The decision to buy a boat can be one of the happiest and most fulfilling in life.
There is, however, a wry joke that the two best days of boat ownerships are the day you buy a boat and the day you sell it. It does not have to be like this, but too often buyers are encouraged by enthusiastic sales people to make purchase decisions before they are clear enough about all the options and about their true requirements. Where can prospective buyers find independent advice?
My function is to help would-be buyers make wise choices by taking the time to understand their needs and explore the market. I help my clients conduct a careful reconnaissance before making that first strike!
This improves my clients’ satisfaction by:
- cutting the hassle of finding their 'perfect' boat
- reducing the risk of “buyer’s remorse”, and
- increasing the value they get for their money.
The issues
Amazingly, many stylish boats are not seaworthy. Boats advertised as in excellent condition can be in very poor shape. Discovering this is frustrating and a complete waste of time, especially if it meant a long trip to Spain, Portugal or France for you, which would have taken me just a few hours.
New boats can prove costly and pre-owned boats good value - but it takes experience to tell them apart. Price can be a poor indicator. Some manufacturers spend money on trim but penny-pinch on hull and engines. Others put all their money into the components you cannot see and are let down by their finishes (defects that are easy to put right). Thus boats that look inexpensive may depreciate rapidly, be costly to maintain and uneconomic to run. Better-built boats hold their value and, of course, are much safer at sea.
My clients are sensibly price sensitive and they value even more the kind of advice that I give that can mitigate the risks of an ill-considered purchase.
Last, but not least, many that buy boats (especially couples) fail to agree their needs beforehand – and this can be a lasting source of dissatisfaction. One owner chose their boat for its sparkling performance at sea. On a calm day, the skilled demonstrator was able to make marina handling look easy. Imagine the buyer’s dismay to find that their new motor cruiser’s single engine and lack of bow thruster made it extremely tricky to berth in any wind or tide. Another owner - otherwise delighted with his boat - knew its AC demands meant a 15 kw generator had to stay running at all times when not connected to shore power. But he did not expect that the generator, adjacent to the Master Cabin, would keep him awake with its low-frequency vibration.
My approach
I have a proven process to assist you before, during and after the purchase. Before the purchase, I can help you to thoroughly understand your needs. I will explain the total cost of boat ownership and advise you on running costs, maintenance, marina fees, and insurance. I will then work with you to compile a list of the size, type and makes of boats that may best fulfil your criteria, agree a search strategy, and conduct a thorough market survey.
During the buying process, I can inspect specific vessels on your behalf and will report back (usually by e-mail) with photographs, price comparisons, and so on. I can support your negotiations by arranging a survey, making sea trials and compiling a check list at handover.
After the purchase, I can help you sell an existing boat, and deliver or arrange delivery of the new boat. I can provide customised tuition and will follow through with advice on cruising areas. Here are some client views on this service:
I found 'The Perfect Yacht' for Kris Boon
Dear Martin,
A Commendation for Martin's personal boat search service.
There may not be any such thing as a perfect yacht...but there will be the perfect yacht for YOU. Trouble is; which one, where is She and at what price? I had spent three years researching and mulling over different design merits and requirements but had yet to fully decide. I met Martin while taking my RYA Coastal Skipper practical and by the end of the week I had been introduced to my dream yacht. Valiant M (A Bluewater yachts Vagabond 42') as she is now proudly named could not have been a better match - and most importantly despite all my looking I had not actually short listed this design. The more experience I get the more I value the service, especially when the seas get up a little and her basic correct design just settles her down and carries on whilst other yachts slam hard to the weather and head for home port.
Factually modern yachts have some fundamental design faults... e.g. a spade rudder concept. Some new yacht brochures even point this up as an advantage! To Team New Zealand perhaps, but you and I? I doubt it. That is obvious now I mention it but to the experienced eye, which Martin certainly has, there will be a multitude of such nuances. Martin's integrity, judgement of character and personal requirements means you will be given candid advice. This advice will not only save you money and time but possibly much more. I can certainly recommend you enlist his services as he is truly independent and caring; you will get the right boat for you. I know Valiant M can go wherever I choose with comfort safety and grace.
Thank you Martin!
Kris Boon
This is the yacht that I found for Kris
A boat to grow into, not one to grow out of...
Dear Martin,
We just had to write to tell you that we have completed our very first cruise, on our own, in the magnificent Bowman 40, you so wisely guided us to buy. When we look back to that first week's sailing course with you four years ago, we realise what a treasure we had stumbled upon. Even in those early days of our acquaintance you strove to instill the principles of fun, safety and knowledge.
You have helped us not only to discover a passion for sailing (let's face it, our interest in sailing back then was simply an excuse for a week in the sun and some cheap wine), but you have also found what we now realise is the perfect boat for us. When we think about the mistakes we so nearly made - like Anne's 'I want a washing machine and a big engine' or my 'what about a Fisher?' - we thank our lucky stars that we at least had the intelligence to listen to what you had to say.
