Pics on Yachtworld are misleading!

I'm still shopping!!! Went by and looked at an Allweather on my way to Oregon in Dec. All comments about this boat were very positive with the exterior pics. looking "clean" ...... Looking at the boat was a different story--although it's a great hull and looks very seaworthy the Interior was Very rough--wiring, woodwork, engine compartment, aft deck, trailer,electronics , were all Major projects .... I think this boat has been seen as a "perfect" trailerable cruiser --------- Seems that it would be an ideal Alaskan fishing boat but for recreational purposes they would need BIG $$$$ to bring them up to a comfort level that would work for most ....... Back to the Albin and possibly the C-Dory....... really different boats ..... now I have to decide what I really want(keeping in mind that I don't really Need it!!!!!!) Enjoy 2013....john

windmill29130 said:

Would you say I could get a decent boat for $100,000?

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You probably could, but it will require more patience and you will be disappointed more often than if you had 200k to spend or even 150k. This will also depend on your standards of course.

The pictures on the interent are helpful but you can not tell the really good boats or the really bad boats from these pictures, plus you must remember that Yacht World is simply a way of advertising a boat, a paid advertisement paid by the broker.
I have sold boats now for 17 years and have found that if I tell a client about problems before they come to the boat they are not surprised and feel that I have been up front with them.
I have often suggested to a buyer that they hire a local surveyor to do a 15 minute inspection.
The market I deal with here in Fort Lauderdale is different than many other places as I have clients from all over the US and other countries as well. I offer to my clients to do what is called a broker preview of boats listed by other brokers that are located in Florida. If I represent the buyer I can look at boats listed by other brokers and give an unbiased opinion, if I find a good boat at a good price I am more likely to make a sale, but finding the right boat at the right price is always a time consuming exercise.

dwhatty said:

Umm. I don't believe that it was the French that gave us the phrase "caveat emptor".

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Quite right, but they gave us "agent provocateur", so unacceptable there are no words for it in English.
There will always be bad brokers with misleading pics, like real estate brokers/agents photo-shopping out power lines obstructing views,or making the sea look more blue, I even saw a house pic "repainted".
Asking for very specific pics a broker has to actually go and take is a good idea. Trouble with long times on market, pics get hopelessly out of date.

I am looking for a live aboard boat now, something in the 40- 50 foot range. I'm not in a hurry and will know the right boat for me when I step aboard her.

I have a broker. I trust him. We have traveled half a day to look at boats that the other broker said were"perfect" only to find them unacceptable. Unwaxed hulls that were billed as freshly detailed, new bottom jobs that were 2 plus years old, new canvas that had been up for years. I look real hard for a few months and then take some time off to re-group. Seems to help.

Having just gone through the process of buying our Nordic 32, and having looked at many boat online and quite a distance from us, I agree that Yachtworld pictures can be misleading. We got around this by contacting the broker and asking for additional and higher resolution photos. Most brokers were happy to oblige. Even if it is the same photo from the web, a higher resolution photo sent by email allows you to zoom in on particular aspects of the boat. Just my two cents, but certainly helped us to narrow down the boats we traveled to see.

Sharkey said:

I am looking for a live aboard boat now, something in the 40- 50 foot range. I'm not in a hurry and will know the right boat for me when I step aboard her.

I have a broker. I trust him. We have traveled half a day to look at boats that the other broker said were"perfect" only to find them unacceptable. Unwaxed hulls that were billed as freshly detailed, new bottom jobs that were 2 plus years old, new canvas that had been up for years. I look real hard for a few months and then take some time off to re-group. Seems to help.

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I have been looking for a year now, and very disappointed in what I have seen. I am just like you, not in a hurry and will know it when I see it.

windmill29130 said:

It's amazing how the pictures you see on yachtworld of a boats interior and exterior are misleading. Have you ever view a boat on Yachtworld and then gone to view the boat in person? I have done this quite a few times lately and the boats I have seen are a lot different in "quality" in person. The pictures you see online are not a good representation of the boat.

My suggestion before you travel a long distance to view a boat, is to ask the broker a lot of questions and your expectations of what condition a boat you are in the market for before going.

Anybody else had this experience?

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oh yes. The last one i looked at was bristol according to the pix and broker and when i got there it had cracked windows and dry rot al over the tak deck. I'm going to look at another tomorrow that involves a thousand mile trip.

1000 mile trip! I hope the best for that one.

Sharkey said:

1000 mile trip! I hope the best for that one.

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well 450 miles each way. The boats kind of a strippy but made by one of the best yeards for these boats

My dog wouldn't have a name without the French, Pan Pan. Not a m'aider, but more trouble than a securite.

koliver said:

My dog wouldn't have a name without the French, Pan Pan. Not a m'aider, but more trouble than a securite.

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More about the origins of "pan pan" please? Did ok in French at High School, but that was a looooong while ago.

So the pics on Yachtworld aren't representative of the goods.

I'll tell you that when I was divorced years ago I took a spin through the dating websites, and let me tell you about misleading pics......

Rambler said:

So the pics on Yachtworld aren't representative of the goods.

I'll tell you that when I was divorced years ago I took a spin through the dating websites, and let me tell you about misleading pics......

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I can only imagine. Did you ever find one?

Quote “Pics on Yachtworld are misleading! “

Well, November Sierra, OP. It’s true on the entire internet. It’s human nature. Sellers want to get you interested.

After six years of full time cruising we wanted a waterfront house where we could keep the little DeFever at our own dock.

