INVESTIGATOR 563

Think you'll find Marauder is the name of the boat. The boat is a Manitou 32

It does peak my interest, wonder how much room in the aft cabin. Either lock the kids in there or have an escape room.

Hi Luke. The lack of side deck at the rear cabin area creates a very roomy interior. Cheers

...... but the canoe stern takes all of that space away.

I've been aboard a Manitou 32 at dock several times, and a few salty yarns ensued

One major point that came up was that these boats are too "tender" - this means the bilge cross-sections are "too Slack", they don't have enough buoyancy in them, it results in a boat heeling over far too easily. I noticed that when stepping off the gunwale onto the dock, the Manitou's gunwale rose up noticeably, a few inches. (on other big keelers i've stepped on/off it never budged)

These boats always seem to sell far cheaper on the 2nd hand market too, could be a reason why.? It's a fault that can never be modified out. Never was a fan of aft cabins on 32 footers or shorter either, just not enough room in either end. (this begins to disappear in well designed 35 footers, best suits 40 fter or longer, handy having large engine room more centralised under cockpit).

The Manitou 32 supposedly sold 100+boats. The person behind them was John Biddlecombe and according to a Rob Mundle bio the production was underway in 6 weeks. Now, I was in the boat building business in those days and to design and build a boat from scratch took months to years. Word around the traps was that it was cobbled together by using sections of existing boats and putting it altogether - may explain the tenderness issue mentioned. For the life of me I cant remember any canoe-sterned production boats of the era so maybe the stern is the bow of something - just sayin'

Boat design is a science once you get above tender size and even then some tenders are better than others. There was a story in Afloat magazine years ago about a large wedge shaped hull on a sailing boat that sat unused in Sydney Harbour for years . The triangular cross sectional shape obviously had little resistance to water (speed wise) due to its narrow section and would have been a flyer but was extremely unstable under sail . An unfortunate experiment.

Similarly I used to kayak past a large power boat moored in LM years ago. Tall, magnificent looking thing we’ll executed. Locals I talked to told me apparently it had been scaled down from a U.S. Coast guard cutter or such, but the half width beam was not compatible with the half length hull and the boat was inherently unstable. The owner had removed the fly bridge at one point to attempt to lower the cg but eventually it disappeared from the mooring. A shame.

One of the great things about boats is anyone with a lump of wood or composite , a pot of glue and pulse can cobble one together and have fun without big brother sticking his nose in, unlike cars. Using such on the open sea when life and limb is involved is another matter I guess.