Roger Long
Senior Member
Unless my insurance company changes their verbal assurance that they won't require it, I'm not planning to have the boat I think we are about to buy surveyed.
(Standing by for the flames)
I spent my professional life designing boats from 8 to 400+ feet including a fiberglass fishing boat that is still working out of Portland a quarter century later. I even did some surveying way back when a surveyor was just someone who knew how to get letterheads and business cards printed.
My last two survey experiences were quite unsatisfactory. One surveyor produced extensive lists of things that didn't meet current ABYC standards on a 1980's boat but missed the broken engine mounts and bolts missing from the shaft coupling. I found them after and called him to have them included in the report. If I had spent that time looking around instead of staying out of the surveyor's way, I would have known a lot more about the boat and we might not have bought it. The other surveyor was on the boat for about an hour.
This time, I'm planning three full days for inspection and sea trial. We have a buyer's broker with extensive trawler experience as owner and broker who will be there as a second pair of eyes. The seller is also a broker who has been through a lot of surveys and is selling his well loved personal boat so I expect it to be better cared for than our last boat which had been a stationary houseboat for a decade. I don't think the PO of that craft had ever seen the inside of a marine supply store.
(Standing by for the flames)
I spent my professional life designing boats from 8 to 400+ feet including a fiberglass fishing boat that is still working out of Portland a quarter century later. I even did some surveying way back when a surveyor was just someone who knew how to get letterheads and business cards printed.
My last two survey experiences were quite unsatisfactory. One surveyor produced extensive lists of things that didn't meet current ABYC standards on a 1980's boat but missed the broken engine mounts and bolts missing from the shaft coupling. I found them after and called him to have them included in the report. If I had spent that time looking around instead of staying out of the surveyor's way, I would have known a lot more about the boat and we might not have bought it. The other surveyor was on the boat for about an hour.
This time, I'm planning three full days for inspection and sea trial. We have a buyer's broker with extensive trawler experience as owner and broker who will be there as a second pair of eyes. The seller is also a broker who has been through a lot of surveys and is selling his well loved personal boat so I expect it to be better cared for than our last boat which had been a stationary houseboat for a decade. I don't think the PO of that craft had ever seen the inside of a marine supply store.