We are both native Floridians so we knew where to look. Looked at about 60 properties over 6 months, none of which lived up to their MLS listings. Finally we found one that met our criteria.

Hard work, due diligence. It’s how you get what you want.

Mike

windmill29130 said:

I can only imagine. Did you ever find one?

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Not off the internet. My current wife is someone I've known for years prior to my divorce some 12 years ago. We're both in the same/similar profession, that's how we first met at some professional meeting or something. We have some of the same mutual friends and reconnected at a dinner party a couple years after my divorce. Dated for a while, and wed in Maui back in 05.

markpierce said:

Pan-pan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Should have checked Wikipedia myself. Interesting the origins may be multiple. Not sure "man overboard" is a "pan pan" event , more of a Mayday to me, perhaps it depends on the actual event.

BruceK said:

Should have checked Wikipedia myself. Interesting the origins may be multiple. Not sure "man overboard" is a "pan pan" event , more of a Mayday to me, perhaps it depends on the actual event.

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I agree...the practical uses of those words aren't as black and white as wikipedia would have you believe...there are those that say maydays are only used for the "ship in peril" never an individual...

But my philosophy after 20+ in SAR with the USCG..Mayday for MOB or Medevacs is fine by me...who's gonna argue...the radio police?

What I find funny is that the USCG doesn't care much about radio usage. I let the CG Galveston station know about a radio that was keyed up for days in Clear Lake, preventing any type of communications. Their first response was (from Galveston) they couldn't hear it. I told them that if they would send a boat this way, they could. They then replied it was none of their business anyway, that I had to call the FCC. Of course they had no # to call. I literally started at the FCC # in Washington and worked my way down to a local guy. After about a week the offending radio was shut down.

And those people also gave us French Kissing!

Seriously, I once flew down to Oakland to look at a boat that was FAR worse than any picture could show. What a waste of time and money. Someday Yachtworld and will have quality (dare I say "professional"?) videos to show what a boat really looks like. I'm not saying that video can't be similarly manipulated, but it's a better way to show both the good and bad of a boat. We plan on developing boat for sale videos for our site in the near future.

Interesting that they didn't care.

In the parallel universe of aviation, I spent many hours searching from the air for radio interference, pirate radio stations and phantom air traffic control transmissions in the course of my FAA career. Maybe the FAA sees the FCC lines of responsibility differently than the USCG, but I know the FAA takes it VERY seriously.

Those searches were some of the more interesting "cat and mouse" exercises we encountered on our missions. Some of them carried us into foreign airspace looking for the 'perps'.

Moonfish said:

And those people also gave us French Kissing!

Seriously, I once flew down to Oakland to look at a boat that was FAR worse than any picture could show. What a waste of time and money. Someday Yachtworld and will have quality (dare I say "professional"?) videos to show what a boat really looks like. I'm not saying that video can't be similarly manipulated, but it's a better way to show both the good and bad of a boat. We plan on developing boat for sale videos for our site in the near future.

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Great Idea!

The wonderful thing about photography is that it makes things look much better than they are. The worst thing about photography is that it makes things look much better than they are.

While relatively new tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. can be used to radically change a photo, you don't have to do any of that to experience what the OP described.

The gel coat on our 1973 boat was beat up for 25 years before we bought it by the California sun, let alone previous owners banging things into it and whatnot. It's eggshelled, dinged, worn thin in spots, and scratched.

But back away ten feet and take a photo and the boat looks great.

I would always assume that what I saw in a photo of a boat was better than what I would see if I saw the boat in person. Gnorts is correct, one can take a bad photo that makes something good crappier than it is. But assuming a properly taken photo, they invariably portray the subject as more flawless than it really is.

If it didn't work this way Playboy magazine would never have gotten off the ground.

As to video, don't pin your hopes on that. We regularly manipulate video using the same kinds of tools the still folks use to make the things in the video look far better than they are. I've removed dirt, grease, scratches, and dings, to say nothing of entire portions of paint jobs from airplanes using things like Adobe AfterEffects. I regularly greatly enhance color, change the color balance and tone, alter the density, add or subtract sharpness, change red tails to blue tails, blue upholstery to brown, and on and on and on, all by simple mouse clicks.

Add in the expertise of our CGI people and they can fool an audience into seeing things in a video that aren't even there.

I actually had the opposite experience. I looked at a boat for some time in Aaska and saw it in person finally when we went to Seattle. We both thought the boat looked better "in person" than it did in the pics. But I see most pics mislead to the positive side of truth and reality.

If you are looking at a boat far away ask the owner to take some very close pics of specific areas of your choice. That should tell the tale unless they are clever enough to put hydrofoils on a Willard.

I can't emphasize enough the value of a good buyer's broker. When I call a broker about a boat he will always give me the straight scoop on a boat as he wants/needs to build a relationship with me. I have saved clients tens of thousands of dollars finding better boats for many times less money. I had a 120K boat under contract for buyers then heard about a boat that wasn't on the market. We bought the second boat, a better boat then the first (same make/model/year) for 75K. A BB should be able to save you time/money and disappointment. Best of all the service costs you nothing as he/she is paid out of the existing commission.

I had a buyer come and sea trial one of my clients boats last winter. At the end of the day they turned to the seller and asked him if he was still interested in selling his boat to them. Of course he said he was. They then said that they would like to pay a thousand over the contract price as they were very pleased with her condition

So the buyer just paid the guy an extra $1000? That's about a special kind of stupid.