Did Surveyor make mistake or just bad luck?

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

And they would like you to believe that but no professional would be dumb enough to be unprotected.

And to reiterate, the typical liability disclaimer included on survey documents provides no defense to liability.

Perceptions are hard to break.

S/V Illusion is absolutely correct. Only the judge decides the value of a liability disclaimer. Do a little research, there are many instances of those being overridden by the courts.

[boatpoker]

I once bought a stone barn built in 1832. It took me 8yrs to turn that barn into a house and I did it single handed. I did cut some corners and did some things that were not to code. (nothing unsafe).

When I sold that house in 1994 the purchasers brought in a home inspector.
He spent 4hrs and found absolutely nothing wrong. His fee was $800.

That deal fell through for financing reasons.

Two weeks later another home inspector came through with the latest buyers. He spent 4hrs. Found everything that I had buried so deep I simply don't know how he found that stuff but he did and he charged $800.00

Lawyer, plumber, home inspector, surveyor, welder. Some very very good, some very very bad. Your job, your responsibility to find the good ones. They are out there. I know almost every one of the 250 surveyors in Ontario and there are about 5 that I personally would hire. Find one of the five.

[Connemara]

Hmmmm. On the issue of brokers/surveyors.... When I was buying a boat in New Zealand (from Canada) I used a surveyor recommended by the broker. The day of the survey (at which I was not present) I got an email from the broker: Call me.


So I called. He said I would shortly be getting the survey by email, but it was highly negative and I should walk away. So I did.


He was right. The survey showed extensive osmosis, as well as a number of other defects.


A few months later, I used the same surveyor when I bought a boat through the same broker. This time there were no issues and we still are completely happy.


So honour is not completely lacking among brokers and surveyors.


Connemara

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Hmmmm. On the issue of brokers/surveyors.... When I was buying a boat in New Zealand (from Canada) I used a surveyor recommended by the broker. The day of the survey (at which I was not present) I got an email from the broker: Call me.


So I called. He said I would shortly be getting the survey by email, but it was highly negative and I should walk away. So I did.


He was right. The survey showed extensive osmosis, as well as a number of other defects.


A few months later, I used the same surveyor when I bought a boat through the same broker. This time there were no issues and we still are completely happy.


So honour is not completely lacking among brokers and surveyors.


Connemara

I agree. I've dealt with pretty much every broker in Ontario over the years. There are some straight shooting decent ones. Again, the purchasers job is to find one of those.

[exMaggieDrum]

Some surveyors are better than others for sure. When we bought our first boat we got the most bad-assed surveyor we could find. He spend 8 solid hours on the boat and did the writeup on other hours later. He gave us a voluminous report with lots of issues and problems noted. None of them were a deal breaker so we bought the boat. I have always felt we did the right thing.
He did miss some things, included a completely scorched area behind the AC panel. You had to use a screw driver to take the panel cover off and surveyors usually will not take anything apart and that is part of their disclaimers. And, as a buyer, the owner does not generally allow you to do that either.
We did not find this little item, which required a complete replacement of the circuit breakers to be safe, until several months later. The owner did not tell us about it. (We bought it direct from the owner.)
I never faulted the surveryor and would hire him to do a survey for me again and routinely recommend him to my friends who need one. He is one of the best: Matt Harris in Bellingham, WA.
And, that was not the first or last item that needed repair that we found on that boat, and the same on our current boat. I am still finding things after 5 years of ownership of the current boat.

Having said that there are some things that should always be found out from a survey. The OP's issue is a gray area in my mind so far as the cabin boards go. Not a good thing to find and one that could have been found by pulling back the carpet a bit farther. But personally I would have pulled the carpets back myself when looking at a boat.

[Doug Brown]

Having been a surveyor in So Cal in the 80's, that "hole'" should have been mentioned and discussed. The "hole" is were a table leg base was fasten - and obviously since removed.

Spongy floor should have been discussed and a couple of options given for getting it fixed.

