Design crimes

pugwash

pugwash

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When you're trying to sell your house, carpet in the kitchen or bathroom knocks £1,300 off the price according to yesterday's Telegraph about the top 12 design crimes. Paint-spattered light switches will cost you £3,000, a dying pot plant on show or a gnome in the garden £500, and so on.

Talking modifications, fittings and furnishings rather than basic hull design, what's the equivalent of pebble-dash that knocks value off your boat when you try to sell it? What are the top 12 design crimes afloat?

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Value Killers

Damp carpet is quite a turn-off.

Dead electronic gadgets ("funny, the radar was OK when I last used it") implies a fairly laissez-faire attitude to maintenance.

Siezed sea-cocks.

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I think D-I-Y is pretty much a killer anywhere.

I also think when selling that presentation is not much considered. When putting your boat on the market do you -
1. Clear all the crap from the lockers and (if you love it), take it home to garage. Less in the lockers makes the storage look more generous.
2. Remove all dirty cleaning and oily rags, don't need to remind buyers its not all fun.
3. Keep the boat clean and tidy.
4. If you can manage it keep it heated and if possible get all the lights on and the coffee on before the punter arrives.

Brokers never do these things, perhaps they cannot, but I've sat in enough cold and dismal saloons, batteries too flat to light the lights, trying to peer around with an old torch, in which it's virtually impossible to imagine the same place warm and cosy to think that some attention might have improved sale prospects.


<hr width=100% size=1>John
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.allgadgets.co.uk>http://www.allgadgets.co.uk</A>
 
A perfectly varnished hull adds about three weeks of spring-time maintenance per year.
Brand new, grey and brown sails mean she's been raced to within an inch of her life summer and winter, and you will need a couple of grand to replace all the cruising paraphernalia that was stripped out to make her go faster (bimini, anchor chain, water tanks....).


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Top crime for me would be a DIY fibreglass Sprayhood - YUK, next is cup holders...followed by holes cut in panels for keeping those handy little bits and pieces...
Mark

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Bilge water still in a boat lifted out and in it's cradle, used underpants on the berth (no, I didn't look that closely), the cut off end of a plastic bottle secured around a light switch so you couldn't lean on it by mistake, heads ponging to high heaven, wiring emerging from the bilge like the monster from the black lagoon, that white residue you get on battery terminals in bad conditions, owners who say that osmosis doesn't exist and they won't drop their price if you find it, "shorepower" consisting of a 13 amp plug and 2.5mm twin and earth to a wander socket, the galley with unwashed pots still on cooker....... all things I found when looking at 2nd hand boats.

Why their owners didn't clean up before putting on the market I'll never know.

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Re: Value Killers

I'd rather have carpet in the bathroom anyday. I'd rather have a bit of damp carpet now and again (reduced if you have a bath matt) than a broken neck from slipping on tiles.

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Clean, tidy, spacious and impersonal

is pretty much what is wanted, I think.

But I am not in a good position to judge - wooden boats go according to quite different rules, it seems, and I have not sold a boat for twenty years!

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Uncluttered Cockpit

I looked at one wooden boat whose entire cockpit seemed to be taken up by an aircooled engine sticking it's nose through the sole... lots of character, but I have a healthy respect for my shins...

<hr width=100% size=1>"Stop mucking about, darling, and get the bloody mud weight over."
 
Re: Wood stain

Painting hardwood like it was a garden fence.

Moss on the halyards.

Anchor locker full of water and rusty chain.

Add on electrics from different eras and manufacturers all fitted with snap connectors.

I've see all of these plus a waterheater that almost filled the space in the heads and of course the furry sausage. I once visited a boat for sale with a broker that had a pan of fried sausages on the cooker. From their beards they were quite old.

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Some boat designs, and cars come to that, are a crime in themselves.

I think that there should be some form of planning permission, like with a building, to make sure the general public are not subjected to eye-sores on the water or the roads.

The Westerly Consort Duo is a good example, whereby the basic boat was quite acceptable but looks awful with an extension.

The Fiat Multipla also comes to mind - unfortunately!

<hr width=100% size=1>If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
 
Re: but..

In that case I suggest:

(a) A matt around the offending bathroom furniture. A bit grannyish I know.
(b) I'm told you can get toilets which have something to aim for which reduces spillage.
(c) Do it sitting down when you're drunk.

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