The etiquette of buying a boat - surveys and offers...

[Kukri]

A note on liens. This is from memory of my days as a practising Admiralty lawyer forty years ago, so may not be accurate, but it's roughly right:

There are four sorts of lien that may attach to a British ship (or boat) under English law:

1. Maritime Liens.

These are the important ones as they survive a bona fide sale of the vessel at arm's length for value between a willing buyer and a willing seller. A maritime lien arises in respect of a claim for salvage, for collision damage to another vessel, for general average, for bottomry and for crew's wages. In other words, in the sale of an ordinary yacht, they are unlikely to arise.

2. Registered Charges.

These are marine mortgages which are registered on the British Register of Ships ("part one registration") and the ship cannot be validly sold unless and until the mortgage is discharged. if the boat is on the Part One Register and you have not submitted the Bill of Sale to the Registrar and recieved the new Certificate of Registration, you haven't bought the boat.

3. Contractual liens

Any claim "in rem" against the ship which can be enforced by arrest and sale of the vessel, other than those listed above. These do not survive a bona fide sale at arm's length.

4. Ship repairer's possessory liens - a similar lien is granted to boat yards and marinas under the SBBNF standard terms and under marina berth contracts. The vessel cannot be moved even after sale until the bill is paid - but if she is moved, the lien disappears.

Caution: that is the position in England. Under US law, all claims against a vessel give rise to maritime liens which survive a sale.

 

[jac]

So did I is that sad or what?

It shows that we are highly observant and probably intellectual individuals and much better than the rest of the rabble that view the video and don't spot it.

And I'm sticking to that story.

Probably not the forum reference though.

 

[Sticky Fingers]

It shows that we are highly observant and probably intellectual individuals .... .

 

[Angele]

Agreed.

.....now who can spot the forum reference in the video at https://youtu.be/eUeZcVEo3Og :encouragement:

I have. :encouragement:

But I'm not going to spoil it for others.

 

[jac]

I have. :encouragement:

But I'm not going to spoil it for others.

Me too.

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Agreed.

.....now who can spot the forum reference in the video at https://youtu.be/eUeZcVEo3Og :encouragement:

Me too. Slow afternoon in the office....

 

[jonic]

Me too

I suspect that those "in the know" will keep it that way and leave everyone else in suspense.

 

[WoodyP]

Can't you just flag it up for those who can't spot it?

 

[Angele]

Can't you just flag it up for those who can't spot it?

 

[duncan99210]

I've seen it! And no, I'm not telling...

 

[grumpy_o_g]

You seem so intent on trying to change a system that currently works for both buyer and seller. This system has safeguards for both buyer and seller. Maybe it is your ignorance about boats in general that should be addressed. Go and get some experience on a variety of boats to see what you like. This can be done by chartering, taking sailing courses or joining a club and sailing on other peoples boats. Experience is something you gain whilst doing something else, and you desparately need some more experience as many of your comments and changes in ideas clearly show your lack of understanding of how secondhand boat sales are conducted.

Over the 50+ years I have been sailing, I have seen many major improvements to the way secondhand boats are sold. In the past the only was to advertise a boat for sale was a card in a yacht club or chandler, a line entry advert in a yachting magazine or with a broker. You rarely saw any photographs, you had to visit the boat where ever it was (usually on a mooring as there were virtually no marinas). My father once listed his boat in a yachting magazine in 1970 and on the day of publication he had an enquiry from Scotland and he drove down to view 2 days later and agreed to buy without a survey as it was only 3 years old. We arranged transport with a yacht transport company and for the hire of a crane to lift the boat from the water straight on to the low loader. We did all this on his behalf as he was not there and from the first contact to lifting the boat was under a week.

Now days you can view many boats at the touch of a button from the comfort of your chair. Photographs are reasonable representations of what a boat looks like, but do not give you a feel of the exact space or condition. The only way you can do that is to visit the boat. This change has radically changed the way secondhand boats are now offered and many new internet only brokers have sprung up.

No matter what you think it still comes back to a seller and a buyer agreeing terms. Others have clearly shown your "ideas" to change the system are impractible or impossible to implement. No agent will bear any costs to protect a buyer as he is employed by the seller, no different to a house agent. Surveys are conducted to assist the buyer to be aware of faults the surveyor can see, but not those he cannot see, again no different from a full house survey.

It is strange how you ignored my comment about having to prove you have the cash to buy a boat as this is little different from getting a mortgage in place before looking at houses.

Let me now show how fast a boat can be purchased. I bought my current boat privately after viewing several with agents. It had been out of the water for 18 months in a yacht club yard. I agreed a price when I first viewed it and paid a deposit subject to survey (not held by an agent in an escrue account!). I contacted my surveyor the same day and he was able to do the survey the following day. Nothing major was found in the survey, but chatting with him was very useful as I learnt a few things that I had missed, however I still disagree with a couple of his recommendations as unnecessary. The following day I had a digital copy of the report and a hard copy a day later. The vendor was unavailable for a couple of days, so from purchase to completion was 5 days. The only slight problem was I had to join the yacht club to keep the boat there whilst I completed some improvements. This worked out far cheaper than launching it and lifting it out at the marina to complete the work. How else could this transaction have been simplified or improved? I doubt if an agent had been used the transaction would have been any different.

I had never been on any of this model of boat in the water, let alone tried it under engine or sail. It was recommendations and comments from published test reports that made this unnecessary, and since then I agree with the comments about handling under sail and power.

I still cannot see what needs to be changed in the current agent system. There will always be good agents and useless agents, but forums like this will readily advise on good agents but bad agents will only continue to trade if ignorant people deal with them. Innovations to the selling/buying process are very unlikely to change in the next few decades as it has been found by most buyers and sellers to work in both their interests. Changes to make it one sided are highly unlikely. The biggest changes we shall see relate to supply and demand making price alterations in the market, or put simply, the market makes the prices.

The fact that you chose to but a boat that had published tests available as to it's handling in various conditions does not lead to the conclusion that we have "a system that currently works for both buyer and seller". Also vj has stated that he does not have answers but that he feels that there are some shortcomings in the current system. Any perceived or real ignorance about boats (which was, to put it mildly, somewhat less than tactfully phrased) is irrelevant as it isn't just people with 50+ years of sailing that buy boats. With a known boat, a good broker and a sensible and reasonable vendor just about any system will work. There are plenty of people (including an example in the post immediately before yours) that have had issues, perceived or otherwise in other scenarios though, which rather suggests that the current system isn't perfect and that there is room for improvement.

Exactly what those changes could or should be is what I suspect the OP wanted to start discussion on when he made the post. Personally I would like to see a standard way for the potential buyer to cover all the costs involved of taking the boat for a test sail and to deter those wanting a cheap day's sailing. If I'm willing to stump up £1K+ for stepping the mast, prepping the boat, launching, etc. and the reverse of the process then I'm obviously serious. If the boat is in her berth though then maybe a standard fee for a test sail that would effectively be a non-refundable deposit? Also there's absolutely no reason a survey can't be obtained beforehand - the conflict of interest argument is totally spurious. I pay for a service and MoT on my car and walk away with what is effectively a very low quality standard survey on my car that I can show to prospective purchasers. At the very least the vendor should have the option of "buying" the results of a survey commissioned by a potential buyer who changed his or her mind.

 

[duncan99210]

I feel that the MOT/service on a car is not necessarily a good analogy to use for a survey. There is little or no comeback on a garage for any short comings that later emerge from their work, especially once a sale has been completed, whereas there is some comeback against a surveyor who has made false statements in his report.

In addition, when I've been in the business of buying a boat, the main objective of getting a survey done is to satisfy myself that my impressions of the boat leading to putting in an offer weren't too heavily rose tinted and it also gave me something objective to discuss work required/price adjustment with the seller. I would not be happy to accept a survey commissioned by the seller to provide me with this sort of information.

All that said, I've got no problems with offering test sails to a potential buyer provided out of pocket expenses are covered before the boat leaves the yard. That's the crunch: it's a sizeable wedge of cash that'd be required to launch the boat and cover opportunity costs for a crew to take a potential buyer out. It'd be less if I could be there to provide the service and less still if the boat was in the water but it needs to be bourne in mind when thinking about 'test' sails as opposed to sea trials.

 

[jac]

Can't you just flag it up for those who can't spot it?

Going to be as quiet as a mouse

 

[Concerto]

Any perceived or real ignorance about boats (which was, to put it mildly, somewhat less than tactfully phrased) is irrelevant as it isn't just people with 50+ years of sailing that buy boats. With a known boat, a good broker and a sensible and reasonable vendor just about any system will work. There are plenty of people (including an example in the post immediately before yours) that have had issues, perceived or otherwise in other scenarios though, which rather suggests that the current system isn't perfect and that there is room for improvement.

The largest purchase anyone usually makes is a house. This is an immovable object that should be easy to get surveyed. Any boat is a combination of transport and accomodation, which is far more complex to get surveyed as it may or may be not ashore.

The survey as duncan99210 states is to satisfy the buyer that all is correct. If a novice decideds to buy a boat, then he should be taking advice (friends or professional) that the intended purchase is suitable for his needs. If he ignores advice, then any mistake will be his own. Every in house purchases, some factors outside all the surveys and legal checks can still result in a bad move. Why should a potential buyer of a boat be immune to any risks?

