&ywo=eliteyachtbrokerage&

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-Tom
2003 298 Vista

Funny that you had that experience. I ended up paying a little under $275,000 for my boat with the hydraulic platform, cockpit AC, washer dryer, Volvo EVC, and a couple other little nice to have options. i was looking at a boat up in the Milwaukee area that was very clean but very lightly equipped. They had the boat listed for $385,000 but they indicated they would offer me good money in trade for my 358. So I decided to head up there and take a look. The boat was indeed very clean, all fresh water and as lightly equipped as I had thought. They did indeed offer me good money for my boat but wouldn't budge below $365,000 for their boat. The owner of the place insisted that I had no idea what I was talking about with the market value of the boat, despite a dozen listings in my hand showing his price was quite high. He also insisted the fresh water boat was worth $65k+ more than any saltwater boat, blah, blah, blah. Our discussions also got a little heated. I suggested that with his attitude I doubted he would ever sell another boat (and by the way he'd had this boat for over a year and a half at this point). Two months later I found out that Cruisers pulled his dealership and the bank foreclosed on all the boats he had. I didn't realize quite how prophetic I might be.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

How do you like your 4450?

I just sent a friend of mine in Panama one of them that was a freshwater boat here locally. It does ~ok in heavy water, but I wouldn't want to get caught in a storm

Here are some pics and a short running video

http://www.tuningconcepts.com/Cars/Tony ... rs%204450/

Incidentally, This one that I picked up had the lower helm station as well.

Justin

Ben:

Congrats on the new boat. I am a first-timer and down in River City and when I first posted you were very gracious re helping me through the locks. Well, I have been through them several times and enjoyed the 4th. I hope to see you in your new boat at some point this summer.

Justin,

Couldn't be happier. The boat you picked up looks great. The lower helm is a really intriguing feature. There are times when it would be great to have the lower helm but for the rest of those times I'm not sure I'd want to give up the dinette and general space down below. Incidentally seeing your friend's made me wonder exactly how the lower helm fit in and what space it took up. So I decided to go look at all the 4450s posted on Yacht World. Of the 20 something out there not one has the lower helm.

As far as how the boat runs, it's a very broad hull without a particularly deep v or sharp entry. It does indeed run okay in rougher stuff but not exactly it's forte.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels