I'm a slow learner, I gather. I wish I'd seen something like what follows
before I'd started down the road I've traveled...

Based on my experiences in actually *buying* a boat (versus all the research
any who have bothered to follow it have become very tired of, I'm sure), the
most significant tip I can pass along (based on my/our experience -
different areas, and different boats may be different than our experiences)
is:

Know the boat type you're going to buy inside out, like you made it
yourself. Avail yourself of forms or whatever motivates you and informs you
to do what amounts to a survey. Don't offer on a boat you have not had the
opportunity to inspect out of the water. Then, do as close to a survey as
you have the ability to do. Take a tack hammer or small plastic mallet and
tap every 4th inch or so of the exterior. Plug in your 110v outlet tester
everywhere there is one. Plug in some cigarette-lighter powered item to any
12v outlet. Operate every appliance and through-hull. Turn on and make
work anything that has a switch or a knob. Try to twist every hose clamp.

Ignore that nearly every boat will have expired flares and inadequate fire
suppression, epirbs with out-of-date or melted batteries and inadequate MOB
provisions; these can be bought cheaply - by comparison to other stuff and
labor. Concentrate on the things which matter to safety - like keeping the
water on the outside the boat and the electricity inside the appliances and
wires - and your expectations of what the boat will do for and with you.
Send the broker out to lunch or whatever is needed if they're objecting to
how long it takes you to do that - after all, most surveys take the better
part of, or, in some cases, more than, a day.

When you have done that, sit down with your "survey" and do the best you can
to calculate how much it will cost to remedy the shortcomings you've found.
Then take that off what you would have offered for the boat *before* you
knew those things (based on your impressions of the boat without your
"survey"), and *then* make your offer. Look for a competent surveyor to
watch your back - that you didn't make any dangerous omissions - but use
their report to make a laundry list for you to accomplish on your own
nickel.

Because you won't get any satisfaction after the survey. The boat is the
owner's baby, and can do no wrong. Worse, since you didn't make a
full-price offer in the first place, you've insulted the owner, but they
reluctantly agreed because the broker told them they had to if they wanted
to sell the boat. Whatever you settle on, the owner is now counting the
commission as additional money out of his/her/their hide, because they'd
mentally paid it initially out of whatever reduction you got - but now it's
not there. If you come to the owner with any more than a token survey
adjustment, you'll have the door slammed in your face. Not only has the
owner been raped before this, now the broker wants a piece of flesh, and
here you come with the Visigoths to finish the job of insulting his baby.
The owner's not a happy camper at the thought that the boat's not your pride
and joy in its current condition.

On the other hand, if you've done your survey and have a hard cold look at
what you'll *really* pay for this boat, and can live with it, you'll only
have insulted (vs. raped and pillaged their baby) the owner - and maybe, as
happened in our first and second offers, it will die or you'll kill it
before you spend survey, haul and sea trial money to find out the owner is
now offended at the thought that the boat won't fetch the asking price and
will only sell it as-is/where-is at the price you've agreed before the
survey.

It's only money. I'll get over it. We'll even, most likely, buy this one.
It's a good boat, RTW capable, as it sits. But it's going to cost a lot
more than I like to fix what I think are dangerous items, and when we sell
it, if we don't make a very significant investment in it (beyond what I
think needs doing), it will cost us nearly the same by deduction.

Details later, different post. Reconsidering the name of the boat.. Can't
imagine what, but we have less than 2 weeks to get the answer.

L8R

Skip and Lydia

--
"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you are
quite alone on a great, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as self-sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought, and one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin