Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluewaters2812
I am slowly becoming familiar with some of the ins and outs of State registration as opposed to USCG documentation, thanks. I guess the problem of a "hidden" lien is as great with one system as it is with the other. Another good sailor reminded me of the old adage and that is to get out of Dodge City asap after the purchase lol.
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If a boat is documented you can look up some info on it, sorry I don't remember where. When we bought the
Endeavour it was documented and with 2 co-owners and it wasn't clear if they had ever gotten the paper
work to just one owner. It actually appeared that maybe the guy that was selling the boat wasn't the one with the address that went with the documentation.
I was pretty stressed about this and the broker assured me that I'd have a clear title when the
money changed hands at the closing. The firm he worked for had been around for some time, but he was as new to all of this as we were. I started researching what had to take place to un-document the boat and get a clear title and didn't see how they were going to have time to give us one at closing. He kept assuring me that they would.
Finally I got the
head of the firm involved and he in turn got a
women that does this for a living involved and she explained the whole process to us and assured us that she could handle it. I wasn't happy as that was then going to cost $200-$400 (can't remember the exact amount). I told the owner that I'd signed the papers and was going to pay at closing based on the fact that I would get a clear title at that point. He then said that the money for the
women would come out of the salesman's commission. I felt bad about that, but I'd gone through so much stress at that time and we were about ready to walk that I let it go. She did exactly as she said and shortly after we returned home the title came along with her notice that the boat was old enough to qualify for the low yearly registration.
The moral of the story is that if you are spending the money, and we spent a lot less than you are going to, get someone who is qualified to handle the title check and the paperwork that has good referrals and bite the bullet and spend the couple hundred and sleep at night. If you need it I could PM you who we used and who we would use again.
The
buying and haggling over the price and so forth was nerve racking for us as I don't like that kind of thing, but you will get it behind you.
One last word of
advice and then I won't bring it up again. When we bought our
MacGregor it was in the
winter and I did a lot of mods to it and people kept telling me that we should sail it before we did anything to it, especially since we had never sailed before, but since it was cold (we live in the mountain west) I worked and worked and we finally put the boat in and had no regrets spending the money and doing the work. So I felt most of the advice was not warranted. So what I'll say next might not also be warranted so take it for what it is worth.
You have sailed and gone out for a week. Has your wife? Going out for a week even is a far cry from living on the boat more or less full time. You are making a big step more or less selling everything and jumping into buying a first boat that is also hopefully going to please you for some time and also hopefully so will the life style. Consider trying to get on some boat for a month or so to see if this is really what you want. There are options to do that.
Second is that a 44 or larger boat is going to give you more room than a 35-40, but for the area that you are interested in it might also limit where you are going to be able to go. The
mast height isn't just to go into a city. Most cruisers end up in Florida on the
ICW sooner or later and the bridges there will limit you. You can go quite a ways up or down the coast to fine good places to go inside or outside. If you are on the Gulf side of Florida Bay or go up by the Everglades and the 10,000 Islands and inside on the
ICW over there 5 feet or less is going to really open up some beautiful places to sail and get into at night. After being to those places in our little Mac we sure didn't want to give up those places. Someone above mentioned boats 44 or over that had less than a 5 foot
draft. If that is still your goal I'd be looking at which boats those are. If you can
anchor in closer to shore or get into holes you will be much more comfortable at night.
If you find
anchoring out isn't your deal and need to find
marinas and slips for a 40+ foot boat remember that those longer slips are limited and the price is by the foot and start getting pretty expensive pretty fast.
There are some nice boats out there in the 35' range in good shape that you could get started with and if you like them flip them for something larger within a year and maybe loose $2,000 to $5,000 in the process which would be like paying $200-$400 a month for the experience and you would be a lot wiser in making a more permanent decision then.
Please don't take the above as a bunch of 'negative vibes'. Ruth and I love it, but aren't full time cruisers and probably never will be, but you might be
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