How NOT to Buy a Boat!
01-03-01
Celebrating the purchase of our new boat, an Amel Super Maramu - Brighton, UK
“Not all those who wander are lost”
Your New Multifaceted Family Member
A live-aboard, blue water sailboat is much more than just a vessel to transfer you across the sea to your next adventure. It's also a home, a school, a leisure facility, and a resource production hub.
In many ways, your ‘new’ boat becomes an adopted member of the family with its own personality and idiosyncrasies, constantly needing attention. The relationship you form with this new arrival depends largely on your budget, itinerary, a certain amount of luck, and how well it was treated by its former owner. If its ‘nature’ is rooted in its build pedigree, then ‘nurture’ is how well it has been maintained and upgraded. Both nature and nurture should receive equal scrutiny to determine the quality of the boat you’re about to take on.
If a sailboat's ‘nature’ is rooted in its build pedigree, then ‘nurture’ is how well it has been maintained and upgraded
Knowledge is Your Best Protection
When buying a house, every family has different budgets and needs, and it’s no different when buying a live-aboard sailboat. However, the boat market is far less regulated. When buying abroad, as many people do, you are bound by the consumer laws of that particular country, which can involve a lot of red tape but little in the way of consumer protection. Knowledge and patience are your best protection against being palmed off with a lemon, and knowledge is built up from a great deal of primary and secondary research.
When buying a boat, always be aware that brokers work first for themselves, second for the seller, and only third (and last) for you, the prospective buyer. Many brokers are just repurposed second-hand car salesmen in fancy blue blazers who will happily let you sail off into the sunset on a wreck while they count their commission.
Our Boat Buying Experience
We entered the boat-buying market in 2017 through YachtWorld.com and were met with a surprising lack of follow-up from brokers
Armed with piles of research and questions, we entered the boat-buying market in 2017 through YachtWorld.com and were met with a surprising lack of follow-up from brokers, despite being a cash buyer. Many years later, a trusted broker friend confided in me that there were enough buyers these days who are happy to hand over cash without ever stepping foot aboard a boat. People with too much knowledge who ask awkward questions and insist on inconvenient things such as maintenance records and surveys are just too troublesome to deal with, especially when the broker knows that the boat they are selling wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. So, by all means, wave your cash about to attract the attention of brokers, but don’t ask too many searching questions upfront!
Beware Pretty Pictures and Don't Rush the Process
While sailing around the world, I have encountered boats receiving a professional buff, polish, and anti-foul to make them look picture-perfect, which glossed over the fact that surveys had written them off. I’ve also heard of hurricane-damaged boats from the Caribbean being shipped to Europe, where they receive cosmetic repairs and are placed back on the market without a blemish to their history.
Your live-aboard sailboat is possibly the second most expensive purchase you'll ever make after your home... and potentially the costliest if things go wrong. And make no mistake, even with careful research and due diligence, things can go very wrong.
As we discovered.
How Things Can Go Wrong
In 2017, we were finally in a position to buy a boat. We had sold our rental property and the remnants of our business assets (after the financial crisis) and modified our home for maximum rental income. This gave us a purchasing budget of just under £200,000 (US$250,000), which meant a new blue water cruiser of the size and quality we were hoping for was way beyond our price range.
We had sold our rental property and the remnants of our business assets (after the financial crisis) and modified our home for maximum rental income.
So, we turned to the brokerage market. With that in mind, we knew we'd have to put aside a maintenance and upgrades allowance of at least 25% in the first year and 10% thereafter. We also allowed a search budget of around 2%. During the intervening years, our family had also increased to five, and our boat needs had changed accordingly.
As a working family, only one of us could realistically free up enough time to travel to viewings, and seeing as I was the one with fewer commitments and more maintenance experience, it was my task to hunt down the right boat.
Incidentally, this was how we began video blogging. I uploaded footage of the boats to YouTube for Irenka to view at home. Having spent many years searching online, I thought I knew the market well, but the brokerage market is a murky and unregulated world when you get out there.
Our Boat Buying Journey - DO NOT REPEAT!
Nauticats are well-built boats with a great pedigree and an excellent reputation
Skipping forward through the many boats I viewed, the first boat that we actually put an offer on was a lovely Nauticat 521 built in 1988 and based in Barcelona. Nauticats are well-built boats with a great pedigree and an excellent reputation. It was an impressive boat for its age with many upgrades and in great condition. The owner had clearly looked after it well and had spared no expense in upgrading it. The ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ sides of this boat were firmly ticked. However, the asking price was right on the edge of our budget. It would have meant that we wouldn't have had any contingency once we'd bought the boat, which made us very nervous.
Try as I might, I couldn't persuade the owner to shift on his price. I assured the owner that our offer was no reflection on his boat, merely our budget, but he wouldn’t budge. So, regrettably, we had to walk away. While the boat was priced reasonably, considering all of the hard work and upgrades that had gone into it, three years later, the boat remained on the market unsold, which was frustrating for us but probably even more frustrating for the intransigent owner.
The Second Boat: A Catamaran
The build quality of a monohull is far superior to a catamaran of an equivalent price, although they have other obvious advantages
The second boat that we put an offer on was actually a catamaran - a Leopard 42 listed by a reputable broker and anchored in the BVIs. Travelling to view this boat from the UK was a major chunk out of our search budget, so we were determined to do everything by the book. We agreed on a price, I transferred the deposit, and in May 2017, I flew to Nanny Quay to see it.
The boat was in good condition, quite spacious, and had lots of upgrades. It had obviously been well maintained by the owner and was undoubtedly a fine boat for Caribbean cruising. We hauled it out, and the initial survey uncovered only a few minor issues, so we went for a test sail. The boat performed as it should (as a catamaran), but I was quite surprised at how flat (quite literally!) it left me feeling. That thrill when a monohull catches the wind and heels into its groove... well, it just wasn’t there.
That thrill when a monohull catches the wind and heels into its groove just wasn’t there on a catamaran.
There's no escaping the fact that catamarans within this category (and our budget) tend to be built for the charter market and to a price point. As such, the build quality of a monohull is far superior to a catamaran of an equivalent price, although they have other obvious advantages that I’ll cover in a later post, ‘Catamarans vs Monohulls.’
Undeterred, I discussed how we could upgrade this catamaran to a more robust blue water standard with the surveyor, and as his list of recommendations grew ever longer, I could see it was an unrealistic proposition.
So after long deliberation, Irenka and I came to the conclusion that catamarans within our budget really weren’t right for our adventure. This was a major blow because we had spent a disproportionate amount of our search budget on little more than an expensive learning curve.
Wire Transfer Hacking in the Caribbean
Back at home, we waited dejectedly for our deposit to be returned. Then, we waited some more. While being transferred from the Caribbean to our UK bank via a US bank, the money had disappeared into the electronic ether of the world banking system.
At home, trying to get back our deposit that disappeared for three months in the Caribbean/US banking system.
After three frantic months of exhaustive inquiries, emails, and letters, we finally contacted the Yacht Brokers Association of America (YBAA) for help, who told us somewhat unsympathetically:
"There are many incidents of wire transfer hacking when buying boats in the Caribbean where monies have been fraudulently directed to offshore accounts with no chance of recovery.”
WTF!
In a last-ditch attempt to try and salvage something from the situation, we contacted all the parties involved - the banks, the brokerages, the tourist board, and anybody remotely connected to the boat buying world and/or banking in the Caribbean. We told them that we were going to leverage all media channels at our disposal to get our story to as wide an audience as possible.
A few days later, the money popped back into our account without any explanation. I've got to say I don't think it was the broker's fault; they seemed to work tirelessly on our behalf to recover the money, but our days of searching for a boat in the Caribbean were well and truly over. It was the wisest (or luckiest) choice we made in this whole sorry debacle because a few months later, hurricane Irma flattened everything in its path, including the BVIs.
Hurricane Irma flattened everything in its path.
Find a Boat!
By now, our budget was stretched extremely thin, so I decided to restrict my search to the Med. I arranged to visit two yacht brokerages and a few private sellers in Greece, lining up viewings with as many blue water sailboats as possible. These included a Hallberg Rassy which had rotten teak, an Oyster which sold before I’d even got there, an Italian boat - I forget the make - which had been taken for a weekend sail by the owner so I couldn't actually find it, a Bruce Roberts with serious damp issues, a Colvic 50 with even more damp issues, and a beautiful steel custom-built in immaculate condition that the broker steadfastly refused to return my emails and phone calls after I’d asked about stability calculations.
And then there was this one Amel Super Maramu.
And then there was this one Amel Super Maramu. It was somewhat tired and in need of maintenance and upgrades. But it was about 25% below market value, which seemed quite serendipitous as it fell exactly within our budget. So after much deliberation, we finally put an offer in on the Amel, subject to survey.
The survey lasted two days in all, which included a lift out and a sea trial, and the report came back as a 27-page epic.
THE FINAL STEP
Our surveyor's report - a 27-page epic.
Against better judgment, we went ahead with this ‘doer-upper’. It was a model with a good pedigree and a great DIY support network, but the ‘nurture’ part had clearly been neglected and we were going to have to spend some time and money on bringing her up to blue water standard. There was some to-ing and fro-ing over minor details with the owner, but that was it.
We'd finally bought our sailboat!
If you'd like to see the video blog based on our boat buying experience then follow the link below:
That's is for this week! Next week I'll be looking at the most popular blue water cruising sailboats
“Not all who wander
..”
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