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Old 10-06-2018, 09:24 AM   #21
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The first boat we looked at came with a survey...a survey for insurance requested by the owner of the boat. We had a survey done by us, and it turned out the surveyor was friend of the owner and probably did the insurance survey.

We allowed the owner to be on the boat when the survey was done, and when the surveyor asked us at the end, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" the owner said, "Yes, you can get off my boat". The surveyor had been very detailed in everything wrong with the boat and there was a big price drop.

My takeaway was that an insurance survey leans in the owners favour, being not too critical and padding the price, whereas a buyers survey is more critical and reality based as far as price goes.
There's monetary bottom line[s] to most things... especially material items [such as boats] with levels of $$$ value and sprinkles of emotion[s] salted in by both the owner and buyer!

Bottom line[s] for boat insurance cos., sellers price and payers price: "Get as much as you can, for as little as possible effort, with best $$$ deal possible as the outcome for all three parties mentioned.
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Old 10-06-2018, 09:27 AM   #22
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You can work with the insurer on survey deficiencies. My last survey of my sailboat noted several "major" deficiencies that required repair according to my insurer. The worst was that the surveyor noted that my keel bolts were severely corroded and "must" be replaced. That would have been a very expensive repair IF my boat had actually had keel bolts. Since my boat has encapsulated INSIDE ballast there are no keel bolts. It took a fair bit of argument but I did finally get the insurer to accept that point all because of an incompetent surveyor who mistook the fittings on top of an abandoned iron fuel tank for keel bolts.


My point is that you can argue things in the survey with the insurance company.
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Old 10-06-2018, 09:39 AM   #23
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Wonder about buyers purchasing used boats, often decades old, expecting them to be in brand-new condition. Meanwhile, the asking price is likely to be well below the original boat's price adjusted for inflation.
These type of buyer are out there. As a seller, you don't waste your time with them. Brokers can easily spot them too. But what the hell does this have to do with this thread?
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Old 10-06-2018, 10:00 AM   #24
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The first boat we looked at came with a survey...a survey for insurance requested by the owner of the boat. We had a survey done by us, and it turned out the surveyor was friend of the owner and probably did the insurance survey.

We allowed the owner to be on the boat when the survey was done, and when the surveyor asked us at the end, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" the owner said, "Yes, you can get off my boat". The surveyor had been very detailed in everything wrong with the boat and there was a big price drop.

My takeaway was that an insurance survey leans in the owners favour, being not too critical and padding the price, whereas a buyers survey is more critical and reality based as far as price goes.
I fired an insurance surveyor when he was still on the dock. The instant he pulled out his ABYC book of current construction guidelines he was dismissed.


Insurance companies should be focused on risk. That means safety, and material condition per the design requirements in place at the time the boat was built and current required government standards. That's different than ABYC guidelines.
A surveyor's estimate of value is typically nonsense. I've had a surveyor with zero experience on a larger cruising boat conduct an insurance survey because I couldn't find an experienced individual in the local area. I wasn't about to fly an experience individual in at my expense. He had no idea what he was doing let alone setting a value. He went on my recommendation and a look at Yachtworld. The insurance companies have to know this and should delete this nonsense from survey reports. A pile of photos such as those I included in my self survey (Markel Insurance) tells the story.

Pre-purchase surveys are weapons used by buyers. It's not surveyors who force boat values down...it's cheap skates.
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Old 10-06-2018, 10:03 AM   #25
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"Despite accreditation, surveyors are a mixed lot - some know less than an average boat owner, a very few are quite knowledgable."

Many surveyors simply want to find enough "flaws" to pay for their work.


Few seem to have a good background in boating , so simply parrot what they read in a book.
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Old 10-06-2018, 11:04 AM   #26
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I am fine with a surveyor using ABYC standards as the basis of his survey. That gives the buyer a standard to work from rather than the surveyor's view of what was acceptable 30 years ago.


And of course some ABYC standards are meaningful for safety such as fusing near the battery and some more for convenience such as DC wiring color coding.


I realize that it will be difficult for the typical buyer or insurance company to tell the difference.