I never minded having the buyer attend the survey or answering there questions - it usually only took a few extra minutes and gave the potential owner an idea what he was getting himself into.

And if the potential owner was there I could go over the findings with him so that we were on the same page.

Pretty simple stuff - treat someone how you would like to be treated.

[Happ]

Anytime you have a survey you should be present. You should be learning from the surveyor and asking what he is looking for and watch and learn. The last time I needed a surveyor I did ask the broker for several names. I called each of the 3 names and asked questions to find out their experience with the mfg of the boat I was in contract on. It became clear that Neil Haynes was the guy for a Beneteau.

Below is a link to Neil Haynes in Charleston SC. On his site he has a Seller's Disclosure Statement. By having the seller answer these questions, sign and notarize them the seller could be liable for any damage he or she knew about but did not disclose. If the seller doesn't want to fill it out and sign and notarize it move on!

This surveyor is the go to guy by Beneteau to assess any warranty issues. Interestingly I have been told if Beneteau sees a problem they consult with him to find ways to change the build to eliminate the issue in the future.

https://www.boatsurveyor.com

I don't care if you are buying a $20K boat or a $5m boat its your money. Surveyors look for obvious problems and don't want to go in to deeply as they might find something which puts them on a do not call list of the brokers.

[u4ea32]

I just replaced my floorboards in my 1983 Olson 40. The new floor boards are simply 3/4" marine plywood with Lonseal vinyl fake teak glued to the top. The original floor boards were broken and delaminated and rotten, but were fine for making a pattern. The new boards were cut out using a table saw for the big straight cuts and a band saw for the curving cuts. The edges of the floor boards had to be routed to prevent splintering (small radius at the top, larger radius on the bottom), and there were a couple of places where the boards were routed from the back for clearance over the traverse structure that supports the keel.

The time to cut out and do the routing was about four hours, including several test fittings (the boat was near the wood shop).

Once the plywood was the right shape and fitted properly, the boards were coated with WEST epoxy on both sides and all edges. This is important: it keeps the rot away! The application of the WEST epoxy is not all that different from varnish, but it seals much better for much longer.

Then, the Lonseal was glued onto the top with the Lonseal provided glue.

The marine plywood was something like $100 per sheet -- this is very high quality Brunzeel. I needed two 4x8 sheets.
The Lonseal was something like $400.

The final result looks very good. You can see some of the floors in this picture. The food was breakfast, cooked by my wife who also bought the boat for me for my birthday last year. Yes, I am a lucky man!

[JohnAdams]

In Australia, getting a survey done costs nearly 2 grand and it's sometimes hard to believe the person has not just gone through the boat one sunny morning and sighted various bits, confirmed they exist and then ticked a box on a checklist after adding specifications from SailBoatData. Sometimes they'll even forget to change the name of the boat they surveyed the time before in the template pdf.

Anything out of sight, electrical, or any complex bit of machinery is going straight into the too-hard basket. They'll say there are no blisters but they'll also make sure you know if there are any, it's not their fault. A key thing with buying is making sure you don't purchase some other person's collection of deferred maintenance schemes, that you buy a boat in which most primary systems are relatively or completely new, that you buy a boat you love so much that finding out on your first weekend away that running the oven for more than 5 minutes melts the plastic sliding doors on the cupboard behind the oven is not the end of the world - oh, no. It's just another one of those quirky things, like the leaking front hatch and the strange hot water plumbing, that you'll need to work through and learn by repairing.

Frankly, if the hull, keel bolts, rig, sails, electrics and mechanical components of the boat are solid, then something that was badly made out of wood in the first place is an opportunity to enhance your boat with the high quality marine ply that should have been used in the first place. I agree with others up-thread that it's better to do the job yourself than pay an expensive yard to send its first-year apprentices to do bad work at full marina prices.

