Someone wrote and asked me what I thought of an older Columbia 34 selling for cheap the other day…
It’s not a bad boat at all.
Of course, being cheap with an asking price of less than $7K (around 62-cents a pound) makes it a whole lot more interesting as well.
Even if you needed to spend a month on the hard to replace some interior or a bulkhead, throw some new chainplates and rigging on, buy a couple of new sails and paint, it’s still going to be a great bang for the buck.
From what I gather and judging from the fact that it’s already been converted to using an outboard (that apparently works) with a well, has a Monitor selfsteering, and seems to have some excellent ground tackle, it’s a very tempting project… Made even better by its shoal draft.
Doing a quick search of Craig’s list, I see that there are actually quite a few Columbia 34’s (a couple of different models though) ranging from free (without a mast) to what appears to be a pretty much turnkey boat for $10K, So, $6500 might actually be a kiss high for the boat in question but it does show that the Columbia 34 is something of a must look at for aspiring VolksCruisers.
You could certainly do a lot worse.