About to Buy? Have you got it right?

[IanM]

10 minutes ago, Calranthe said:

On the other hand a forum like this can give you some great ammunition for when you go look at boats, getting people here to pick apart a boat you are thinking of helps a lot so much real knowledge from so many different peoples experiences.

You'll be surprised how many people actually get annoyed when forum users pick apart boats they're thinking of. It's almost like they think it's a personal attack and how dare people rubbish their dream boat!

[Jak]

If you ask for advice then you should be prepared to receive it!  This forum is best for finding out all the mistakes everyone else has made over the years and maybe avoiding them?  If you don't want the advice then don't ask!!  We have spent months upgrading Ajax - and where do you recon we went for ideas and experiences? 

Should be constructive criticism, and most of it is

 

[Richard10002]

13 hours ago, WotEver said:

Or even the other way round

That's how it worked for us. Looked awful in the advert, good in the flesh. One of the questions I asked the surveyor was, "is this too good to be true - where is the catch". The response was that he couldn't find a catch, and it appeared to be true. To date, (6 years later), no catch has appeared

We would never have known if we hadn't travelled much further than our initial set distance for viewing boats, and actually had a look.

[WotEver]

1 hour ago, Richard10002 said:

"is this too good to be true - where is the catch"

It's up at the pointy end. 

Oh... catch...

1 hour ago, Richard10002 said:

We would never have known if we hadn't travelled much further than our initial set distance for viewing boats, and actually had a look.

Yup

I'm pleased for you that the boat found you. 

[Naughty Cal]

2 hours ago, WotEver said:

It's up at the pointy end. 

Oh... catch...

Yup

I'm pleased for you that the boat found you. 

Boats have a habit of doing that.

They pick their victim then lure them in.

[magictime]

'Go anywhere' length and beam would always be a deal-breaker for me (even if we didn't have family up north). No boat could be so perfect in terms of layout, living space etc. that I wouldn't mind putting huge chunks of the system out of reach.

Beyond that, I'm prepared to be won over by a variety of boats. My ideal might be something with a galley & dinette at the back, the saloon at the front, and the bathroom and bedroom in the middle, but I've only ever seen three or four boats with that layout in several years of online window-shopping, so I can't afford to be too rigid and I certainly can't afford to set out looking for a boat with the 'right' layout/living space and also the 'right' sort of stern, for instance. As for toilets... hmm...

[Dr Bob]

1 hour ago, magictime said:

'Go anywhere' length and beam would always be a deal-breaker for me (even if we didn't have family up north). No boat could be so perfect in terms of layout, living space etc. that I wouldn't mind putting huge chunks of the system out of reach.

Beyond that, I'm prepared to be won over by a variety of boats. My ideal might be something with a galley & dinette at the back, the saloon at the front, and the bathroom and bedroom in the middle, but I've only ever seen three or four boats with that layout in several years of online window-shopping, so I can't afford to be too rigid and I certainly can't afford to set out looking for a boat with the 'right' layout/living space and also the 'right' sort of stern, for instance. As for toilets... hmm...

That is exactly what my original post was about. We also had some quite 'fixed' ideas on what we must have. Our boat 'found us' and the 'fixed' ideas went out the window.....thank goodness!

 

[cuthound]

1 hour ago, magictime said:

'Go anywhere' length and beam would always be a deal-breaker for me (even if we didn't have family up north). No boat could be so perfect in terms of layout, living space etc. that I wouldn't mind putting huge chunks of the system out of reach.

In which case I would specifically instruct the surveyor to measure the length.

Boatbuilders isn't an exact science centre,  so a nominal 58 foot boat could easily be a foot or two longer or shorter. Also as the original owner licences the boat by length, there may be a temptation to licence it a bit shorter than the actual length to reduce costs.

[Dr Bob]

22 hours ago, WotEver said:

"Go out and look at loads of boats" is the advice offered so many times on here, "The right boat will find you". 

That doesn't stop some members from trying to do it from their armchair though. 

Quite right. In our original post, our 'Sacred Cows' were formed from the 'informed' information gathered on here with I would say limited veiwing of boats (maybe 10 or so). In our case the armchair was not very accurate.

[rusty69]

5 minutes ago, cuthound said:

In which case I would specifically instruct the surveyor to measure the length

A Good point. The first boat we had surveyed was advertised as being 55 ft in length. We liked the boat, so had it surveyed, measured length 47ft. Had we bought a tape measure and measured it ourselves we could have saved some money.  Or with a more experienced eye, could tell by looking. 

[bargemast]

2 hours ago, rusty69 said:

A Good point. The first boat we had surveyed was advertised as being 55 ft in length. We liked the boat, so had it surveyed, measured length 47ft. Had we bought a tape measure and measured it ourselves we could have saved some money.  Or with a more experienced eye, could tell by looking. 

Did you make de seller pay for this Survey ?

 

Advertising with completely wrong dimension like that, isn't acceptable.