It's worth considering that no production boat is right. Whether it's the lack of tether points, absence of fairleads, masts that leak into the bilge, inaccessible and unfused wiring down low, 'stainless' tanks sitting against the hull and surrounded with cabinetry, engine anodes that can't be removed without custom tools, cleats without backing plates, furniture molds stapled to hulls, aluminium toe-rails with stainless screws that never had a sniff of loctite, cute teak decking that burns your bum and adds 300 more holes to your cockpit, cockpit steering positions that slope away so acutely underfoot they become ice rinks when moist, ventilation that is not there, bimini poles that come apart at the connectors if you grab them.

Let's not even talk about under-spec deck hardware (with no backing plates and covered with fake wood paneling) and so-called high-tech hulls in which some sort of putty/glass composite is touted as anything other than a ploy to charge you much more for much less.

Any problem you can see is a 'good' problem, in my opinion. The best boats are usually maintained by the painfully conscientious who charge over the eight, knowing just how much they tipped into bringing their boat to a state of perfection. In hindsight, paying that additional cost can often be worth it.

[mfahrenthold]

That's an easy fix with West System epoxy materials. Look at their videos on youtube. No way it should cost $1000.00.

[Fore and Aft]

I had the classic broker/surveyor thing happen the other day.
The power boat next to my yacht was being sold and the potential buyer went out on the sea trial. When they came back I caught their lines and had a brief chat to the broker. The broker did not even introduce me to the buyer as I had already cost him to many sales and the broker has his pet surveyor that he can recommend to the buyer instead of me the marine surveyor who has cost him money. No stress for me, I am busy enough anyway and if that buyer had any sense he would ask around before engaging the brokers favourite surveyor.
Cheers

[Jwerkjr]

I own this same exact boat. The hole is where the dinette table floor mount belongs. It is recessed into the floor (thus requiring the hole cutout) and accepts the post that supports the table. My floor is "spongy" in the same area you describe. Seems to me like it is not properly supported in the corner where the bulkhead turns into the head. I plan to unstep my mast for various work and also to check out the compression post this winter (Notoriously problematic). May be able to diagnose the sponginess at that point. I have no evidence of water filtration. I have been going over this boat extensively for two seasons. Feel free to PM me with any questions that I may be able to answer. Good luck!

[Fiveslide]

Did the table and its pedestal come with the boat or are they missing? I'd be more concerned if those pieces are missing. The floor should be a relatively easy DIY repair.

BTW, those Hunter 34's, even it's smaller cousins the 31 and the 28.5, are some of my favorite boats. I still kick myself for not buying one for sale by a navy officer forced to move because of orders. I'd probably still own it, I got tired of the narrow, cramped interior of our older full keel boat and sold it when we had a kid on the way.

I think you did alright.

[Nicholson58]

What you have is small potatoes and handled by any of the proposed measures noted. Ours missed the hull blisters. I wound up peeling and applying a new bottom on a 58 foot hull. We are not impressed with these guys. The last time, even the description of the basic vessel was in error along with many other things I had to make him correct.

Next time, use the old survey with your edits in an easy to handle digital format along with your own edits. Hand this to the survivor and lead him by the nose in person.

[chollapete]

I once bought a stone barn built in 1832. It took me 8yrs to turn that barn into a house and I did it single handed. I did cut some corners and did some things that were not to code. (nothing unsafe).

Having just finished building a fully-permitted and inspected house, mostly alone, with my own hands, I'm curious as to what you feel wasn't to code and what the second inspector found. Don't publish details that shouldn't be published, but...

I'm imagining that you may have used Romex in a few places there it remained exposed, though probably hidden. Perhaps you used a 3" drain-pipe where it should have been 4" or a vent pipe was greater than 3' from a fixture. Drywall hides many sins, so it's hard to imagine what "buried" things he could see. Missing porch light? Missing exterior receptacle by the door? Perhaps a bathroom fan exhausting to the loft rather than to the exterior? Missing railings or graspable handrails at raised elevations? I hope there's a story you can tell. Thanks.