Buying your first boat is frightening. The bottom line is you are
buying someone else's problems and trying to mitigate, or minimize, buying their
mistakes.
Regardless of the boat, you have to get aboard and scrutinize it. If it has a nice pretty coat of
bottom paint on it, you have to figure out a way to see if it (the hull) has
water. There are devices that can find out if the
hull contains
water in the
fiberglass. You need to look for signs of water intrusion from every
single port, every
single place and space, from above
deck. Walk around the entire boat feeling for soft spots, especially near hatches,
ports, and
deck hardware. Here is a reference:
https://www.boatingworld.com/questio...ll-is-damaged/
So here is something we learned about ANY boat made in the 70s and 80s in regards to
fiberglass bottoms. They were inconsistent on how the bottom was made! A person standing there spraying the chop-strand on a Friday afternoon ready to leave for the day might not have quite gotten the layers right properly completed.
If this is your first boat, and you don't know what you are doing, you really ought to have someone who does, help you. Or find the very best
surveyor you can to tell you everything they can find about it before you buy it.
If you are dealing directly with the
current owner, then recognize that unless you're lifelong friends hanging out at each others house and you both value the friendship... you probably cannot trust anything they say. They are trying to sell you the boat, not tell you everything they screwed up or hate about it.
Familiarize yourself with 12V systems, examine the
batteries, bring along a multi-meter. Look at the back of the 12V breaker panel. Do you see nice organized
wiring or does it look like a horizontal plate of spaghetti?
Look for signs in the
bilge of water sitting, like lines around the sides. Our boat usually had water in the
bilge. It came down the
keel stepped
mast, so there was no stopping it. That said, if left unchecked, it go higher and higher. High enough and it starts touching other things, like
fuel tanks, water
tanks, etc. If the boat still has its old tanks, look for
corrosion.
Regarding the
fuel tank, look to see if the
engine sits atop the
fuel tank. Meaning the
fuel tank is housed in the stern area bilge. If it does, was the tank ever replaced? Is it metal? A known issue with Endeavour was positioning the fuel tank in the water... where over time it corroded and would eventually leak
diesel into the bilge.
Regarding how it sailed. The Endeavour 40 CC was a wide boat, she had a big belly. Very roomy on the inside, we loved it. Loved the aft cabin! Back to the sailing, she sailed well enough. As I
recall we were able to wing-on-wing nicely as needed. She would get overpowered and weatherhelmed once the upper teens of
wind was encountered. Our boat came equipped with a huge geneoa, it was very overpowered we came to realize. We learned early on to reef early and often. That was specific to our boat. As a heavy boat, it felt good moving through and over the waves. I'm not sure how a 33' would feel. She definitely wasn't the fastest boat but we always felt pretty good about the sturdiness. I wanna say 5, 5.5, maybe 6 knots high end? She wasn't a speedy boat.
Of course you have to do a good
inspection of the
engine. There is so much that can go into this that your better off doing an
internet search on what to look for. Basics would be close
inspection of the fuel filters, are they nice and pink and clear? Seeing how the owner cares for the boat is a really good indicator of how they previously took care of it.
The best
advice I can give you is to be ready to walk away. And again, having someone who knows boats is invaluable, or a good
surveyor. You sorta want your surveyor to talk you out of buying the boat by providing you a punch list of all the things you need to fix if you buy the boat.