Grand Banks 36 Classic

This is a deeply researched owner's companion to the Grand Banks 36 Classic, written by people who love these boats. It is not a factory service manual, and it is not a substitute for a qualified surveyor or mechanic. Before you use a single fact in these pages, do one thing first: positively identify which Grand Banks 36 you actually own, because "a GB36" is really several very different boats wearing the same graceful lines.

1.1 What this book is, and what it isn't

The Grand Banks 36 is one of the most beloved recreational trawlers ever built, and one of the most misunderstood. It was in production for roughly forty years, built in wood and then in fiberglass, in Hong Kong and then Singapore and then Malaysia, as a single-screw long-range cruiser and as a faster twin. American Marine Ltd. even changed the hull material silently, engineering the fiberglass boats to look identical to the wood ones, so that "it is impossible to tell that a well-maintained 1972 Grand Banks 36 is made of wood and a 1973 model is fiberglass" (source: denisonyachtsales.com). That single sentence is the reason this book opens the way it does.

This book is a companion: a place to understand your boat's history, its systems, its known weaknesses, and the questions worth asking before you spend money. We have chased every claim to a source, and we tell you when the sources disagree.

This book is not a few things, and it is important to be honest about them up front:

• It is not a factory service manual. We do not reproduce torque specs, wiring diagrams, or step-by-step overhaul procedures for your specific hull. Where a job is safety-critical, we tell you what to know and then send you to the manufacturer's documentation and a professional.
• It is not a substitute for a surveyor. A marine surveyor who knows these boats, ideally one who knows wood boats if yours is pre-1973, will find things no book can. Buy the survey. Read it. Argue with it.
• It is not a substitute for a mechanic or a certified marine electrician. Anything involving fuel, exhaust, through-hulls, or the DC system deserves qualified hands.

1.2 How to use this book

Read this chapter first, all the way through, and complete the "know your hull" checklist below. Everything downstream depends on it. After that, the book is built to be dipped into: engine and propulsion, electrical, fuel, steering, plumbing, and a frank chapter on known issues and what surveyors look for.

Throughout, you will see a recurring phrase: "typical -- verify against your vessel." We mean it literally. These boats are fifty to sixty years into a life of refits, repowers, rewiring, and re-tanking, and no two are identical. When we describe a system, we are describing the common arrangement, not a promise about your boat. First uses of specialized terms are marked for the glossary so you can find them again.

1.3 The most important idea in this book: identify YOUR boat

Before anything else, establish exactly which GB36 you have. There are four questions that change almost everything about maintenance, parts, value, and risk. Get them wrong and you will buy the wrong parts, budget for the wrong problems, and read the wrong half of this book.

1. Wood or fiberglass?

The GB36 began in the 1965 model year as a wood boat: Philippine mahogany carvel planking on sawn frames, hand-built in Hong Kong. Around 1973 the boat transitioned to hand-laid fiberglass. The sources place the changeover slightly differently and we will not pretend to a precision they don't support: some say "mid-1973," some "late 1973, ahead of the 1974 model year," and one respected history says fiberglass began "in 1974" at the new Singapore factory [CONFLICT]. The safe framing is that the switch happened around the 1973/1974 model-year boundary -- wood through the 1973 model year, glass from 1974 -- and you must confirm your boat's construction by its year and hull record, not by eye, because the two look the same (source: denisonyachtsales.com).

Why it matters: a wood hull carries classic wood-boat liabilities (plank replacement, refastening, dry rot around keel bolts, rudder posts, shaft logs, and fuel-fill ports) and trades at a large discount for exactly that reason. A fiberglass hull avoids those, but do not imagine it is maintenance-free: every GB36, wood or glass, has genuine teak decks and teak trim, and the screwed-down teak deck over a plywood-cored subdeck is the single most common expensive problem on the boat regardless of hull material.

2. Single screw or twin?

The GB36 was offered both single and twin screw, and both are common in the fleet. Ken Smith designed it originally as a single-engine long-range trawler, and the single remains the archetype: simpler, thriftier, and far easier to work on. The twin (documented packages include twin Lehman 120s, Cummins, and Volvo) trades a little fuel and a lot of engine-room elbow room for maneuverability and get-home redundancy. Count the engines, count the shafts, count the rudders. This determines your fuel burn, your handling, and how brutal any future engine work will be.

