In March 2017, we purchased Y-Not, a 1999 Bayliner 4788.
Our original intentions were to slowly explore the American Great Loop seasonally over a few years. Reality has been, we just love cruising and are enjoying 'generally' following the Loop going at our own pace. If we ever complete? Hooray. If we don't? Who cares.
Y-Not will be our 'summer' home as we slowly explore the American Great Loop, and Zephyr (our 1961 vintage bus conversion that has been our full time nomadic home since 2011) will become our 'winter' home parked in the south to return to warmth as we cruise northward.
Y-Not is a 1999 Bayliner 4788. She's a 47' 4" long motor yacht with twin screw (twin screw = two propellers) with two Cummins 370 HP engines, bow thruster and a custom hydraulic folding arch that gets us down to a bridge clearance of just under 13'.
Despite Bayliner being regarded as a relatively mass-market focused boat maker, the 4788 was their high-end flagship and the model earned a reputation as a solidly built vessel that has withstood the test of time. Eventually the design was actually migrated to the Meridian brand to present as a more upscale yacht to get away from the 'Barfliner' association.
While pictures may tell a thousand words, video tells even more. Here's a tour of Y-Not, 2 years after we purchased here showing off some of the major upgrades we've done:
General Interior
We have a full post on what lead us to selecting a pilothouse v-berth layout this large, when we were originally specifically interested in a 38' - 42' aft cabin sun-deck style. But it was in large part the smooth flowing layout and wide open views of the 4788 that won our hearts.
We kinda neglected to take a lot of photos of the interior of Y-Not, so thank you Pier One Yacht Sales (selling broker) for providing them from the listing to share with you.
The boat has 4 different levels, not including the engine room. Two bedrooms (originally it had three), 2 bathrooms, 6 sinks, 3 air conditioners and 7 heaters. We have five distinct hang out areas onboard - cockpit, flybridge, salon, pilot house and bow.
Suffice it to say, it's a mansion in comparison to our 35' bus.
Upon delivery it was in pretty great shape and pretty darn livable from day one. And we're of course already in progress on making some updates and building our list of projects we want to eventually tackle (yes - lithium, solar, induction and more.)
General Bayliner 4788 Specifications:
Custom Hydraulic Arch
The seller of the boat lived in a canal community that had a fixed 14' bridge to get under. He had modified the boat with a hydraulic folding arch to get the bridge clearance down to 13' with less than 10 minutes worth of effort. PERFECT for doing the entirety of the Great Loop (we want to be able to do the historic western Erie Canal portion, which has a 15' 5" fixed bridge to clear)!
This was a major selling point for us with Y-Not, on top of the owner having taken excellent care of the vessel.
The name Y-Not was also a selling point on our pros & cons lists of boats we were considering. It's the original name of the boat taken from the first owner's name of Tony (Y-Not backwards).
As many alternate names as we could come up with, we just couldn't find anything that would make it worthwhile to go through the efforts to change the name. It's a huge process - between Coast Guard documentation & appeasing the gods.
Y-Not just perfectly summarizes our life philosophy. So, we're keeping it. But we have replaced the original logo with our own.
We'll be making lots of modifications to make Y-Not our own, here's some of the biggies we've done so far:
- Installed 300AH @ 24v of Battle Born lithium ion house batteries & Victron 5000w hybrid inverter
- 1440w of solar panels installed on the flybridge
- Custom TV lift cabinet and corner desk built
- Replaced the generator with a 6k Northern Lights
- All new marine electronics (Garmin) - radar, multi-function display, sonar, forward looking sonar, GPS, VHF.
- Installed a Dinghy Caddy davit system on the swim platform, to hold our Achilles HB310AX inflatable RIB with a Yamaha 9.9HP outboard.
Boat Videos:
