If it were my boat, I agree that I would be taking a core sample or two, but these poor people are fighting terminal health issues in the primary boat-keeping person and need to be shut of this liability which has been rotting any unused for years due to simple inertia in remembrance of better times. To encourage any further effort on the care-giver's part to resurrect this old dog, despite its ok engines and genny, would be cruelly adding undo complexity and costs to her life and involve me in ways I do not want, and money is no concern to her. I think I have done the right thing in recommending a survey once we got the engines and genny running and bilge pumps set up to get a handle on potential insurability, and now that the hammer has fallen about where I thought it would, they should hopefully soon unload it. The son I was helping expects to get a pontoon boat to put in their now-empy boat lift alongside their soon-to-be-empty wet slip so he can take the parents and grandkids out for enjoyable days on the bay in good weather. The ailing parent enjoyed a recent family trip in a rental pontoon, but will not probably have a lot more time for that. In his memory, they can all enjoy a much simpler vessel doing the same things they did with the trawler which was just short day runs.
