Worst Thing a Previous Owner Did to Your Boat ?

[4arch]

1. On the port/starboard water tank">fresh water tank selector valves, one valve handle moved but the valve was seized 75% shut. It was also located in the engine compartment.
2. Water heater (installed 2006) sacrificial anode had never been inspected/replaced and was completely gone.
3. PO cut the lip of cockpit locker to fit new water heater.
   
4. There was no way to drain water heater for winterization. PO told me he filled it with antifreeze.
   
5. Cheap hose clamps on fresh water tubing rusted and some were broken.
6. Some abandoned and redundant wiring including a lead off a battery positive terminal going nowhere and a positive lead off the battery switch going to the bilge.
   
7. Electrical cables were hanging loose under cockpit sole touching steering gear.
8. Some AC wiring is solid copper. It's outdoor grade which I guess the PO thought would be better.
   
9. An AC outlet added by PO has no outlet box.
   
10. Battery charger connections (AC side) made with wire nuts.
11. Virtually all deck hardware, stanchions, ports, etc. were rebedded using silicone.

All that said, I don't want to be too hard on the PO. He left me a lot of spares, manuals, and documentation, he spent a lot of time sharing his knowledge about the boat with me, and beyond the issues listed he generally kept the boat in above average condition.

[zeehag]

bought a boat touched by a man named dmitri who uses nails in the cap and other places on the boat as fasteners...yipes..among other weird things......

one of the better things he did was blow the 4-107....lol....now i have 4-108!!!

got it for a reallly good price......

[Don1500]

Not about sail boats but it does relate to a Previous owners lack of a clue. My father bought two Palmer V-8's for his 40' Express Cruiser very cheap. The PO could never get the oil pressure up, They were Navy Rejects for the same reason. He never installed them, just let them lie about in the shop for about 5 years. So my father gets them home, hooks up some water from the garden hose, REMOVES THE OWNERS MANUAL FROM THE OIL PAN, and starts them up with perfect oil pressure. 2 $15,000 Palmer V8's for $500, total, just to get them out of the yard. Oh yes, did I say that the PO was the owner of the ship yard? Sometimes the POs loss is your gain.

[rwidman]

I guess I'm pretty lucky. While the PO installed a bunch of "homemade" shelves and things that I have since removed and which left a bunch of screw holes, the worst thing I can think of is that he kept a very detailed maintenance log which I saw whan I was looking at the boat, but he didn't leave it with the boat.

I had an occasion to call him later to ask what bottom paint had been used and I asked about the log but he didn't produce it.

[SuenosAzules]

Originally Posted by 4arch

1. On the port/starboard fresh water tank selector valves, one valve handle moved but the valve was seized 75% shut. It was also located in the engine compartment.
2. Water heater (installed 2006) sacrificial anode had never been inspected/replaced and was completely gone.
3. PO cut the lip of cockpit locker to fit new water heater.
   
4. There was no way to drain water heater for winterization. PO told me he filled it with antifreeze.
   
5. Cheap hose clamps on fresh water tubing rusted and some were broken.
6. Some abandoned and redundant wiring including a lead off a battery positive terminal going nowhere and a positive lead off the battery switch going to the bilge.
   
7. Electrical cables were hanging loose under cockpit sole touching steering gear.
8. Some AC wiring is solid copper. It's outdoor grade which I guess the PO thought would be better.
   
9. An AC outlet added by PO has no outlet box.
   
10. Battery charger connections (AC side) made with wire nuts.
11. Virtually all deck hardware, stanchions, ports, etc. were rebedded using silicone.

All that said, I don't want to be too hard on the PO. He left me a lot of spares, manuals, and documentation, he spent a lot of time sharing his knowledge about the boat with me, and beyond the issues listed he generally kept the boat in above average condition.

I am feeling your pain with this boat.. I have seen these exact things on various boats I have surveyed!!! People.. Move your seacocks and valves at least once a month!!! It keeps them loose and helps prevent seixing of the valves.

[Bash]

Frightening thought: Having bought this boat new, I will someday be somebody's previous owner.

And good luck, to that person, figuring out how I hard-wired the chandelier.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by Bash

Frightening thought: Having bought this boat new, I will someday be somebody's previous owner.

And good luck, to that person, figuring out how I hard-wired the chandelier.

With hard (solid) wire no doubt!

I am pretty lucky. My boat was nearly new and had not been "worked on".
One of the reasons for spending too much.

[AquatiCat]

Therapy, best of both worlds, there :-) Ours has had several owners and has some truly astonishing "features." We are in the process of finding and fixing these. As you imply, unless one is very lucky, it's a tradeoff, money vs. time and aggro in finding and fixing. Fortunately, "the journey is the worthier part" for us, and that includes getting all her systems tamed and up to scratch. But let's see if I am still saying that nine months from now and down-island!

