Don't Let Your Boat Repo Dream Become a Nightmare

Don't Let Your Boat Repo Dream Become a Nightmare

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Buying a car is a major expenditure for most people, attended with due research, inspection, testing, legal affairs, and subsequent service and warranty.

Only the purchase of a house eclipses it in complexity, gravity, promise and expense. Or, for some, purchase of a boat.

A boat can combine the elements of both car and house: domicile; transportation; repository of much, if not all, of available capital; complex problems in evaluating its worth; complex maintenance; complex feelings about it.

When purchasing a boat, people logically invest com­mensurate amounts of research, inspection, testing, consultation — in a word, caution.

Don't they? Well, sometimes.

Buying a boat from boat repo is buying a lifestyle, be it a dinghy to use on weekends or a world cruiser to take you off into the sunset.

On a boat you can go places, new places, in­accessible places — away places.

The idea of buying a boat can be so glowing that it is difficult to see what is really there — or not there.

Some buyers have such faith in their fantasies that they put their hard cash down for something which does not exist, with no guarantee that it ever will.

In one case, a Connecticut couple turned a $10,000 deposit over to a dealer who promised them their retirement in the form of a $20,000 Taiwan 54' ketch.

Two agonizing years later, the boat had yet to materialize. Worse, the dealer and the $10,000, had evaporated.

While this example is extreme, it illustrates the degree of naivete exercised in many boat purchases.

"Understandings" about warranties, equipment and dates; verbal agreements; assumptions; and plain ignorance too frequently serve in place of written contracts, equipment lists, and schedules.

Even conscien­tious consumers can be frustrated by the variation in the meaning of technical-sounding terms (base price, sailaway price) and the sheer inaccuracy of published specifications of boats and gear.

Dealing with dozens of consumer difficulties through The Practical Sailor has produced a fair base of experience in the business of purchasing boats, and we can make some fairly specific recommendations for insuring a satisfactory transaction.

Perhaps the most basic and important, however, is also the most general: keep thorough written evidence of every phase of your purchase, from initial contacts and phone calls to legal documents.

The common thread which runs through most of the unhappy boat repo experiences we encounter is the lack of records, and without written evidence it is often impossible to produce any remedy.

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