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HiOur 424 is on the market in St Petersburg FL for $69000. We had a contract and have the survey results. We have addressed all the minor items found on the survey. The buyer was in his 70s and decided on a newer boat.Elaine Patton727-430-0457
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Iâm insured by Boat/US. I got a call last fall from them regarding a survey. The boat, being insured with them for 30 years was due for a survey. They paid for it. A surveyer showed up at my door a few days later and did a thorough survey. He noted one minor problem with the hull that will require a small bit of glass work, a small crack in the hull next to the mast step. Other than that, he said the boat looked fine. I havenât heard from him or the insurance carrier since.
I donât know if this is part of the bouat/us insurance business being taken over by geico or if it was solely based on the age of the boat.
Rich
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Thanks Ewan! So nice to see communities like this. Ted you’re on my shortlist of things don’t pan out! And Paul…love that staysail on Cygnus! Glad she worked out for you..looks like a recent purchase! Looking a surveyor on Rhode Island (or close) at the moment for convenience.
Patrickprice87@gmail.com if anyone wants to contact me directly with recommendations.
Thanks again everyone! -
Patrick, I see a lot of buyers of boats that are really disappointed when the find out all the stuff the surveyor missed.
A survey is a ‘process’ that occurs to satisfy the insurance and or finance company that the boat is not a complete POS and not going to a liability to either company.
You get what you pay for. If you want a job that is really going to carefully examine the nuts and bolts of the boat and find all the warts you should expect to pay $5000 at a minimum. If your guy finds 5 things that are all $1000 each to fix and the seller accommodates that in the sale price, do the math. Owners have passed onto me surveys for me to review and the boat name was not updated through the entire survey from the previous job the surveyor did. ‘Cut and paste survey’. I see the same boilerplate in nearly every one. “Flares are out of date”, really is that what you want to know? I want to know the tabbing is loose around bulk heads, this wad of 5200 was smeared on to clearly stop a leak and is a band aid, not a repair, this boat has a history of water intrusion in the rudder, this boats owner owned stock in JB weld, every turnbuckle is either seized or galled from being seized and subsequent attempted removal…Or, all the issues (and curious methods of repair) with the boat have been documented in various blogs and forums. That’s the sort of work I’d expect from a qualified investigator of boats.
If you spend $3000 on a survey and the surveyor misses an item that costs $4000 to fix, you paid $7000 for a crappy survey but you get a new part thrown in.
Brokers will often supply a list of surveyors. The broker wants you to buy a boat and as much as he’d like to not broker you a lemon, he doesn’t get paid if you don’t by a boat.
Do some research on brokers local to the boat and if you are not satisfied with the selection consider flying one in.
Here’s the other side of the coin. You are buying a boat that is probably no less than 30 years old. If you think your not going to spend a fair sum of money on it after purchase then you might rethink what you are doing.
If you have that understanding and are ready to put the funds towards getting it to your level of expectation then finding an repairing things the surveyor missed shouldn’t be all that painful.The only thing that works on an old boat is the owner….
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Chuck, that was brilliant advice. You must be a surveyor yourself. I was a yacht broker/dealer for 10 years (in 2 shifts) and saw with the whole spectrum of marine surveyors; the good, the bad and the downright worthless.
Not that this will help most buyers – that advice comes at the end – but I managed to do it differently when I bought my 424. I was actually the co-broker on the deal, representing myself as the buyer. The seller’s broker was an old friend of mine from our delivery skipper days and knew it was safe to give me the companionway lock combination so I could inspect the boat myself (and save him an hour’s drive each way to let me in). The boat was on the hard in a boat yard way out in the boondocks, Indiantown Marina in central Florida, and the seller was someplace else.
Since there was nothing in the purchase/sale agreement that limited how many hours the buyer could spend inspecting and surveying the boat, I settled in for the week not far from the yard. Every day for 5 days I spent all day crawling through the boat inch by inch. I’m not a professional surveyor, but I’ve been messing around with boats my whole life and knew I could do a better job of it than a lot of them I’d dealt with. As it turned out, what I lack in credentials I more than made up for with hours spent. I consulted checklists from half a dozen of the best surveyors I knew, and even managed to rent a moisture meter from a local surveyor. By the end of the week I had something like 8 pages of “issues” I’d found in this worthy old ketch, and an estimate of what it would cost to rectify them.
Long story short, the seller eventually accepted my substantially adjusted offer. IMHO, we both got a fair deal. He got free of a boat he had long since stopped caring for, and I got a boat that needed a lot of refurbishing, but for a price that allowed me to do it all. Most importantly, I knew every inch of this good old boat before I even owned her. The only “surprise” was how long it all took to bring her up to my standard, but as it turned out that wasn’t a bad thing. I thoroughly enjoyed the process.
The next 2-1/2 years in a boat yard is now history. The refit list, which I continued thru 2013, is online at http://www.silverheels.us/refit.htm . It never ends, of course, but I’ve been cruising Silverheels since 2009, so it was all in a good cause.
I don’t advise anyone to do what I did. The best way I know to find the best surveyor in any given area is to call every yacht broker you can find and ask them who they would hire to survey a boat they were going to buy for themselves. They know who the best guys are in their region, and since you’re not a customer they have no motivation to steer you towards an “easy” surveyor. However, you don’t necessarily want to hire the local “deal-killer.” There are some surveyors who are just plain negative and turn every issue into a disaster, scaring buyers away from what is in fact a decent boat. The local brokers know who’s who. Ask them.
Reef early,
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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Chuck and Tor,
Gentlemen! Words of wisdom!!!
“The only thing that works on an old boat is the owner…”
…I’m stealing that one Chuck!I ended up having a similar experience to Tor and, although I’m not a surveyor myself, I’d like to think the merchant marines taught me a thing or two..(the only thing that works on an old tug is the crew.) The surveyor I hired after was a talented second pair of eyes and helped considerably!
Long story short, after a salty mental marinade, I pulled the trigger on Findrinny. She’s been kept indoors every winter season and boy does it show! Not many bells and whistles but I prefer the blank canvas.
Thank you all again for the help! If you’re around the north shore of Long Island during the warmer months please feel free to reach out.
-Patrick
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