4º 51.682s 128º 54.073w
Thu May 02 2019
Not
about your health, not about your money, not about your home, not about your
personal safety. If you leave that stuff to others, you’re going to get less
than optimal results. They’re almost always looking out for number one.
Same
goes for boats, especially when looking to buy. Brokers want to sell you what
they’ve got in inventory. It’s not uncommon for them to be in cahoots with a
“somewhat compliant” surveyor, who will represent a boat as entirely seaworthy
when it might ought to end up smashed up with a backhoe and recycled or buried.
It’s
heartbreaking at times to meet folks, young or old, who drank the coolaid
(there’s that darn Jonestown massacre again) and put all their faith and trust
in a broker and his collaborating surveyor. They blow a big chunk of their
savings on their dream, expecting to move aboard and set off on their new life
only to discover that to make the vessel seaworthy for anything but coastal
sailing they’re going to have to spend as much again. They might have carefully
budgeted for a few years of living a thrifty life aboard, but in their optimism
overlooked the real cost of new rigging, new sails, blistered hulls, tired
diesels.
Finding
a trustworthy broker is the first step, and we did. We met Kurt Jerman at the
Annapolis Sailboat Show in 2005, and I told him then “this is going to be a
very long relationship building exercise, but we’re absolutely serious about a
Seawind 1160 someday”. Kurt hung in there with us, and when we were ready to
buy and unbeknownst to us, he researched all the boats on the market, most of
which were in Florida. Combining business trips and short holidays, we were
able to personally look at every boat in the US except JollyDogs, and a trusted
friend helped us out there. Working with Kurt we made offers on more than one
Seawind 1160 before we ultimately purchased JollyDogs. It was a real emotional
roller coaster ride.
Over
the years, Kurt arranged test sails for us, and even suggested we consider less
expensive boats if we wanted to get going sooner, but we were focused on this
particular model. When we finally found “the boat”, we asked Kurt to represent
us as the buying broker since the seller pays the 10% fee anyway, AND the
selling broker was a total waste of space. We felt Kurt deserved a chunk of the
commission for sticking with us all those years, as well we believed he would
help us get the best value and ensure the transaction was smooth and painless
for us.
We
also found a total hardass of a surveyor, a fellow named Bill Melbostead. He
had a reputation for independence and calling a spade a spade. He wasn’t cheap,
but he saved us more than his commission in what he found wrong, items the
seller was liable to fix before the deal was done. Bill was absolutely worth
the price of admission.
You
should always want to be the dumbest person in the room, to surround yourself
with best and brightest, to build the winning team. Brings up your game, and
forces you to get smarter yourself. As newbies in the boat owning game, we had
plenty of holes in our knowledge, but we did the best to educate ourselves,
then we found the most trustworthy, smartest folks we could to help us.
Back
at the giant aerospace company where I worked 28 years, the contractors that
serviced the fire suppression systems in our numerous hangars had a slogan
painted on the side of their trucks. “Quality is remembered long after the
price is forgotten”.
As
Tex Earnhardt used to say on his car selling TV ads, “this ain’t no bull”.
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