3. Which engine? Read the data plate, and never mix parts.

The two classic Grand Banks engines look and sound alike but are different blocks:

• Ford Lehman 120 -- the early and classic default (a marinized Ford 2715E "Dorset"), about 120 hp.
• Ford Lehman 135 / SP135 -- the common later single, built on the Ford 2725E "Dover," a different engine from the 120.

Read the data plate on the engine and confirm the model before you order a single part. These are not interchangeable, and buying "Lehman parts" without knowing which Lehman is a fast way to waste money. Later boats may instead carry a Caterpillar 3208, a Cummins 6BT/6CTA, or a Ford Sabre; if your boat has been repowered, the data plate is the truth and the brochure is not.

4. 32-volt or 12-volt DC?

Here is the electrical gotcha that catches buyers. Many older American Marine boats of this era were factory-wired as 32-volt DC systems rather than 12V -- house bank, lights, pumps, windlass, and refrigeration all running on 32V. A great many surviving boats have since been converted, partly converted, or run a hybrid, so the single most important electrical question on any older GB is: what voltage is this boat actually on, end to end?

Be honest about the evidence: 32V is firmly documented on Grand Banks boats of the era generally, but the exact model-year range in which the 36 specifically shipped as 32V was thin in our sources, and some later boats clearly left the factory on 12V [UNVERIFIED]. So do not assume either way -- count and read your batteries, check the panel and breaker labels, and look at the alternator and the windlass nameplates. If you find 32V, that shapes every electrical decision you make, from chargers to electronics to whether you convert.

1.4 Your "know your hull" checklist

Before you go further in this book, walk your boat with a notepad and settle these:

• [ ] Data plates / builder's plate: engine model (2715E vs 2725E; Lehman 120 vs 135, or Cat/Cummins/Sabre), transmission, and any hull/builder plate.
• [ ] Year and HIN: find the HIN (hull identification number) and the model year, then place your boat on the wood-vs-glass timeline. Confirm construction from the record, not by looking.
• [ ] Count the engines (single or twin) and the shafts and rudders.
• [ ] Count the batteries and read them: how many, what nominal voltage, wired in series or parallel. Decide 32V vs 12V vs hybrid, and confirm it against the DC panel labels.
• [ ] Note the layout: aft-cabin Classic, Sedan, or Europa -- all three ride the same hull but the accommodation differs.
• [ ] Write down what's already been refit: tanks, wiring, steering (still cable, or converted to hydraulic?), decks.

Keep those answers somewhere permanent. They are the key that tells you which parts of every following chapter apply to your boat.

1.5 A note on honesty, and the disclaimer

We have worked hard to source every fact, to show you both numbers when the record disagrees, and to flag anything we could only find in one place. Where you see a value called "typical," treat it as a starting point to verify, not a specification. Where the boat can hurt you or your wallet -- fuel, exhaust, DC wiring, through-hulls, bilge pumping on a wood hull -- we err toward caution.

And the plain disclaimer, in our own voice: this book is for understanding and orientation, not for authorization. Nothing in these pages certifies that any statement is true of your particular boat, and nothing here replaces a professional inspection or repair. Boats float on unforgiving water; fuel, electricity, and the sea do not grade on effort. Before you rely on anything you read here for a decision that affects safety, seaworthiness, or a purchase, verify it against your actual vessel and have the safety-critical work inspected, done, or blessed by a qualified surveyor, mechanic, or ABYC-certified marine electrician. Use good judgment, and when in doubt, get a professional aboard.

Now -- go find out which Grand Banks 36 is yours. The rest of the book is waiting for that answer.

Your Grand Banks 36 descends from a soft-drink bottling plant in Hong Kong, a naval architect's 1963 prototype, and one of the quietest material switches in yacht-building history. It is the boat that taught the world what a "trawler yacht" was, and understanding where yours falls on a single dividing line, the day American Marine stopped building these hulls in wood and started building them in fiberglass, tells you more about what you own than any brokerage listing ever will.

2.1 A bottling plant in Hong Kong

The company that built your boat began, improbably, in a parking lot. In 1956, Robert J. Newton and his two sons, John and Whit, founded American Marine Ltd.American Marine, Ltd. in Hong Kong. Robert Newton was then the manager of a Bireley's soft-drink bottling plant on Mok Cheong Street, and the family, as the record has it, "started in 1956 building boats on the parking lot of the bottling plant" (source: gwulo.com).

