Buying the Find

Well, we found our boat. Now what?

And so the process begins: the first step in a prospective purchase is to survey the boat. What this means, is to hire experts on hulls, boating systems, and engines to come on board and inspect the boat, a process somewhat familiar to every homebuyer. The buyer bears the cost of this process, which with boats includes hauling the boat out of the water to inspect the hull and running gear (props, shafts, rudders, fiberglass, thrusters, through hulls and zincs) under the boat. The prospective buyer also has a chance to take the boat for a little spin to determine seaworthiness, handling, and whether you're really interested in the vessel.

You understand that you're gonna have to touch every part of this boat, right?

For us, this process came on a second trip down to Jacksonville, where along with the broker from great harbor, Eric, we took the boat out into the Ortega river, and then into the St. John's river for a 30 minute cruise. We then turned the boat around and went back to Huckins boat yard where the boat was hauled out of the water with a travel lift to allow further inspection. The surveyor, Noel, was experienced and focused. At one point during the process of Huckins, he approached me quietly, and said, "you understand that you're gonna have to touch every part of this boat, right?" What an exhilarating feeling! He was right.

The Yanmar engine inspector, Jeff, was also experienced, focused and reassuringly had no adverse comments regarding the engines, cooling systems, running gear or generator. Jeff works at a First Mate Yacht Services in St. Augustine and we would come to know the company well as they maintained our engines over the next several years.

There was no question that this boat was in pretty rough shape as it had been exposed to the elements for several years, and had probably not cruised within the past two years. We found a lot of problems that needed to be corrected before we could become comfortable with the vessel. Oddly, this mostly struck us as a welcome challenge to resurrect this boat. A video made by the broker said it best.

Starting from the bow, there was a curious brown drainage from the bow spirit across the forward deck, the flybridge cushions were rotted, the deck was filthy, the GH model decals on the side of the pilot house had cracked to the point of being illegible, the dinghy was a disaster, there had been some leakage in the rear of the pilot house which a Bahamian technician had tried to fix with a bathtub full of caulk, the interior teak floors were filthy, the port holes were dirty and leaking, and corroded with broken screens, the color of the boat was not our favorite, and there appeared to be a leak damaging one of the cabinets in the salon. On the plus side, the diesels had only 1400 hours on them, and the generator substantially less. The running gear was in good shape, except for an excess of barnacles, and the hull, thruster and steering gear was solid. We cataloged what needed to be done and prepared our offer.

The negotiating process was direct and two counteroffers later and a contractual guarantee of repairing the most egregious deficiences, we owned a boat. Then the work began.