Grounding damage in prospective purchase

[Ken Z]

I would hire the best surveyor you could find. " touched the bottom" hello.... the boat should be hauled, because they were sloopy in the bilge doesent mean the bottom is bad, but.. surveyor has to see the bottom, tap, thump the bottom with a rubber mallet to check soundness, not 100 percent, check for straightness, cracks, any thing irregular. What materials were used in the repair? has the yard skimped on good materials? est. $800-$1000 , surveyor cost haul out $250, maybe the bottom needs cleaning to inspect better. there has to be reciepts and repair logs for the work at the yard. most surveyors , good ones, want a haul out. assume nothing, good luck.

[Scaramanga F25]

BoatPoker,

My repairs on CS boats near you due to groundings hull bilge and liners, were well done. Nothing was apparent obviously. LOL They did crack. Repaired a few.
I would not buy a CS 30 for example. I owned a CS. Nice interior finish though.

[Dave22q]

Minor groundings generally do not require repairs. This smells like a substantial repair. In the absence of detailed documentation I would assume the worst and look closer to home.

[bsurvey]

where is the invoice for the repair. it should be given to the surveyor


was the keel removed to do the repair, if fin and bolted?

[Seas the Day]

Not having a survey could be even more expensive. I've just bought my Catalina 350 which looks 'as new' but would not dream of completing the transaction without a survey which in Sydney will cost me about USD1,000 including the hoist/lift out.

Would you buy a car that had a front end repair without a proper inspection, I wouldn't.

Bon chance,

Alex

[buzzstar]

I'd worry about the broker until I could see the boat for myself and still wanted it enough to consider a survey. To claim that such a fine boat can be damaged by a mere touching is to contrary to fact as to be worrisome. Further, to say that repairs still visible after almost 15 years are better than new is both encouraging or possibly misleading. Good, if the original repairs are intact, not so good, in fact bad, if there have been follow up repairs. Get he receipts and photos of this boat from then (before, and after, as well as the damage) if you can. You can be sure that at least the pre-repair damage was photographed.

[ALAIN97133]

Originally Posted by musher

I'm considering the purchase of a boat located in another state. Spoke with the broker today and asked if he knew any negatives about the boat. He indicated that the vessel had been damaged from "touching the bottom" in 2003....I'm curious 1. Are repairs of this sort generally able to completely restore the structure (strength)? 2. Does this sort of damage history greatly affect the value of the boat? 3. Is this a red flag that means I should just move on to the next boat ? thanks

Hi! I assume the keel is bolted to the hull ? The damage could have been limited to the keel itself (No big deal) or it could have damaged the hull itself i.e. the underfloor stringers**. In that case you either replace the damaged stringers or double them up, in either case if you have access. It's a more complex & expensive repair as you might have to remove some furniture.
**Is there a word in English for "transversal underfloor stringers" ? Varangues ??? Cheers !

[DeepFrz]

There is a thread on here of minaret fixing a boat that had been "repaired". It was a very expensive refit required to make the boat right.

[doug1957]

We put an offer on a boat that grounded and had repairs, among other things. We have the invoice from the yard that repaired it which has been forwarded to the surveyor. If done correctly, it can be better than new and at the same time, fix other issues found on a near 30 year old boat (mast step in this case at least). But I would not trust hearsay on any of that without the repair invoice and a survey.

So it can be a plus instead of a negative.

[kish]

A grounding can be cosmetically repaired, but latent defects, due to inadequate repairs, can arise, which can be catastrophic as in the loss of yacht cheeki-rafiki, where the keel fell of, due to bad repairs of prior repaired groundings, resulting in the loss of a crew of four..

What happened to Cheeki Rafiki? Key findings from the official Marine Accident Investigation Branch report - Yachting World

:

Originally Posted by musher

I'm considering the purchase of a boat located in another state. Spoke with the broker today and asked if he knew any negatives about the boat. He indicated that the vessel had been damaged from "touching the bottom" in 2003.
;
;

I'm curious
1. Are repairs of this sort generally able to completely restore the structure (strength)?
2. Does this sort of damage history greatly affect the value of the boat?
3. Is this a red flag that means I should just move on to the next boat?

thanks

[JPA Cate]

The thread Uncivilized posted the link to, involved the repair of a Waukiez. It was quite a complex repair, and the boat was clearly better than new at the end of it.

Ann

[Schooner Chandlery]

If there are not plenty of pics of the damage and repair (during progress of repair) I'd pass on the boat. Since insurance claims were made, this would not be an insignificant repair. There should be written documents, receipts for materials, a statement of work, and pics of the before, during, and after. Just because you can see it in the bilge doesn't mean it wasn't well done, it just means you can tell a repair was done. Depending on the boat, that would be pretty normal.

Since you're in Alaska, you are far from any boat you're likely to look at -- except those in AK of course. You may consider doing as we did -- we were in Washington, DC and considered boats all over the USA and internationally. We did look at ones that were within a few hours drive on our own. But if a boat was located far away, on the few we became really serious about, we hired a surveyor local to that area to do an in-the-water look-see at the boat and report back to us verbally and with a few pics. The understanding was that if we did a complete survey of the boat (with us present), we'd hire the same surveyor for the work. It worked well for us to do this since we were going into a boat restoration/rebuild and almost every boat we considered was in need of some repair or other. We had 4 boats looked over by a surveyor in this way before we flew out to see the one we ultimately purchased.

Best of luck!

[musher]

Thanks for all the input on this. Apparently there are repair invoices. Not sure how much in the way of photographic records. I've got the name of the shop that did the work as well.

Sounds like this might not be a deal breaker if the repair documentation is there and I can get it into a surveyor's hands.