Well, I'm back from the latest foray. I'll talk about that in a separate
post.

Another comment: Are you SURE you need a broker?

Seems to me the first broker you mentioned did some broker-like things,
like
trying to narrow your search, give you advice, etc. You rejected it (which
is
fair enough). In fact, you seem to be someone who doesn't like to be TOLD
stuff
- you want to form your own conclusions. So I'd say you DON'T need a
broker to
hold your hand while you notate, measure, video, etc. all the boats you're
looking at.

That's entirely true - in fact, I'm happy to have them go off somewhere and
attend to other business, while I'm busy on the boat, which some did, this
last trip. What I *do* need a broker to do is set up the viewings, and
since they know the area, get me to and from each of them in the least
amount of time.

So, I don't need them on the boat with me - I just need them to make me get
on as many as possible, in as short as possible a time.


Seems like you only need a broker to negotiate price once you've settled
on a
boat, and you're probably wasting THEIR time asking them for advice then
not
taking it.

Why not go to the broker with this in mind? Tell him you'd like to look at
these
boats by yourself and form your own conclusions, and let him know what the
result is. I think you'd be thanked. As someone else said, you want to buy
a
boat, not be sold one.

I've not really had a problem, once I've gotten under way, other than with
the specific broker mentioned. Plus the ones who are actually listening
(and doing some feedback/questioning, which he didn't do) go beyond the
initial setups and suggest others which might work. If we've already
isolated the type, I'll know about it and we can move on. If not, as
happened in the last trip, serendipity, or providence, depending on your
position, may have it that the broker, in taking me around a yard with a
bunch of boats immediately available and to hand, puts me on the boat which
works for us, when it hadn't been on the list. Without the broker, I'd have
never been on that boat, and still looking, probably, though as the separate
post will point out, there are now several choices, most of which have more
than one from which to choose...

So, I'm glad I've used brokers. There's no way I could have seen the
several hundred examples, including going aboard well over 100 - close to
200 - individual boats, without brokers doing most of the shuttling, in the
total of only about 40 days on the road.

Of course, if you already know what boat you want, and where to fiind it,
you don't need a broker, other than if the boat's listed with a broker...

L8R

Skip (and Lydia, by proxy)

--
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover." - Mark Twain