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 the

........etc.....

Don't forget that the most vulnerable party in any negotiation is the one with
the greatest emotional exposure. The seller is usually going to have a greater
fear of losing the deal than you need to have of losing the boat. Odds are the
boat has been on the market for *months* and you might be the first real buyer
the seller has seen. It would take you 5 minutes to find somebody else willing
to sell a boat, it might take the seller 5 months to find another buyer.

Don't be shy about making a realistic offer based upon what you believe is
probably wrong with the boat, and then going back for another bite after the
surveyor verifies, amplifies, and discovers even more deficiencies. The key is
to go after the big items, and leave the nickel and dime stuff alone. The
seller knows you're not going to
walk because the flares are 90 days expired, but he can be persuaded you might
walk unless the delam in the foredeck is remedied.

90% of the time the deficiencies are resolved with an adjustment to the selling
price. If the seller balks at adjusting the price or doing the repair, it's
perfectly OK to point out that everybody else who eventually decides to make an
offer on his boat will be hiring a surveyor as well- and the same schlockoid
irregularity will continue to be an issue. It's easier to fix it now and have a
sale for sure than to hope the next buyer hires Mr. Magoo to do the survey.