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Should A Broker Declare That A Boat IS Overplated?


alan_fincher

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"Should A Broker Declare That A Boat IS Overplated?"

 

Of course a broker should make this clear if they know about it. Given that there is a survey they must. ABNB changed hands not long ago and is now owned by a prominent surveyor.

 

The BMF Code states: Members shall provide Clients with bespoke accurate and reliable information being mindful of their requirements when making any recommendation; such information shall include but not be limited to price, specification and time of delivery of their products. Furthermore, Members shall not dishonestly misrepresent nor misdescribe their products or services.

 

You might debate whether failing to declare a known hull condition is covered by this regulation, but morally I certainly think it is. Putting myself in the customer's shoes, if I had made the effort to travel to someone's office to be then handed a survey revealing that the hull had had major works carried out, I think I might query why I hadn't been made aware of this before making a decision to spend time and money on the journey.

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The pictures they put on Facebook seemed to indicate that much if not all of the bottom half of the total hull sides was over-plated on both sides.

 

That clearly does not align with a suggestion that it is all "wear" damage, though some may be, of course.

 

Looking back at a comment made by "Brinklow" when they were doing the work, they said.......

 

Not sure what that means? Paul Barber, possibly, I don't know - I'm not clued up enough on builders in 1992 to know what other Pauls there were!

 

ABNB are selling it very definitely as early Steve Hudson - perhaps they have not been told the shell may be by someone else, and SMH only fitted it out?

 

 

Fair enough. I don't do Facebook so haven't seen any photo's. I was just going by Brinklows web site and there's only two photo's and very little comentry

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You might debate whether failing to declare a known hull condition is covered by this regulation, but morally I certainly think it is. Putting myself in the customer's shoes, if I had made the effort to travel to someone's office to be then handed a survey revealing that the hull had had major works carried out, I think I might query why I hadn't been made aware of this before making a decision to spend time and money on the journey.

 

There are a lot of brokers out there with lower moral standards than yourself Dominic

 

I recently went to look at a yacht - 400 mile round trip. When I got there it looked like a shed! The pictures used in the particulars were 2007 and the yacht has been layed up untouched for the last two years

 

I was not happy! I threatened to report them to the marine federation etc.

 

The broker has now put additional recent pictures on the particulars and identified the 2007 pictures as "what it could look like". But it's still very confusing for potential purchasers

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Why does it need to be exclusive as no-one wants to join?!

 

MtB

So many SMH boats are being massed produced these days that they'll soon be as commonplace as Springers or Liverpool Boats.

Clearly loads of people are very willing to join this exclusive club!

So, whilst the forum is bickering amongst itself with diametrically opposite certainties, the SMH club quietly flourishes with "the right sort of people".

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So, whilst the forum is bickering amongst itself with diametrically opposite certainties, the SMH club quietly flourishes with "the right sort of people".

 

[bites tongue whilst repeating the mantra: 'must resist..must resist..']

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Yours is heavily disguised though and looks (almost) like a proper boat from a distance :D

 

Pretty much like the one I nearly bought. Not a glint of polished brass anywhere and niceIy aging paintwork. (I was put off by the 3LW in it though. I wanted something a bit more esoteric.)

 

Neither of us would be allowed into the club anyway, I would hope!

 

 

MtB

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Our take on this is as follows.

 

My understanding is that , as has been said, it is described as an early Steve Hudson boat. The steelwork is by Paul Barber, fitted out and marketed by Steve Hudson, and for the record, it has no rivet washers, and polystyrene insulation.

 

The current owners have owned the boat for ten years or so, and have cruised very extensively over that time, in their retirement. Talking to them, there aren't many places they haven't been, but the now decided that it is time for them to move back into a house and sell the boat. They are really nice people, and the boat is extremely well kept.

 

They put the boat on brokerage last year and agreed a deal with a prospective purchaser subject to survey. During a previous docking they had been told that the boat appeared to have nothing wrong with it, and although it was not a formal survey, they did not anticipate any problems. However, the surveyor found evidence of significant pitting on the hull sides and said that remedial work was required, the scope of the work was to be established by thoroughly cleaning the hull sides under the waterline, which was not possible at the time of the survey.

 

The sale fell through, and the owner decided that the b to have the work done himself before putting the boat back on brokerage, hence he spoke to me. I spoke to the surveyor, and established that it was likely that the straight sides would need overplating, the bottom, fore end and swim were ok. When we craned the boat out my initial response was that it looked to be in pretty good order and that we could probably weld up the worst pits, however, after rotary wire brushing it was obvious that the pitting was too widespread and deep for this to be practical, especially considering the polystyrene insulation. We have a method which we use when overplating boats with polystyrene insulation that greatly reduces the risk of fire, we have done several over the years and never had a problem, however this is easy enough when the welding is confined to a straight run at the top of the new plate, but much more difficult when welding widespread pitting up over the whole surface of the plate. The polystyrene will melt away over a couple of inches behind the weld leaving bare steel, but if the option is to strip out what may be, and in this case was, a sound and tidy fit out then it is probably worth the compromise.

 

So, we overplated the boat on the straight portion of the sides up to the waterline, leaving the fore end, swim and bottom as they proved to be ok, the survey report was transferred to the owner, and the surveyor passed our work off before relaunching. I do not believe for one moment that either ABNB our the owner would try to hide the fact that it had been done, and considering that most buyers would have a survey done anyway it would be discovered in any case, but I am not sure that you would expect it to be disclosed in the initial advert, more likely during a subsequent discussion

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And if that doesn't shut up the claptrap god knows what will.

2 friends of mine looked at this boat at abnb prior to the work being done , and there was no evidence of anything wrong. The mantra get a survey get a survey always applies.

Who in their right mind cares about over plating after 20 years of hard service, if it puts the boat sound. We overplated bits of our boats in the past ie behind knees, until other area's caught up, and then chopped the whole lot off as needed when we had earned the money, that's what impecunious boaters did and will still do in the future, better boating with overplate than continuously moored.

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So, we overplated the boat on the straight portion of the sides up to the waterline, leaving the fore end, swim and bottom as they proved to be ok, the survey report was transferred to the owner, and the surveyor passed our work off before relaunching. I do not believe for one moment that either ABNB our the owner would try to hide the fact that it had been done, and considering that most buyers would have a survey done anyway it would be discovered in any case, but I am not sure that you would expect it to be disclosed in the initial advert, more likely during a subsequent discussion

Thanks for clarifying, Steve.

 

To be clear, I am absolutely confident that if you guys have done it it, that it was both sensible to do it, and that it will have been done to the highest standard.

 

I'm not suggesting for a moment that ABNB, (or the owners they are acting for) are attempting to deceive, but I'm surprised that they don't include that information as part of the sales details.

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