Slow and Steady

There's a guy on my marina who recently bought a 50ft springer for £2,000 without a survey... it floats and hasn't been over plated... yet! We're all looking forward to when he has it removed for blacking, cruel buggers that we are. lol

I was chatting with someone yesterday who spent £1500 on it for his camper. I priced Celotex up for my 60ft boat inc tape and it was around £1,000! Point being that thin is all there is room for in a boat to maximise the internal space so you'd think people would get their wallets out.

Thanks, that makes sense! I'm still highly suspicious that it's apparently almost 3x better than celotex - if it were that good everybody would use it!

Found it. Mine is the thinner stuff no doubt. R value 3.8 at 26 mm thickness R value 5.8 at 44 mm thickness Technically very good actually!* Celotex R value 2.25 at 50mm * I'm thinking there are cunning ways of specifying this. The celotex specifies "2kw", the 3M is quiet on that aspect. I don't know what it means I'm just suspicious that it could be like battery capacity discharge rates.

Yes, it's supposed to expand isn't it. I suspect mine was cheap van stuff. I'm just not impressed. Probably dandy for a holiday boat, not so good through the winter. Fag papers for scale.

Mine too - I'm not seeing the vapour barrier though and IMO it's terrible - it's a sound proofing material for cars, 3M do not provide thermal insulation numbers for it or describe it as thermal insulation.

Here it can take literally months to get a slot to take a boat out + arrange a surveyor - then the haggling etc. Saying here's the money right now, no survey, what's your bank details - it's a winner for both parties. When I was a lad waving £10 notes and saying "here's the cash, now" was always good for low offers on cars.

My narrowboat isn't getting uglier, it was ugly when it was built.

Actually I'm in two minds about counselling anyway - it didn't exist in any meaningful way 40-50 years ago - you had to just get on with it, which is really what the ultimate aim of counselling is!

One way of looking at it is that if you agree to buy something at it's advertised price, haggling later could be seen as rather unfair. I had that when I sold my house - it was priced lower than the max because it was not perfect. Someone "won" sealed bids then came round with his builder buddy trying to knock £40K off. Well, no, it was priced for what it was, not for how perfect it could be if you spent £40k on it! Maybe I'd react the same to being haggled after a survey - sorry mate if you want to knock £5k off to fix everything, I'll have to add £5k on first so the price reflects a boat with no faults. Unless the seller claimed in writing it was fault free - only then you would have cause for discussion.

Such is our first past the post system.

I'd say that comes under the expense heading at the end of the day. Unqualified GPs prescribing brain warping drugs because the wait for a councillor is 6 months or more. It's the same fire fighting throughout the NHS though - you need something simple/cheap so have to wait because someone in dire straights obviously needs treatment first... so you have to wait until your simple condition has developed into an emergency requiring expensive treatment taking up 10x more time and expense. Surprise surprise the NHS is short of money. One of the consultant surgeons I "used" had 3, yes 3 that's no typo, planned operating days per year, the rest of his time was dealing with emergency admissions. That was ten years ago, I can only imagine with the delays due to Covid he doesn't have any planned surgery days now.

I simply meant that I have no experience of boat surveys. But I have experience of surveyors in general and agree that their value is dubious. I certainly didn't "know boats" when I bought my first one further than getting drunk once and falling asleep on one. I just looked at loads, read a lot (on here!) and went with gut instinct. The one I bought just stood out. Honestly I believe some people are simply too lazy to educate themselves and think paying a surveyor saves them the bother. Kind of like judging the condition of a car as good because it has an MOT.

Not had a good experience of depression treatment here, I was prescribed rather addictive drugs when in reality I was having a completely human reaction to the kind of life events that many (if not all) people go through. Result was instead of coming to terms/dealing with stuff I just didn't give a poop and festered until I went cold turkey. Would have been no worse off getting drunk every day. A bit of counselling (chargeable term for having a chat) would have been far better and it's only the relative expense of this that sees so many people prescribed drugs instead, so... hopefully this is a good thing.

Yes and no - most brokers do not have such onerous conditions. Still, what do I know I've bought 2 boats and sold one all deals done without surveys. I found sellers like how that speeds up the sale enough to simply knock off that £5k or whatever it is that the survey would provide the info to haggle with. Cut to the chase with £5k to spend putting things right. Before you say it, yes you must be confident the hull is in good order and there we will disagree. I would say a good one is obvious and if I didn't feel confident without getting it out of the water I'd walk away anyway.

Same here but once you accept them for what they are... they are what they are - I suppose if it floats it's a boat!

Whatever.

Less than loosing a 10% deposit

All good points - it's the no dickering after the survey and you can only pull out without loosing the deposit if the work would cost more than the deposit leaves a bad taste. Maybe before paying the deposit take your "mate who knows about boats" (the surveyor) for a look around and test things.

I look at boats like this and think "where's the fit out?" Is the stove installation sensible or even "legal"?

Hire boats - are they not rather untypical of narrowboats? Lots of berths, multiple WC's, not much storage. I'm pretty sure I would want "something else" if that was my experience of narrowboat interiors.

There are going to be bruises getting on and off this one. One roof drain and I hope the window seals are good.

Clause 4 is a bit catch-22? You have been given the opportunity to inspect and accept with no come backs, yet you have to agree to this and pay up before they let you have it professionally surveyed? Maybe talk to your surveyor and get them to complete an in the water equipment survey and negotiate price dependent on that survey before you pay up the deposit, that would cover everything but the hull, then come back for the hull survey. Otherwise if the survey after deposit shows up something serious but under 10% you don't have any redress. Never been a fan of non-returnable deposits on second hand unchecked stuff, it seems like a con to me. Basically they are saying anything short of overplating you are stuffed and have to buy it anyway. I might even walk away faced with terms like that!

To be pedantic - stern haul in this case.

Fair payment - I'm the same.