Thank you for everything that you did: your help in looking at different boats; your understanding when we wobbled; your suggestion to think hard about Salome; your timely approach to the owner, just before she went on the market; the survey you arranged; the endless discussions on osmosis; and, the patient coaching in handling her. The list goes on. We now have a boat to grow into, not out of. I hope others will be lucky and smart enough to listen to you, too".
Alec and Anne Taylor
Alec and Anne Tayler wrote the letter above to me about four years ago, they have since done a lot more cruising, changed Salome's standing rigging and made many other improvements and repairs to the boat. In November 2004 they completed their first passage of more than 18 hours duration. They sailed from Gibralter to the Canaries which took them six days, they stayed there for a few weeks and then left for the Caribean in mid December. A month later they arrived, just the two of them on-board, at St Maartin's. The following is their account of this passage. Martin.
Dear Martin,
We have finally arrived at St Maartin’s after a month long passage from Lanzarote, we are so pleased with Salome. Thank you again for guiding us to her. The story of our slow trip is quite simple. Two days out of Lanzarote we hit a week of Force 5 to 6 SW winds which, reading the fine print of our Atlantic-crossing literature happens very occasionally in late November or early December. So we tacked South (or slightly East of South when the battering got too much) until we got too close to Africa, when we tacked East or slightly North of East, and so on. We were about 80 to 100 miles North of the Cape Verdes (adding about 400 miles to our journey and 4 or 5 days delay) before we got anything remotely like a Trade Wind and could turn right. Then we sailed in light and variables with occasional squalls back to about 20 North 030 West as we tried to follow this guaranteed, sure-fire lowest route to pick up the Trades. Needless to say, we were still too far north and stayed for the next thousand miles in the band of quite nasty squalls that sits above the Trade Winds. Eventually the penny dropped, having read every weather book again and again, and we motored South in a calm, to about 17 degrees North, before we began to see anything remotely like Trade Wind clouds. Even then, the weather was variable. So my greatest surprise of the experience was the need to keep sailing the boat day and night. No leisurely downwind 'milk run' for us. I do not know how many times I optimistically put the pole out - it was always sure to lead to a wind change.
We ran a 4-hour watch system, with both of us on when things were nasty, usually at night, sleeping whenever we could. I was lucky to suffer no major seasickness, though Anne did. We did get caught in one very serious storm while we were concentrating on repairing the Monitor. I had injured my hand. Then this weather caught us. It snapped a reefing line, broke the Monitor's 'sacrificial' tube, spat out the Main Sail battens, damaged the wind-speed indicator and destroyed the autopilot (Anne thinks this was caused by lightening). Backing the Staysail and with two reefs in the Main, I could not get her to heave to, so Anne helmed and we motored into the wind. It was impossible to see the instruments or anything (ski-goggles are now a must). There was an amazingly hot downdraft of air. Anne was afraid that by heading into the wind all the time we could be going around in circles, staying in the middle of it. So her brilliant suggestion was to look at the radar. We turned ninety degrees into a gap, were not knocked down, and got away from it: more than enough excitement for one night and certainly not boring.
Your excellent, patient coaching helped us through. My only feedback on RYA training is that it may be misleading, even dangerous, to separate theory from practice. You are quite right about the super-yachts here by the way. Although they all look so new and beautiful that I seriously doubt anyone ever takes them to sea. Actually we were much chuffed that we got a huge, spontaneous cheer from the cocktail crowd at the St Martin's Yacht Club when we motored into the lagoon - which no one else did. Anne, who was on the helm, acknowledged this appreciation with a regal wave. This was because the boat's Yankee and Staysail look as though they are in tatters, with long streamers of sailcloth hanging off the roller reefing. It certainly looks as though we had a hard trip, which I suppose we did. Hopefully it is not as bad as it looks. We think it is mostly the ultra-violet strips on the edges of the sails that have disintegrated. Needless to say we had the sails checked and re-stitched before we left Gibraltar and again before leaving Lanzarote. All this happened in the first week, sailing close-hauled. It did give us some anxious moments, as we did not know when the sails would stop coming apart. The bloody streamers kept getting tangled up in standing and running rigging, ripping further whenever we rolled up the sails. Still it gives us a very credible weather-beaten look, quite different from super-yacht spit and polish, and much more admired by your serious Yacht Club boozer.
Alec and Anne Tayler. S.Y. Salome. St Maartin's. January 12th 2005.
Since arriving in the Caribean just over two years ago Alec and Anne have cruised all over the Caribean including Venezuela, Columbia, and Panama. They are now (April 2011) anchored in the 'Bay of Islands' in Honduras.
Martin.
