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One word of caution, before you plunk down your money for a survey on a Columbia 8.7, these are just plain poor boats. While this boat may have a lot of gear, these were miserable sailing boats in most regards, and frankly given their uncomfortable motion and extreme tendancy to roll steer, they would be an extremely poor choice for offshore. The whole wide body concept lead to boats that handled poorly both in light and heavy air, and which exhibited all of the worst sailing characteristics of the Fastnet Disaster era IOR boats.
1977-79 was also a low point in build quality at Columbia, occuring just before the company went belly up and was bought out from the banks. It was also at the height of their blister problem. Frankly, Hunter 30's of that general era were substantially better constructed and were way better sailing boats as well.
As to the specifics of your question, previous buyers will sometimes offer to sell their survey to the next buyer to come along. There are several problems with that. You do not have access to the surveyor to ask questions about his findings, the boat may have continued deteriorating, and it may be impossible to reach the previous prospective buyer. It is rare that you can get it from the Seller since Sellers rarely see the actual survey when a deal falls through and so the seller would not have a copy. And if the deal fell through, the seller would be hesitant to give you the name of the buyer who bailed out of the deal. In other words there would be no easy way for you to get ahold of the prior survey.
BTW, if you are considering the boat in Pampano Be, Florida, the photos would suggest a fair amount of water getting below at the portlights and somewhere below the deck forward. The way these boats were constructed, I would expect that this boat may have deck coring problems. I suggest that before you start with a surveyor that you look for delamination of the deck core (bouncing lightly on your toes you should be able to hear and feel if the delamination is pretty extensive). If there is deck core delamination I would definately not spend the money for a survey.
Respectfully,
Jeff
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