 

 1' or 2' wrong isn't good either, but 8' in this case is pushing it rather too far.

 

Peter.

[rusty69]

17 minutes ago, bargemast said:

Did you make de seller pay for this Survey ?

 

Advertising with completely wrong dimension like that, isn't acceptable.

 

 1' or 2' wrong isn't good either, but 8' in this case is pushing it rather too far.

 

Peter.

I think we did try, but without success.  It was a long time ago, and we were young a naive. 

These days i could tell the difference by looking. 

[bargemast]

6 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

I think we did try, but without success.  It was a long time ago, and we were young a naive. 

These days i could tell the difference by looking. 

Makes it even worse for the seller, really nasty trying to screw a couple of naïve newbees.

 

I am a non-violent person, but sellers like this one make my blood boil.

 

Peter.

[cuthound]

55 minutes ago, bargemast said:

Makes it even worse for the seller, really nasty trying to screw a couple of naïve newbees.

 

I am a non-violent person, but sellers like this one make my blood boil.

 

Peter.

I wonder if it was licenced at the correct length?  If not, and depending on how long he owned the boat, the owner could have overpaid a significan't amount. 

Also, what happens if you measure the boat and find it is licensed at the wrong (too long) length? Will CRT give a refund, when shown the evidence?

If the boat turns out to be longer than licenced, i suspect many people would just keep quiet. 

Edited June 22, 2017 by cuthound
Spillung

[bargemast]

2 minutes ago, cuthound said:

I wonder if it was licenced at the correct length?  If not, and depending on how long he owned the boat, the owner could have overpaid a significan't amount. 

Also, what happens if you measure the boat and find it is licensed at the wrong (too long) length? Will CRT give a refund, when shown the evidence?

If the boat turns out to be longer than licenced, i suspect many people would just keep quiet. 

Yes, I guess that in that case people would keep quiet.

But advertising a boat at a lenght of 55' while it's only 47' in reality is as far as I know swindle.

In a case like that if the seller isn't prepared to pay the Survey costs that the prospective buyer wouldn't have made if he'd known that the boat was only 47', would make make me go and have a word with him, and I'll tell him that he doesn't have to worry because my arms aren't long enough to touch him, but then when he's calling me a lier when his nose starts to bleed all of a sudden, I'll tell him that my arms are longer than I told him.

 

As I said before, I am a non-violent person, but there are limits.

 

Peter. 

[Bewildered]

44 minutes ago, bargemast said:

But advertising a boat at a lenght of 55' while it's only 47' in reality is as far as I know swindle.

Maybe the plan was to sell it to a woman; not sure how they are with feet but men have been lying to them about inches since the inch was invented  don't know if this is a swindle though?

[rusty69]

5 minutes ago, Bewildered said:

don't know if this is a swindle though?

I don't recall if the subsequent advert was amended. I suppose it could have been a genuine error, or perhaps the seller wasn't themselves aware. 

[MtB]

5 hours ago, cuthound said:

In which case I would specifically instruct the surveyor to measure the length.

Boatbuilders isn't an exact science centre,  so a nominal 58 foot boat could easily be a foot or two longer or shorter. Also as the original owner licences the boat by length, there may be a temptation to licence it a bit shorter than the actual length to reduce costs.

 

Nor is the length.

When selling should you state the overall including bow and stern fenders, rudder straight, (as I think CRT (and EA) demand for the licencing length)?

Or should you measure the solid hull steelwork length, from prow to tunnel bands, and state that?

 

The difference can easily be two or three feet.

[bargemast]

31 minutes ago, Bewildered said:

Maybe the plan was to sell it to a woman; not sure how they are with feet but men have been lying to them about inches since the inch was invented  don't know if this is a swindle though?

That would really be a sexist swindle then.

It's an old, and probably true story that man have been lying about inches, but this could also have been caused by the introduction of the decimal counting with the centimeters, and because of that, reading centimeters while thinking they were inches, an easily made mistake

But as the saying go's, lenght is of no importance to the fun one can have, give or take a few centimeters, inches or feet.

 

Peter.

[Alan de Enfield]

23 minutes ago, bargemast said:

But as the saying go's, lenght is of no importance to the fun one can have, give or take a few centimeters, inches or feet.

But having a couple of feet is useful, - life with any less does become a little more difficult.

[bargemast]

3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

But having a couple of feet is useful, - life with any less does become a little more difficult.

You are absolutely right in what you're saying.

Some people can walk just as well on their hands, which is not my case, and apart from that, it isn't very practical I recon  .

 

Peter.

[cuthound]

4 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Nor is the length.

When selling should you state the overall including bow and stern fenders, rudder straight, (as I think CRT (and EA) demand for the licencing length)?

Or should you measure the solid hull steelwork length, from prow to tunnel bands, and state that?

 

The difference can easily be two or three feet.

Good point, maybe the seller of the 47 foot claimed 55 foot boat had 4 foot fenders at each end.