In 1962 the operation moved to a proper yard at Junk Bay, near the village of Hang Hau, and there American Marine did work that would surprise anyone who thinks of Grand Banks as a production builder: it built custom, one-off yachts and sailboats to the designs of the leading naval architects of the day, Sparkman & Stephens, William Garden, Nat Herreshoff, and Ray Hunt among them. The house ethos was traditional hand craftsmanship, many carpenters building each boat individually, work that was "literally 'hand crafted.'"

This is the pivot point of the company's identity, and it is worth holding onto as you read the rest of this chapter. American Marine began as a custom yard and became a production builder only when it committed to one boat. That boat was the Grand Banks.

2.2 Kenneth Smith and the Spray

In 1962 the Newtons commissioned the naval architect Kenneth Smith to design a 36-foot, diesel-powered cruising boat with workboat lines, a proper little ship rather than a yacht. Smith's design was launched as a prototype named Spray in 1963, and it is the direct ancestor of every Grand Banks 36 ever built, including yours.

Spray was not quite the finished article. When American Marine turned the prototype into a production boat, it enlarged the saloon and added a flying bridge, and in doing so it defined a type: the finely built, eight-knot trawler yacht. In 1964 the Newtons made the decision that changed the company, they abandoned custom yacht building altogether to focus on producing this one line. The first Grand Banks boats followed for the 1965 model year. (Spray herself reportedly still cruises, on the Great Lakes as of the late 1990s, a pleasing thing to know about the boat that started it all.)

A footnote worth a moment, because it clarifies what your hull is not. Before Spray, American Marine had built a wooden 34-foot-6-inch diesel cruiser called the Chantyman, an early production-trawler concept with a raised pilothouse, high bulwarks, and soft, round-bilge hull lines with no hard chines. Your Grand Banks 36 is the opposite school: a hard chinehard-chine, semi-displacementsemi-displacement hull. The Chantyman is a cousin of the idea, not of the boat.

2.3 The yard moves: Hong Kong to Singapore to Malaysia

Over its production life the Grand Banks 36 was built in three countries, and each move is a chapter in its own right.

Hong Kong (Junk Bay), from 1965. The first Grand Banks 36s were built here, in wood, using the same hand craftsmanship American Marine had brought from its custom-yacht days. This is the all-wood, plank-on-frame era.

Singapore, from 1968. American Marine expanded to Singapore by 1968, and it is the new Singapore factory that is credited with the start of fiberglass GB36 production. Here you must be careful, because two separate events are easy to blur into one. [CONFLICT] One brokerage review compresses the timeline to "production in Hong Kong until 1968, then moved to Singapore" (source: denisonyachtsales.com), while the more detailed PassageMaker history has the wood boats built at Junk Bay and fiberglass "beginning in 1974, at a new factory in Singapore" (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org). The reconciliation, and the framing this book uses, is that Singapore capacity came online in the late 1960s, but the wood-hull GB36 continued to be built in Hong Kong until the fiberglass switch. The "1968 move" and the "changeover to glass" are two distinct milestones, not a single one.

Malaysia, from 1995. Late in the model's life, production moved again, to a facility in Malaysia in 1995 (source: boatinternational.com).

A caution about all three moves. It is tempting to say that quality rose or fell as the yard relocated, but [UNVERIFIED] no solid source quantifies any such change, and this book will not assert one. What the record does support is that the hand-craftsmanship and the teak-lavished joinery carried across every move; the defensible line is continuity of workmanship, not a quality drop or climb tied to a border.

2.4 The wood-to-fiberglass changeover, the story that matters most

Here is the single most important thing to understand about your boat, and the one fact that reshapes almost every practical decision you will make as an owner: the Grand Banks 36 began life as a wooden boat and became a fiberglass one around 1973. Which side of that line your hull sits on changes its maintenance, its known failure modes, its survey checklist, and its value.

What the wood boats were. The original GB36 hulls were Philippine mahogany planking, built as traditional carvel plankingcarvel planking on sawn frames, the same method documented explicitly for the larger sistership, the GB42. These are beautiful, heavy, hand-built wooden hulls, and they carry every classic wooden-boat liability with them.