With my yacht purchase I could have surveyed the boat myself with my experience, but I know that an insurance company would not accept my word. Another similar boat I missed out on, I very nearly matched the accepted asking price offer but being non conditional on a survey. Later I found the price was reduced after survey as some remedial work was deemed necessay, but quotes were obtained that were highly inflated and also delayed the completion of the sale by nearly 2 months. The agent's comment was the purchaser was using the survey as a lever to substantially reduce the price, but the vendor continued with the sale. He could have declined and come back to me and had an almost instant completion.

I still believe that an outsider to the process of buying a secondhand boat should be very aware of how it has evolved to the mutual benefit of both parties. The idea like a test sail really do not apply to most boats as they are from common moulds, so similar boats will have been tested by a magazine at some time in the past. Surely it would be an improvement to the buying process that these "old tests" be readily available for potentil buyers. It may be worthwhile that copies are made available by an agent or private seller, but this raises copyright issues. There have been many comments about the high price of old articles from yachting magazines archives. This is strange as most magazines over the past decade or so have the information stored digitally, so the "research and copying" time is virtually zero but charge as if they are still doing this. This works against anyone trying to research a number of different boats as currently they could easily spend a lot on old tests on many unsuitable boats.

The idea of test sails really should only apply to one off boats. Personally I do not think a test sail is necessary as many have stated some people look for a free day out. A sea trial is again a possibility, but this is after all due negociations, deposit and survey have been complted. It may show up things that an out of water survey cannot do like engine faults. This system is there to protect the purchaser once he has made his choice to buy, not before he has made his intention clear. The current system still works to the benefit of the vast majority of all secondhand boat sales.

 

[Hacker]

How do first time buyers who may be relatively new to sailing get an idea of how the boat sails? For mainstream AWB they could charter or flotilla; but for others there doesn't seem to be a way to check out how a boat sails.

 

[maby]

How do first time buyers who may be relatively new to sailing get an idea of how the boat sails? For mainstream AWB they could charter or flotilla; but for others there doesn't seem to be a way to check out how a boat sails.

Indeed. It's been suggested that the purchaser should rely on the reviews that were done of the boat by the sailing press, but those tend to be pretty superficial and just focus on performance. That may be the primary concern to racers, but not to those who are more interested in cruising. A boat can be very fast, but a real pain to sail and uncomfortable to be a passenger in. Is the helming position comfortable for you? Are you tall enough to see out? Can you reach the main winches without having to call the osteopath for an appointment tomorrow? I've never seen any reviews in the boating press that even begin to address questions like those.

 

[jac]

Indeed. It's been suggested that the purchaser should rely on the reviews that were done of the boat by the sailing press, but those tend to be pretty superficial and just focus on performance. That may be the primary concern to racers, but not to those who are more interested in cruising. A boat can be very fast, but a real pain to sail and uncomfortable to be a passenger in. Is the helming position comfortable for you? Are you tall enough to see out? Can you reach the main winches without having to call the osteopath for an appointment tomorrow? I've never seen any reviews in the boating press that even begin to address questions like those.

But surely you can tell those when just looking at the boat.(ok maybe not when heeled) but you could certainly know if you could reach winches etc.

 

[Resolution]

How do first time buyers who may be relatively new to sailing get an idea of how the boat sails? For mainstream AWB they could charter or flotilla; but for others there doesn't seem to be a way to check out how a boat sails.

Well there is a way but it is expensive. The novice buyer has to persuade the seller a) that he is worth continuing the time and effort of negotiations, and b) that he will pay up front for ALL the costs of taking the boat out (with a proper skipper) in order to get his idea of how it sails. As has been said several times already in this thread, this will probably be expensive. Maybe several hundred pounds. All strictly buyer costs.
All part of the learning process?

 

[maby]

But surely you can tell those when just looking at the boat.(ok maybe not when heeled) but you could certainly know if you could reach winches etc.

Oh no, I think not. There is a world of difference between standing in the cockpit with the boat tied up to a pontoon and being out under sail in a moderate wind.

A boat is one of the most expensive purchases many of us make and it is a moving vehicle as well as a place to live. Ours cost more than our house. How many people buy a new car without having driven it a few miles?

 

[jordanbasset]

Well there is a way but it is expensive. The novice buyer has to persuade the seller a) that he is worth continuing the time and effort of negotiations, and b) that he will pay up front for ALL the costs of taking the boat out (with a proper skipper) in order to get his idea of how it sails. As has been said several times already in this thread, this will probably be expensive. Maybe several hundred pounds. All strictly buyer costs.
All part of the learning process?

Agree, still struggling to see what the issue here is. If the buyer wants a test sail and the seller is okay with it, then the buyer pays all the true costs, including opportunity costs for the time of the person showing the boat, simples.