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Old 10-06-2018, 12:11 PM   #27
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Again, ABYC is a wonderful leverage device for buyers to screw sellers who don't know the difference between what is required by the regulating authorities (which is what should be the baseline for insurance companies), and what are industry standards for new boat construction. Old boats are officially "safe" as designed unless there's a post manufacture accident or incident driven regulation that affects that design, or the fleet in general. Those are few and far between for pleasure craft. Bringing ABYC into a survey, whether for insurance or "screw the seller" purposes borders on unethical in my view. More safe doesn't mean something is unsafe. "More" safe has a price, which buyers use to screw sellers. It's packaged and made to appear "official" in pre-purchase surveys. ABYC loves it because it gives their product faux legitimacy in the old boat market place. They sell safety. They are business partners with SAMS/NAMS, and the insurance companies...look it up. Wanna know who pays for all of it? The end user, that's who. Most of us are against unnecessary regulation, yet these pseudo official organizations stick it to the operating community every day. They are a tax on all of us.
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Old 10-06-2018, 04:46 PM   #28
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We just bought our first trawler at the end of July (currently living aboard our sailboat) in Annapolis. We had a boat surveyor (who happened to run the yard in Taiwan that built the boat) and an engine surveyor. The boat is almost 30 years old so of course we knew there would be some issues. There were some serious issues found because no zincs were found on shafts, Ugh. Plus some other major issues. We dropped our offer based on the serious issues only. The seller wasn't happy, but in the end, with all the serious issues, she knew it would be harder to sell the boat now knowing what she and the broker knew. So she finally excepted our offer.

Our insurance is with BoatUS and we submitted the survey. We got insurance because we told them the boat is up on the hard and addressing all the serious issues in the survey. Our surveyor had a rating system for each item he found. He classified some as MUST, some as SHOULD, and some as AT SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE, or something like that. The boat is almost ready to be launched and we'll have to submit the work that was done that addresses the MUST parts.

And FWIW, we agreed with the surveyor on the MUST issues. We were very happy with both our surveyors.
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Old 10-06-2018, 06:40 PM   #29
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My "new" 1978 Mainship is insured with BoatUS. They let me do my own survey and had me submit pictures of all areas. I did the needed repairs prior to taking the pictures. I made the repairs and am happy with both the price of the insurance, the agreed upon value, the price I paid for the boat and their survey policy. They may have been comfortable with me because I didnt try to "skinny" down the policy. I bought full coverage.
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Old 10-07-2018, 04:22 PM   #30
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Originally Posted by FF View Post
"Despite accreditation, surveyors are a mixed lot - some know less than an average boat owner, a very few are quite knowledgable."

Many surveyors simply want to find enough "flaws" to pay for their work.


Few seem to have a good background in boating , so simply parrot what they read in a book.
Too often - True!
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Old 10-07-2018, 04:29 PM   #31
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My "new" 1978 Mainship is insured with BoatUS. They let me do my own survey and had me submit pictures of all areas. I did the needed repairs prior to taking the pictures. I made the repairs and am happy with both the price of the insurance, the agreed upon value, the price I paid for the boat and their survey policy. They may have been comfortable with me because I didnt try to "skinny" down the policy. I bought full coverage.
Similar here... except I did hire a knowledgeable surveyor to do the ins survey, after I'd gotten the boat up to snuff.

Taint nothing wrong with full ins. coverage and a well written policy. If you take the dollars spent annually and amortized it over a length of time in regard to the what-if-that ever happened safety factor of having full coverage. Well, you get my drift!!
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Old 10-07-2018, 11:23 PM   #32
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Nothing wrong with a surveyor using current AYBC as the standard for the survey. Its up to the buyer and seller to figure out who pays for what, but standards have improved function and safety over the past 30 years, and I want my surveyor to flag anything that is clearly in violation of current standards. That makes me a better informed buyer and give me the opportunity to have a safer, more reliable boat.

Hard to believe anyone but a seller would want a boat surveyed to standards that existing decades ago. That wouldn’t be a survey that I would request or pay for.
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Old 10-08-2018, 05:37 AM   #33
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"Hard to believe anyone but a seller would want a boat surveyed to standards that existing decades ago. That wouldn’t be a survey that I would request or pay for."

Little has changed in terms of what is "safe" from 30 years ago.

Standards are different today because equipment is different.

Todays "standards" are suggestions to keep current builders from having legal hassles , and almost nothing to do with a required change to a well built 40 year old boat.
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Old 10-08-2018, 07:11 AM   #34
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Sorry for the sidetrack. Is there a place to download the AYBC info, preferably in PDF?
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Old 10-08-2018, 08:46 AM   #35
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Nothing wrong with a surveyor using current AYBC as the standard for the survey. Its up to the buyer and seller to figure out who pays for what, but standards have improved function and safety over the past 30 years, and I want my surveyor to flag anything that is clearly in violation of current standards. That makes me a better informed buyer and give me the opportunity to have a safer, more reliable boat.

