Adventures in boat shopping

Don't really have enough info on the boat to find the owner. I don't really want to get in the middle of of it anyway. This is the second broker in the past month I've come across that would not work with other brokers.

The guy today seemed offended that "I didn't want to work with him" (his words). I said, I just want someone representing my interest in the deal. He said, I can represent you. I said, no, you represent the seller. You can't represent the best interests of both parties. He just seemed confused so I just told him that if he would not work with my broker, we are done here.

The Sea Ray still has hope. Broker and seller are aware that my offer has an expiration date and that people in this area are not terribly motivated to buy boats going into the winter.

My broker told me that about 1/3 of his deals this season are falling through on financing. For that reason, the cash buyer is holding a much better hand. They are advising sellers to take a lower cash offer over a higher financed offer. If they take a financed offer, the boat is tied up during prime selling time for a month or more on a deal that may never get financing.

We've pretty much homed in on a Sea Ray or Meridian Sedan Bridge or maybe Silverton Sport Bridge. Definitely that style though.

Might have found a winner. 2007 Sea Ray 44 Sedan Bridge. I made an offer sight unseen. Seller came back higher. I said no, offer is best and final pending visual inspection, survey and sea trial. After a day they accepted. The boat is in south Florida.

So I flew to FL yesterday, looked at boat this morning. Survey and sea trial is set for Friday. Exterior is in great shape. No cracks where cracks shouldn’t be. Fly bridge enclosure, aft cockpit camper canvas, aft cockpit sun shade and 2 sets of windshield shades (one black and one white) are new last year. Bridge is air conditioned. Anything that could be sun damaged has a fitted cover. Exterior upholstery is in great condition. No signs of sun damage. Needs a wash and wax but gel coat is in great shape. Probably won’t need a compound, just a wash and wax. Lighting has been upgraded to LED.

Below deck it has QSC500’s with 1500 hours. Turbos and aftercoolers were replaced last year. Has a water maker. Current owners never used it so it probably needs overhaul. Heads and vacuflush were serviced this year. Smartcraft display is working other than rudder position input, but rudder position displays fine on the AP. Smartcraft is set to metric units, but that should just be a system setting.

It has Hurley Davits and a small hard dinghy. The dinghy is pretty useless for our needs but will suffice for the ride home. Will replace it with a RIB.

The broker took the boat out a few days ago and noticed a vibration on the port side. They removed the port prop and found one blade was pretty far out, so prop shop fixed it and will be going back on tomorrow morning. If there is still a vibration on sea trial, I guess they will have to pull the prop shaft and have it straightened or replaced.

Owners live in the UK. They were flying back and forth to use the boat and wanted to do the loop, then had a medical issue and had to abort.

Survey and sea trial on Friday.

thread seems to have vanished.

Looks like it used to be an aft cabin MY then the extension made it a cockpit MY. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just buy a CPMY or a Meridian 459?

None of the gadgets turn me on. Are the TV3 domes even useable? I know at some point they changed the frequencies on the sat tv systems which bricked a lot of the older domes. One starlink dish can replace all 3 domes at a fraction the cost.

Thanks. Hoping the survey doesn’t reveal much more than I already know. I’m not seeing anything major. Just a few minor things that are more routine maintenance items rather than real issues.

We have seller who actually wants to sell. That a win all by itself.

Sea trial was interesting. Survey at the dock for about an hour then over to the yard for short haul. No blistering, clean bottom, no soft spots, didn’t even need to pressure wash. No vibration so reworking the prop did the trick. Everything was running on the genset. All 3 AC’s, fridge, stove, etc. no problems.

After short haul we went out to run it up. Ran it up to 1800, looked good. 2000, looked good. 2300, port would not go past 2000. Wide open, port still at 2000, starboard at 2350. Diesel tech was scratching his head. He said we should we should see load demand and fuel burn go up, but we were not.

So on the way back in, broker runs the engines up no load with the same results, 2000 and 2350. He texted the owner who is in the UK and owner said, turn off the cruise control. Did that and the engines hit 2600 on the money no load. So we went back out and everything was good. 2600 both engines at WOT with fuel flow and speed right on the money.

Next issue was the nav electronics. Radar was not working when I did my visual on Wednesday but everything else was. Went back over on Thursday and worked with the broker on the electronics. Found a rats nest of wiring and just moving wires around, things would go dark. By the end of the day we had everything working.

So Friday morning we get there for survey and the auto pilot is dead again. We did survey and when we got done, I tinkered on the electronics more with the broker. Got everything working again. This morning I went back over for another short sea trial. Auto pilot is dead gain. Pulled the left MFD to get at the wiring and the MFD went dark. Checked the power plug and had no power. Checked fuse and it was good. Found that if I manipulated the cable at the MFD end, power would come and go, so we have a bad cable. Through all of this we noticed that the network hub was not lighting up. Found a blown fuse. Replaced fuse and the hub is still dead.

When I made the offer I new the electronics were old but was told it was all working fine. My broker says they won’t reduce for the cost of new electronics which is fine, I just want what is there to be working. Listing broker is having his electronics guy get on it, so we’ll see how that goes.

Basically everything that says Raymarine is knocking on deaths door. I knew I was going to have to address this, but I wanted to get a year or so out of what’s there. Also not thrilled about a 10 day run up the east coast in unfamiliar waters without a reliable sounder at a minimum. I can use the iPad for nav and won’t need radar.

So assuming the rest of the boat surveys clean, what would you do? Go for a reduction of some sort or or take it as is for the original offer?