i have seen brand new
steel boats that size advertised
for sale and they have been proud of the fact that the hull is 3mm, brand new. have you tried to damage steel that thick? it is strong stuff!
my boat took years to build too. it is dutch. reason? because it was originally commissioned as a sailboat...the buyer
lost interest...the next buyer specified it as a
trawler...what's the problem? i'd regard the fact that your boat took six years to build as a positive. it means that for six years of its life it wasn't sitting in
salt water. result!
how many spots on the hull did your
surveyor measure? how does he know where the stringers are? if they are horizontal, and if there are no limber holes, then where does the
condensation go? no limber holes means no drainage, so the
water just collects there and stays there, it lifts the
paint, and then
corrosion starts. if some
salt water got in there too then that is a bigger problem. make sure he takes lots of measurements. as the excellent scott fratcher says, badly corroded steel can be just a few millimeters from healthy steel. so it can be easily missed by a surveyor if he isn't taking enough readings.
have you looked at your portholes? any sign of rust there (on the inside)? are the
seals in good shape? another important thing, go and look at the inside of the chain locker. look at it yourself. how does it look? remember that a salty wet chain has been dumped there repeatedly. where did the
salt water go? are there drainage holes through the hull beneath the chain? or does it drain into the midship
bilge?
there are surveyors and there are surveyors. i originally found this excellent site as a result of an article written by a guy who bought a steel boat that came with a clean bill of
sale by a surveyor. it turned out that the boat was a wreck, absolutely rusty all over, and he had to
rebuild it.
a friend of mine has been looking for a steel
trawler here in
europe for almost two years. we've been down to
gibraltar to look at an amazing boat built back in the 1960s out of steel. down in the
engine room i found a 10" x 10" piece of corrosion probably caused by vibration caused by a bad
engine mount. this was covered up by some pads and some heavy containers of engine
oil. coincidence or cover-up?
when i crawled into the space under a
cabin floor i found 12" of sitting water and strum boxes on the
bilge pump pipes that had completely corroded away. scary.
i'd really advise you to put some old clothes on and take a good look around yourself, just to be sure. there are surveyors, and surveyors.
if you do buy the boat then you will learn that steel is easy to
work with, and with the right methods of corrosion treatmentand prevention, e.g. phosphoric acid,
epoxy paint, etc., that you will have a super strong boat that could potentially last 100 years or more.
if the boat has lived in fresh water for a good part of its life then that is a good thing too.
good luck.