When the switch happened, [CONFLICT]. The sources agree closely on the era and disagree on the exact boundary, so this book shows all of them and resolves none silently:

• "Mid-1973", "the original GB 36 was built of Philippine mahogany until mid-1973 when the transition to fiberglass was made" (source: hmy.com; steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com).
• "Late 1973, prior to the 1974 model year", the wood-hull designs abandoned in favor of fiberglass (source: hmy.com).
• "Beginning in 1974", the PassageMaker history has the 36s built "first in wood at the Junk Bay yard and then, beginning in 1974, of fiberglass at a new factory in Singapore" (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org).
• "1973" flat, from multiple broker and review sources (source: denisonyachtsales.com).

The safe framing, and the one this book uses: the changeover happened around the 1973/1974 model-year boundary, wood through the 1973 model year, fiberglass from the 1974 model year, with the physical switch occurring somewhere in mid-to-late 1973. Do not let anyone (including a listing for your own boat) tell you a single day or a single hull number is the definitive dividing line as established fact.

The hull-number granularity. For the 36 specifically, community consensus puts the count at roughly 365 wooden hulls built through 1973, which would place the last wood hull around #365 and the first glass hull right behind it, [UNVERIFIED] this is a forum-sourced figure, not a factory one, so treat it as a useful approximation rather than gospel (source: trawlerforum.com). The hard corroboration comes from the sistership: the GB42's glass switch is documented at a specific hull, "beginning with hull number 353 in 1973, the hulls were built with hand-laid fiberglass with an integral, full-length keel" (source: hmy.com). That is the best-documented material boundary anywhere in the Grand Banks family, and it anchors the whole ~1973 changeover across models.

Why the switch is the whole story. Two things make this transition remarkable, and both matter to you.

First, American Marine changed materials silently. It switched from wood to fiberglass "without telling its dealers or the public. It came as one big surprise to a boating world still somewhat suspicious of fiberglass" (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org). In an era when buyers distrusted the new material, the yard simply did not announce it.

Second, and this is the detail that still fools people at the dock today, the fiberglass hulls were molded to mimic wood planking. American Marine engineered molded-in chines that look just like carvel planking, so that "unless you already know the difference, it is impossible to tell that a well-maintained 1972 Grand Banks 36 is made of wood and a 1973 model is fiberglass" (source: denisonyachtsales.com; steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com). The company built a fiberglass boat and then made it look like the wooden boat it had replaced. You genuinely cannot tell the two apart by eye.

What this means for you as a buyer or owner. Because the boats look identical, you must establish material from documentation and survey, not from appearance, and the consequences are large:

• Wood hulls carry classic wooden-boat risk. [SAFETY] Expect to inspect for plank replacement, galvanic corrosion, and dry rot around the keel bolts, rudder posts, shaft logs, and fuel-fill ports, plus through-bolt deterioration, the places water and time do their work on a plank-on-frame hull (source: steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com).
• The market prices the two very differently. A 2013 surveyor's snapshot put wood hulls around $62,000 and fiberglass examples anywhere from $90,000 to $450,000, a gap that reflects the higher upkeep of wood rather than any deficiency in the design. Treat those as illustrative, decade-old figures, but the direction of the split is real and durable.
• A fiberglass GB36 is still a wood-care boat. This is the honest catch that undercuts any fantasy of a maintenance-free glass hull: both wood and fiberglass GB36s have genuine teak everywhere, decks, transom trim, rails, grab rails, and interior joinery (source: steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com; mby.com). The 1974-and-later boats escaped the wooden hull. They did not escape the wooden everything-else. A glass GB36 is a fiberglass boat wearing a full teak wardrobe.

2.5 The production run and the numbers

The Grand Banks 36 was introduced for the 1965 model year, one of the founding trio (GB32, GB36, GB42), and it enjoyed one of the longest production lives in the trawler world. HMY frames the model as "1965 to 2004." That long run was not perfectly continuous: the 36 went on hiatus in the late 1990s, and as of the Fall 1998 PassageMaker history the boat "is not being built this year," with production expected to "resume in 1999" (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org).

