Help please! Dutch buying process/contract/survey

[bushytales]

Hi...I’d walk away and learn from bitter experience. Better to be down £700 now rather than £ thousands after the fact.
Cheers

[Akafred]

Originally Posted by richr

Thanks, I will.

Another gremlin has just emerged. The seller is contracting to replace the standing rigging . I had understood this would be done professionally and therefore I would get an rigging/inspection report. The brokers latest email says the seller will be doing it himself! News to me. However handy he is, he isn't somebody who has rigged three hundred yachts, whose brand is recognisable by my insurer, and whose reputation depends on it.

Don’t let the fact that the owner is doing the rigging himself put you off. I recently re-rigged my sailboat an islander 30.. I’ve been slowly refitting the boat over the past year and although there were no obvious issues with the rig, but it’s an old boat and I wanted to be sure.

I couldn’t afford to have it done by the riggers so I measured and marked the stays and shrouds, had the rigger copy them and increase wire diameter. I also replaced any suspect hardware on the mast the then re attached the rigging to the mast which was then stepped and re connected to the chainplates. Once the rig was up I arranged for the rigger to come back and static tune it..

I’ve never done anything like this but I’m confident it’s as good as any professional rigger would have done and cost me half the price.

Boat maintenance e isn’t cheap so you either learn how to do the work or whip out your credit card. 😎😉⛵️

[hellosailor]

I'd say rich has a point about a gremlin there. There are many alleged professionals who totally bollux up a job. I had one install the front brake shoes backwards on my car, ages ago. Never made *that* mistake in all the years after I decided to learn how to DIY that maintenance myself.

The problem is, one can't really guess at how qualified or skilled "some guy" is going to be on an important job like that. Will "some guy" know to request actual test results on the actual cable he's buying and using for the job? Some riggers routinely do, even when they know and trust their suppliers. (Counterfeit and substandard cable being a very old business.)
At least with a licensed rigging business, you've got a presumption that they have some skill and experience, and someone to come back to if the job was done wrong. And, the insurers may have some question about the matter, at least asking for a survey by a professional rigger to confirm the work was done well.

More of a speedbump than a gremlin, I suppose. Still, one more thing on the list.

[Akafred]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

I'd say rich has a point about a gremlin there. There are many alleged professionals who totally bollux up a job. I had one install the front brake shoes backwards on my car, ages ago. Never made *that* mistake in all the years after I decided to learn how to DIY that maintenance myself.

The problem is, one can't really guess at how qualified or skilled "some guy" is going to be on an important job like that. Will "some guy" know to request actual test results on the actual cable he's buying and using for the job? Some riggers routinely do, even when they know and trust their suppliers. (Counterfeit and substandard cable being a very old business.)
At least with a licensed rigging business, you've got a presumption that they have some skill and experience, and someone to come back to if the job was done wrong. And, the insurers may have some question about the matter, at least asking for a survey by a professional rigger to confirm the work was done well.

More of a speedbump than a gremlin, I suppose. Still, one more thing on the list.

To be clear I purchased my rigging and any hardware needed from one of the top riggers in the Bay Area (South Beach Riggers) They have a great reputation and guarantee all materials used and their workmanship..

In my case I was lucky to have the rig shop right next to the boat yard so the owner came over and checked all my work before stepping the mast. By doing this labor myself I was able to cut my labor costs dramatically.

I suppose if there is an insurance issue you could get a rigging inspection and any documentation on the materials used. Any inspection will include photos of everything from the masthead to the chain plates

[richr]

Update...and many thanks to everyone for your very helpful comments! I made contact with the seller via his sailing blog and we are in much better shape.

Communications between me and seller are (touch wood) good and we have got a lot of stuff done, removing the misunderstanding caused by the rather jejeune broker.

So the seller took many of our initial observations on the chin and is making them good; also it turns out he is not "doing the rigging himself"; rather he is having it manufactured by what seems to be a very swept-up firm that does much bigger boats; he is only doing the fitting.

Oh, and he had no idea the broker was trying to force a dumb one-sided contract down my throat, and that this alone nearly cost him the whole sale. We rewrote the contract in 20 minutes, exchanged a couple of emails to confirm, and he then instructed the broker what to write.

Now we have just done the survey. There's a bunch of stuff, one or two items potentially significant and may need further investigation. I'll be going direct to the seller for sure. Hopefully we'll agree a way forward otherwise (thank goodness) either of us has the option to void the contract. As originally drawn, I'd have been forced to complete.

Watch this space! And thanks again.

[Catamarman]

dear RichR
Another perspective you might not have thought about. With a soon to be finalized BREXIT, the UK won't be part of the EU customs zone in a little more than a month from now. If you buy a boat being from the EU and from an EU seller for which taxes have been paid once, you are exonerated from taxation during your transaction. Will this still be the case once the BREXIT is finalized? Maybe it is based on this that the broker feels no remorse to treat you the way he does because he thinks you are in front of a dilema: accept a edgy deal without taxes Vs a spiffy deal with taxes. I might be wrong but it's worth you investigate this.
Good luck