Hard to believe anyone but a seller would want a boat surveyed to standards that existing decades ago. That wouldn’t be a survey that I would request or pay for.
You're not making a distinction between an insurance survey and a pre-purchase survey. As discussed previously, there are (or should be) criteria for an insurance survey. Those criteria should be "safety" as defined by current, official coast Guard requirements plus the material condition of the boat as it relates to the original build configuration. As an owner I don't believe you would want insurance companies willy nilly forcing 30 year old boats to meet build standards for a new boat. If there are no safety upgrades forced by a government regulation, the boat is safe. That assumes the material condition of the vessel is intact (per the as built configuration). That's insurance survey....an assessment of risk.

A pre-purchase survey is another story. If it looks at the design of a boat or its systems per current ABYC design (as opposed to condition) criteria, and is used as a tool to upgrade an original design, it amounts to a tool to shake down the seller.

The example of a worn cutless bearing is a condition issue. An example of revising the original wiring to meet current ABYC guidelines is not. In the aviation world, safety related deficiencies are addressed by official airworthiness directives (FAA). A fifty year old Cessna (with government mandated safety upgrades) is the same airplane that rolled out the manufacturers door. Beyond that the condition of that original design is what counts. In the pleasure boating world, ABYC and SAMS/NAMS would like to be the FAA or the Coast Guard and force upgrades. They attempt to leverage their product {"safety") through surveys. Buyers screw sellers using ABYC. New equipment and accessory manufacturers, who subscribe to ABYC for their products, reap the profits and plow money into ABYC to keep that part of the business circle alive. A few years ago there was a team of ABYC, SAMS/NAMS, and various product vendors set up at our marina. They were offering "free" services. WRONG! They were peddling their "safety" products. Never mind that virtually every boat in the marina was safe per the Coast Guard. ABYC guidelines are not standards (a legal term). Big difference.
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Old 10-08-2018, 09:03 AM   #36
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Sorry for the sidetrack. Is there a place to download the AYBC info, preferably in PDF?
I believe ABYC sells their product. They are a business.
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Old 10-08-2018, 09:07 AM   #37
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Sorry for the sidetrack. Is there a place to download the AYBC info, preferably in PDF?

To access the full ABYC standards you have to join ABYC which isn't cheap. Some excerpts are available- generally electrical but you will have to google to find them.


Canadian stanndards which are kind of a mini ABYC are available on line- https://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents...ty/tp1332e.pdf



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Old 10-08-2018, 12:09 PM   #38
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When I sell something, it is priced to take into account its condition.
A survey should point out the condition of the item being sold, so should only confirm the price you expect to get for it. If the survey finds expensive repairs you need, but didn't know about, you will need to reduce your price accordingly, but you should already know your boat well enough to anticipate what the surveyor will find. Then, only if you are desperate to sell, the survey will make no difference to the actual selling price.
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Old 10-08-2018, 12:20 PM   #39
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When I sell something, it is priced to take into account its condition.
A survey should point out the condition of the item being sold, so should only confirm the price you expect to get for it. If the survey finds expensive repairs you need, but didn't know about, you will need to reduce your price accordingly, but you should already know your boat well enough to anticipate what the surveyor will find. Then, only if you are desperate to sell, the survey will make no difference to the actual selling price.

The Real Estate industry has conditioned their buyers to believe they can beat the price down if they have an inspection and find something is not in "new condition". This is beginning to carry over into the boat and car industry. I ALWAYS state up front that "this is NOT a new boat/car/house/airplane and you are welcome to spend your money on an "Inspection","Survey", etc. But the price is as you find it. I dont give hoot what your guy says."
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Old 10-08-2018, 01:56 PM   #40
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I believe ABYC sells their product. They are a business.
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To access the full ABYC standards you have to join ABYC which isn't cheap. Some excerpts are available- generally electrical but you will have to google to find them.


Canadian stanndards which are kind of a mini ABYC are available on line- https://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents...ty/tp1332e.pdf



David

Thank you both. I thought there might be a special abbreviated version for homebuilders and DIY owners.
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