How many were built, [CONFLICT]. The figures depend heavily on what date you count to:

• 1,124, American Marine's own production tally as of May 1, 1998, also cited by gwulo (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org; gwulo.com).
• 1,136, a figure surfaced in a general history page, [UNVERIFIED] at this exact value (source: nwexplorations.com).
• "Over 1,200", review phrasing that accounts for the post-1998 and resumed production (source: hmy.com).

The safe framing: roughly 1,124 through mid-1998, and on the order of 1,100 to 1,200-plus over the full run. For context, the sistership totals as of May 1998 were GB32 = 861, GB36 = 1,124, and GB42 = 1,400 (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org). Whichever number is exactly right, the point stands: this was a genuinely mass-produced boat by trawler standards, with a deep pool of surviving hulls, parts knowledge, and owner experience behind it, the opposite of an orphan.

2.6 The naming and layout family, and one word used two ways

Now for the tangle that trips up nearly every new owner. The word "Classic" is used in two completely different senses, and you must keep them separate.

1. "Classic" as a family name. Grand Banks retrospectively groups its old-school teak trawlers under the Heritage banner, the Classics, Europas, Motoryachts, and Sport Sedans (source: grandbanksspecialist.com). In this sense, "GB36 Classic" loosely means "the traditional, teak-trawler-styled GB36" as a whole.
2. "Classic" as a specific layout. Within the 36 range, the Classic is one particular configuration, the aft-cabin layout, distinct from the Sedan and the Europa (source: mby.com).

Do not blur these. When a listing says "36 Classic," it may mean the styling family or the aft-cabin layout, and the two are not interchangeable.

One hull, three deckhouses. The genuinely useful fact underneath the naming is that all three layouts ride on the same 35-foot-2-inch (10.72 m) semi-displacementsemi-displacement hull. What differs is the superstructure and deck, not the boat underneath (source: mby.com):

• 36 Classic, the aft-cabin configuration and the "trawler" archetype: master stateroom aft, a guest cabin with V-berths forward, a single head, and the saloon amidships with an inside helm plus the flybridge above.
• 36 Sedan, the sportiest of the three: an enclosed saloon atop a flush deck with a large open cockpit aft, and no aft cabin. It trades sleeping quarters for saloon and cockpit space.
• 36 Europa, built from 1988: a Sedan-like, single-level layout but with an extended flybridge that reaches out over the aft deck and the side decks, giving more covered outdoor space, a notably larger flybridge than most 36-footers carry. It was offered in one- and two-stateroom layouts (the two-stateroom with an L-shaped dinette was standard; a single-stateroom split-head arrangement was also popular) (source: hmy.com).
• 36 Motoryacht, an aft-cabin, motoryacht-styled variant grouped with the Classic in the Heritage family, [UNVERIFIED] thin in the record, best treated as a styling label within the aft-cabin group (source: grandbanksspecialist.com).

The key restyling to keep separate from the Classic is the Europa (1988 to 1998), same hull, different deck and flybridge. And a reassurance about all of them: the GB36 kept the original Kenneth Smith hull throughout its life. When Grand Banks later modernized into new Heritage branding and eventually to wholly new hull generations by other naval architects, the 36 itself did not get a new hull, it stayed a Ken Smith boat from 1965 to the end (source: grandbanksspecialist.com; passagemaker.com).

Running changes worth knowing. The best-documented model update came in 1988, when the hull was lengthened 6 inches and widened 4 inches, and the interior gained a walk-around queen berth aft and a stall shower in the aft head (source: denisonyachtsales.com; steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com). Earlier boats had smaller or offset berths aft, so "post-1988, walk-around queen" is a genuine dividing line for the accommodations. On the construction side, later glass boats could use a balsa deck core in place of plywood to cut weight while keeping strength, a distinction that matters for survey and repair when you are telling an early glass boat from a late one (source: hmy.com).

2.7 Sisterships and the place in the family

Your 36 was the middle child of American Marine's founding 1965 trio, all Kenneth Smith designs sharing the same workboat-trawler DNA (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org):

• GB32, LOA 32 feet, beam 11 feet 6 inches (3.51 m), draft 3 feet 9 inches (1.14 m); 861 built by 1998; the same wood-to-glass ~1973 story (source: devalk.nl; chanteymantrawleryachts.org).
• GB42, the largest of the three and widely called the "gold standard" traditional trawler, built 1965 to 2004; LOA about 45 feet, beam 13 feet 7 inches (4.14 m), draft about 4 feet; wood to fiberglass from hull #353 in 1973 with an integral full-length keel; 1,400 built by 1998 (source: hmy.com; chanteymantrawleryachts.org; yachtworld.com).