Fences instead of ambulances
Not too long ago, I was asked by an inexperienced sailor for a couple of weeks training prior to an Atlantic crossing. He had already bought his boat on the advice of a friendly yacht broker who claimed that it was ‘just right for him’. It was a typical, modern, 44-foot, very light-displacement yacht. On the face of it, he had done a good deal. The boat builder claimed in his literature that the yacht was suitable for an ocean crossing and it seemed to be good value for money. It had superb accommodation: eight berths, twin heads and the usual luxurious master cabin with a double-bed that you could walk right round. It had roller reefing on the mainsail and the jib and a complex system to bring the running rigging back to the cockpit. Extensive instrumentation provided a state-of-the-art GPS chart plotter system for navigation, with screens at the chart table, on the coach roof and just in front of the wheel. He knew the boat that he had bought was quite heavy and that heavy-displacement boats are best in bad weather and that was what he thought he had bought. But he had made the common mistake of confusing a heavy boat with a heavy-displacement boat.
Displacement is all to do with hull shape. The length and very wide beam of his boat meant that, despite its weight, most of it floated on top of the water, like a dinghy. Heavy-displacement boats have narrower beams (with the drawback of less-spacious accommodation). Because more of their hull is under water, they are much more stable in rough weather. Either the broker knew no better or, eager to sell the boat, chose not to correct his customer’s misunderstanding. My heart sank. I knew his boat would bob about like a cork in even moderately heavy weather – a most unpleasant and tiring motion guaranteed to make almost anybody seasick. I knew that the rigging – adequate for short coastal hops – would be severely challenged by the Atlantic. I knew that the electronics would work fine as long as all the instruments functioned perfectly but that the maze of interfaces integrating different equipment meant that a single faulty instrument could cause the whole system to fail in a way that only someone with a PhD in Computer Science could hope to sort out. How could I contradict a broker and a manufacturer and tell my client that the boat that he had bought was totally unsuitable for an Atlantic crossing when three-quarters of new boats - designed to look great at boat shows and expected to spend most of their life in marinas - suffer similar defects?
After two weeks training I advised him not to attempt the trip unless he left in December and took a minimum of two very experienced people with him as crew. He went ahead. The two people who went with him as ‘experienced crew’ proved to have a quarter of the experience that they had claimed. The crossing was arduous and terrifying, all three of them suffered badly from seasickness and exhaustion, the motion of the boat proved to be very uncomfortable and it’s violent slamming when sailing to windward put enormous stress on both the crew and on the standing rigging. The owner has since told me following his return from the Caribbean (by air) that the boat is now for sale in the Caribbean and if it doesn’t sell there he will get a delivery crew to bring it back, I for one wouldn’t want the job!
Another client spent a great deal of money on a rather lightweight 40-foot motor cruiser with stern drives and no bow thruster, he was told by the dealer that the boat didn’t need a bow thruster. He booked two days training with me, but because he had already had some training with me (on a boat with fixed propeller shafts) he decided to take the boat out prior to his instruction with me. Very sadly the boat was almost impossible to handle in a marina even in a moderate crosswind without a bow thruster and he damaged it quite badly by hitting a pontoon, terrifying himself and his wife, and immediately decided to sell it. (I am pleased to report that on my advice he has had a bow thruster fitted and after two days instruction with me his confidence is now restored, the damage has been repaired and he is now much happier about his purchase, and so is his wife!)
Others, with zero knowledge of boating, buy cruisers as fashion accessories to go with the villa on the golf course and the top-of-the-range Mercedes or BMW. For me to advise people after they have bought a boat is starting in the wrong place. What they need is ‘a fence at the top of the cliff not an ambulance at the bottom’. Thus maximising your boating pleasure must start with finding the right boat – and this means confronting some unpopular truths about many of the boats on sale today. Unpopular because boating is about dreams, and people don’t want their dreams to be shattered. The truth is that manufacturers, driven by competition, are cutting corners to build to a price. Thus many new boats are not seaworthy in bad weather. And, if you look at the whole-life costs (including running costs, maintenance and depreciation), boats that seem to offer incredibly high specifications may prove a very false economy. For many, buying a new boat is as emotional and subjective a decision as buying a new car. We are influenced by advertising, brands, lines and fashion. But buyers need to beware – especially where their or their family’s safety is at stake. Boat manufacturer’s and brokers may not like to hear me say these things, but I am afraid that they will hurt their own market and therefore do themselves no favours over the long term by selling boats with such a high potential to disappoint. Manufacturers and brokers have been listening to their customers - but the customers do not always know what is best for them. A cynic might recall the old quip about a certain computer company of whom it was said ‘they believed it was morally wrong not to separate a fool from his money – and they were very moral people’. Ultimately it is up to us, the customers, to do a much better job of understanding our own requirements and making sure they are met.
Martin
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