Haul out/sea trial day, whew!

Wow.  I am exhausted!  All I did was sit on a boat and watch other people inspect it, but boy oh boy, was it hot out today.  90 degrees in November…are we in the tropics?

As this is an ongoing learning process for me, I’ll explain everything we did today.  Since I am buying my boat through a broker (Jason at Cabrillo Yacht Sales is awesome!), I am going as by the books as possible.  After my offer was accepted, the next step was to schedule a survey…what the hell is that??  This whole process is similar to buying a house.  I had no idea since I had been super close to buying a boat as is off craigslist. The survey is similar to a home inspection, you need professionals to go through your boat and make sure it’s working as it should, and that it is seaworthy.   Jason provided me a list of mechanics and surveyors that his company has worked with.  He can’t actually help me pick one out or say one is better than the other, just provide me with a list of contact information.  I could also find my own…but I’m new to this world so an suggestions help!

Since I am not purchasing a sailboat, I did not need to hire a rigger.  There are two parts (almost 3) to the survey day.  First is finding a mechanic.  He goes through the engines and generator.  Then the surveyor, he goes through every other part of the boat, making sure the lights work, the bilge pump works, the bathroom, the horn (mine isn’t working, dang!) and under the boat.  This is the sort of third part.  I had to schedule a time with a boatyard, and seeing as how I’m in San Diego there are a lot!  We went to the Shelter Island Boatyard.  They literally haul the boat out of the water, then the surveyor pokes around looking for blisters or imperfections and examines the props.  “Pokes around” most likely is not the technical term, but hey, I’m a newbie.  The sea trial part took place on our way to  and from the boat yard.  The boat is currently docked in San Diego Bay, which is the larger bay in San Diego.  I thought that we had to go out to the sea…I mean it’s a sea trial.  Basically they just need to run the boat at full throttle and see how everything handles.

The boat owner came out from Arizona to be present for the beginning of the day.  He’s already cleaned out most of his stuff.  It looks like new boat owners just “acquire” some of the previous owners items.

The mechanic today was Alfredo from Quality Marine.  He was great!  I would absolutely recommend him!  And the surveyor was Dean from Frank K Wyatt Surveyors; also awesome and would also recommend!

I”ll get their findings back in a couple of days.  From there I share it with my broker and we communicate with the seller to see if we have some wiggle room.  The starboard engine has a problem with the carborator(which I can’t spell).  There are a couple options to move forward: 1-we can ask if the overall price can be lowered to compensate for the issues, and 2-we can get a “survey allowance”, which would be the amount of money needed to repair the problems, but held in an escrow account that can only be used for the boat repairs.  For the second option the sale price would be the same but the difference needed would be in escrow.

We’ll see how it goes!

Here are some photos of the boat up in the air!