My husband and I have been shopping for a good quality affordable pilothouse boat. We looked at 51' 2000 Ocean Alexander and will be looking at a 55' Altima soon along with another 51' OA 2003. Seems that Ocean Alexander's have issue's with Gelco cracking but besides that it seems like it may be a quality boat? Any input on either boat would be great!
We had OA 66' was wonderful boat and well build. At sea was marvelous. I'm sure later I will have other one. Hugues
I'm not a fan of the Altima. I previewed one on Florida about 18 months ago and I see that it is still for sale today. Level of finish was IMHO not up to par with other similarly configured models. My customers ended up buying a 56' Symbol that they are very pleased with.
Whats the deal with all this gelcoat cracking. We too are searching for the same type vessel. We looked at 3 54/56 Symbols, all 3 had gelcoat cracking and crazing everywhere. Our broker recommended we look at offshore. We traveled quite far to see one but returned disappointed since it also had gelcoat cracking! They were all built early to mid 2000's, perhaps thats the commonality? We haven't looked at any OA's yet. The Flemings look great but we want to be able to regularly cruise in the mid upper teens.
Not sure on the OA's but in that year range several quality sportfish builders like Viking, Cabo, and Post got a bad run of Gelcoat. I believe it was from a place like Cook Composits. Those boats in that early 2000 year range are notorious for cracking and most adds will refer to some boats as "already painted" since painting one can be tens of thousands of dollars. Guessing this is the same issue but guessing others can provide more detail.
I agree gelcoat cracking is an issue with early 2000's on many boats. We are still looking, some require too much work and some are just too expensive. Flemings are classic but just so expensive