466 Carver for Sale? A Buyer's Guide to the Carver 466 Motor Yacht

Why buyers searching 466 Carver for sale keep finding the same boat

Type 466 carver for sale into a search bar and you will find a steady supply of these boats, for a simple reason: Carver sold a lot of them. HMY's powerboat guide calls the 466 Motor Yacht one of the top-selling boats in its class, produced between 2001 and 2007 at the Pulaski, Wisconsin factory. Carver introduced it as the new 466 in 2001, and Power & Motoryacht's Capt. Bill Pike tested one that year after touring the factory.

The pitch was maximum living space in a boat a couple could still handle. A 14-foot 11-inch beam, side decks raised high enough to let the salon run full width, and three staterooms with two heads put it in a class where many rivals offered two cabins. For a used buyer in 2026, that means a lot of boat for the money, with the caveats any 20-year-old motor yacht carries.

Dimensions, tankage and the 19-foot arch

Carver's 2001 sheet lists the 466 at 46 feet 11 inches with the swim platform, 14 feet 11 inches of beam and a 42.5-inch draft. Weight with fuel and water is 37,000 pounds. The boat carries 480 gallons of fuel, 130 gallons of water and 80 gallons of waste. Cabin headroom is 6 feet 4 inches, and it sleeps six, or eight with optional furniture.

Bridge clearance with the arch is 19 feet 5 inches, a number worth checking against your home waters. It is just over the roughly 19-foot fixed bridges on the Great Loop's Chicago route, so Loop cruisers need a lowering arch or a different plan, and owners on lakes with low bridges should measure carefully.

Three staterooms around a full-beam salon

HMY describes an astonishing amount of living space, and the salon earns that line. It holds a dinette, an L-shaped sofa, a loveseat, a breakfast bar and an entertainment center, and Power & Motoryacht's test boat had Flexsteel incliner-equipped UltraLeather settees on both sides with a JVC TV, Harman Kardon stereo, a Kenwood CD changer and Bose speakers. Cherry woodwork with a high-gloss finish is standard. The galley has a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, a convection microwave, a coffee maker and plenty of storage.

Aft, the master stateroom has a walkaround queen with an innerspring mattress, two dressers, two cedar-lined hanging lockers and an en suite head with a large separate stall shower. Pike's test boat had a queen berth that lifted electrically to reveal storage. Forward, the VIP has a centerline queen, two hanging lockers and private access to the guest head. The third stateroom, tucked under the salon settee with a privacy door, is small but turns the 466 into a genuine three-cabin boat for children or occasional guests.

What Power & Motoryacht found in the Pulaski plant

Pike's report opened with a factory tour, and the construction details he recorded are still useful to a surveyor. The hull bottom is solid fiberglass with Knytex reinforcements and a vinylester barrier coat; hull sides, decks and superstructure are cored with Divinycell or Baltek. The hull-to-deck joint is bonded with screws and polyurethane sealant, and aluminum trusses reinforce the frameless cabin windows.

Below the salon sole, accessed by a hatch, the engine room is gelcoated and lit with fluorescents, with aluminum box beams supporting the sole and engines on double-gusseted mounts bolted through hat-section fiberglass bearers. Carver built modular electrical harnesses on large assembly boards with machine-crimped terminals and tinned-copper wire, and its wood shop turned out doweled cherry door frames. On deck, 12-inch cleats are through-bolted with four bolts and aluminum backing plates, and stanchion bases are welded inside and out.

Rudder stocks run through Tides Marine dripless logs with graphite-composite tiller arms on a heavy rudder shelf, reached through hatches in the master stateroom cabinetry.

Cummins 370B, Cummins 450C or Volvo 480

In 2001 the base boat came with twin 355 hp Cummins 370B diesels at $473,995. Options were twin 430 hp Cummins 450C or twin 480 hp Volvo Penta TAMD74P EDC diesels, and HMY's guide treats the Volvo 480s as the typical package, cruising at 18 to 20 knots with a top speed in the low 20s.

Power & Motoryacht's test boat had the Volvo 480s with ZF 280A gears at 2.23 to 1, 28 by 32 Teignbridge four-blade props and Teleflex hydraulic steering. On the Fox River off Green Bay, in near-smooth water, it averaged 29.6 mph at the top, about 25.7 knots, ran at an optimum three to four degree attitude on plane and needed only a little tab above 2,500 rpm. Pike liked the single-lever Volvo electronic controls, the prioritized Beede gauges and the visibility from the centerline helm.

On the used market, Volvo 480 boats are the most common and generally the most desirable. Cummins 370B boats are slower and usually cheaper; price them accordingly.

• Base: 2 x 355 hp Cummins 370B
• Options: 2 x 430 hp Cummins 450C, 2 x 480 hp Volvo Penta TAMD74P EDC
• PMY test (Volvo 480s): 29.6 mph average top speed, about 25.7 knots
• HMY: Volvo 480s cruise at 18 to 20 knots

A hardtop aft deck and a three-chair flybridge

The aft deck is fully covered by a hardtop with a skylight, wing doors, a wet bar with bottle storage, a bench seat and a transom door that can be latched open or closed. An integral stairway leads up to a large flybridge with a wraparound or L-shaped dinette, a serving bar, an adjustable helm seat and two companion swivel chairs. Side decks are wide with thigh-high rails.

Popular options that add value today include a hydraulic swim platform, bridge air conditioning and bow and stern thrusters. Pike's test boat also had a 10 hp bow thruster, a Maxwell windlass, an oil-change system, 54,000 BTU of air conditioning, an 8 kW Kohler generator, a Cablemaster, VacuFlush heads, a washer-dryer and a central vacuum.

Surveying a 20-year-old 466 and budgeting for it

The solid bottom is an advantage, but Divinycell and Baltek coring above the waterline means a moisture meter belongs around every window, stanchion, cleat and the arch and hardtop bases. Many of these big frameless salon windows have already been rebedded once; ask for receipts. Volvo TAMD74P engines should be checked for aftercooler and heat exchanger condition, and every engine deserves oil analysis and a full-load sea trial.

Expect yearly costs of about $25,000 to $48,000 before fuel once dockage, coverage, the annual haul, engine and genset maintenance, canvas, electronics and the usual small fixes are counted. A buyer who wants three cabins and a big salon in the high-$100,000s to high-$200,000s will struggle to find more space per dollar.