[Ocean Girl]

Present boat -unhooking the vent to the holding tank, I found this out on the day I bought her when I had the overfull tank pumped out and flushed by a pumpout boat, the contents sprayed all over the inner hull...the princess in me wanted to just buy another boat rather than clean up the poop.

40 ft Trawler - owners smoked so heavily I had to use tar remover to clean the bulkheads.

Pacific seacraft- she didn't do anything to it, nothing, that was the problem

First boat- all wiring was house wiring with butt connectors, companionway doors were made of pine (unfinished). Dodger was made out of old dacron sailcloth. The PO named her Macgyver (I rest my case).
I love all my boats and I am sure who bought them have PO stories too.

[bigpuff]

a $200.000 refit by reputible firm on 60 ft. ketch/2in. cockpit drains(no sea cocks)stuck to hull outlets(plastic house hold down pipes)with seakaflex below water line.Gen set cooling water outlet just pushed on to hull outlet fitting(found that one at 4 in the morning in the middle of the Malaka strait)

[Davey1000]

Originally Posted by FrankZ

A couple:

Cut the outboard engine well so a too large engine would fit. Looked like a drunk child cut it with a bent jigsaw.

Used automotive filler on the deck to fix two soft spots.

Rolled in sand for nonskid, then just happily painted over the sides. If I need nonskid on the side of the cabin I have worse problems then slipping.

Used a strip of plywood as a backing plate on 1 genoa track, but nothing under the other.

Used plywood for a backing plate for the stem chainplate but no washers. Yes, the nuts pulled into the wood. Also it was too small so one nut was exposed on the side of the plate.

Used a water spiket on the holding tank that was installed using some epoxy and fairing filler. It leaked continusouly (slowly) when there was water in the tank.

Used too short of 3 wire cable up the mast for the deck/steam light combo and then used black electrical tape to secure a couple wires to make it just long enough.

And we won't get into the sheer number of splices in the electrical system that caused ground faults. Why does the bilge pump stop when I turn on this light?

Worst butchered boat I've ever seen was a "project boat" that I bought on eBay. OK I really only bid on it for its Volvo 100 outdrive. I can now see that the boat used to be a fine unsinkable aluminium motor launch but several owners ago a so-called carpenter tried to convert it into a cabin cruiser. Bulkheads of top hat section (buoyancy tanks) have been crudely removed by drilling rows of holes and a lot of the original foredeck has been cut away to make more space. All of the work is butchery and the timber cabin has gone rotten. Some clown has fitted a bronze skin fitting in the aluminium so that has to come out even if the boat is cut up for scrap. It is unbelievable what some people do to boats. Would they try to make a sports car into a camper van? - well what has been done to this boat is pretty much the same thing. Another horror story that I read was about a Shetland cabin cruiser. The anglers who had bought it wanted more room for working their fishing rods so they cut off the cabin with a chainsaw!

[roger.waite]

Ran charging cable over top of petrol tank, and left it lying in seawater in the outboard well. A fine source of galvanic corrosion. I assumed at first the wire was disused (dead), but found it was unswitched, unfused wired straight to the battery.

I found this out when I cut it, shorting it in the process and burning off most of the insulation. Boy, did I move fast to rip wires off the battery!

In my mind I saw the boat a-burning.

Found out about the petrol tank five minutes later!

[Ocean Girl]

Originally Posted by roger.waite

Ran charging cable over top of petrol tank, and left it lying in seawater in the outboard well. A fine source of galvanic corrosion. I assumed at first the wire was disused (dead), but found it was unswitched, unfused wired straight to the battery.

I found this out when I cut it, shorting it in the process and burning off most of the insulation. Boy, did I move fast to rip wires off the battery!

In my mind I saw the boat a-burning.

Found out about the petrol tank five minutes later!

Yikes and gulp.

[Pete the Cat]

Originally Posted by GordMay

When we consult a marine surveyor, we are paying (hourly) for an informed opinion - not a guarantee.

I agree. However, the surveyor on a friends new boat missed the obvious fact that the based of the steering pedestal was completely rotted out (3/4 of the backing plate was missing!) and he said the raw pump was leaking when the leak was actually coming from the completely rotten heat exchanger. I think we ought to have recourse for incompetently done inspections.

On one of my own boats, I wrote a letter to the surveyor and asked for a refund when he failed to note a number of obvious problems with the boat that I discovered while preparing it for launch. He sent a check and a thank you note acknowledging the issues and for being so civil about it.

[barnakiel]

Like drilling holes at the bottom of a couple of (formerly) watertight bulkheads.

Otherwise mostly fine.

b.