The 42's hull-numbered changeover is not just trivia about a bigger boat, it is the hard evidence that the wood-to-glass switch happened family-wide, right around 1973, which is why you can trust the ~1973 date for the 36 even though the 36's own hull boundary is only community-estimated.

American Marine built other lines in the same era, useful as context even though they are not your boat: the Alaskan pilothouse yachts (45 to 55 feet, late 1960s to early 1970s, ended after the 1973 model year at the glass switch) and the Laguna fast express cruisers (1971 to the mid-1970s, 33 and 38 feet, turbocharged V8 diesels, 171 built, killed off by the oil crisis), with the Eastbay (a 1993 Ray Hunt design) coming much later.

A word on the company's turbulence, because it explains why the timeline can feel messy. American Marine over-expanded in the early 1970s, owning part or all of 33 dealerships worldwide and branching into ventures like a marine John Deere diesel. The 1973 to 1975 oil-embargo era, with soaring fuel prices and double-digit interest rates, pushed the company toward bankruptcy, and in 1975 control passed to an investor group headed by Bob Livingston. Separately, the original Hong Kong (Junk Bay) entity itself went bankrupt in 1975, its premises taken over by former staff who kept building into the early 1980s (source: gwulo.com). Keep these two failures distinct: the Hong Kong entity's collapse is not the Grand Banks brand's collapse, by 1975 the Grand Banks line had already shifted to Singapore, and the company later traded publicly as Grand Banks Holdings, Ltd. (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org).

2.8 The reputation, honestly

The Grand Banks 36 is, by broad consensus, the archetypal recreational trawler. It is the boat that "sold the world's boaters on a finely built, eight-knot trawler," and its styling was so successful that it was widely copied by other builders, who, in the words of the PassageMaker history, "could not match the quality of construction for which American Marine was famed" (source: chanteymantrawleryachts.org). That is not marketing puffery; it is the reason a whole class of look-alike trawlers exists.

What owners love. Flawless teak joinery, a seaworthy semi-displacement hull, and a long service life, with owners reporting as-new woodwork decades on when the boat has been cared for (source: mby.com; denisonyachtsales.com). The original single-Ford-Lehman boats are thrifty, unstressed, eight-knot cruisers, and the design has aged into a genuine classic.

The flip side, said plainly. Teak-everything means relentless maintenance, the same wardrobe that makes a GB36 beautiful makes it a demanding boat to keep. And wood-hull examples carry real structural risk, rot at the keel bolts, shaft logs, and fuel fills, plus plank and fastening issues that a fiberglass boat simply does not have (source: steve-insightmarinesurveyor.blogspot.com). This is the honest core of the identity: a superbly built, deeply satisfying boat that rewards care and punishes neglect, and whose single most important variable, wood hull or glass, you must nail down before anything else.

2.9 What to establish about your own boat

Because the wood and fiberglass hulls are visually identical by design, and because "Classic" means two different things, resolve the following before you trust any listing:

1. Wood or fiberglass? This is the master question. Do not judge by the planking-look chines, they were molded into the glass boats on purpose. Establish it from the model year (wood through 1973 MY, glass from 1974 MY, around a mid-to-late-1973 changeover), from documentation, and from survey. Every later chapter of this book forks on the answer.
2. Which layout, and which sense of "Classic"? Confirm whether you have the aft-cabin Classic, the cockpit Sedan, or the extended-flybridge Europa (1988-on), and remember that "Classic" on paper may just mean the Heritage styling family. They share the 35-foot-2-inch hull but almost nothing else about how you will live aboard.
3. Before or after the 1988 update? A post-1988 boat has the stretched hull (+6 inches long, +4 inches wide), the walk-around queen aft, and the aft-head stall shower. A pre-1988 boat does not. This dates the accommodations at a glance.
4. Early or late glass? If it is a fiberglass boat, a plywood deck core points earlier and a balsa core points later, worth knowing for both survey and any deck repair.

Get these four straight and you will understand your Grand Banks 36 better than most listings that try to sell one, because you will know not just what the badge says, but which side of the boat's one defining line you are standing on.