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This 16 minute Cruising The Cut video may be of interest to anyone wondering about the process of buying a boat. David spends about 15 mins minutes interviewing James from Rugby Boats. Many of the issues discussed seem to crop up regularly in the New to Boating forum so would probably be of interest to many newbies. As indeed would much of Cruising The Cut (131 videos and counting) but this particular video might be a good place to start. Apologies if this has already been linked to elsewhere.

My partner and i recently bought a 55ft narrow boat which we are going live on. Because it was the first time we were buying a boat, we thought we'd make sure everything was checked out by professionals and used a broker. In particular, we ordered a full pre purchase survey which showed up some minor problems which didn't seem too worrying. The vendor agreed to fix any problems arising from the survey which were related to the safety of the boat (BSS). We also got the engine serviced professionally. We now feel rather disappointed (and a little bit cheated) because the broker told us (1) the boat had been blacked last year, (2) the engine was serviced last year. The boat looked like it needed blacking and the person we asked to put three coats of paint on the boat told us "there is no way this boat was blacked last year". It turns out the engine was serviced by the owner rather than professionally. A few points were raised that had to be fixed for the boat to be BSS compliant. The vendor asked an engineer to ensure the boat complied with the BSS. Both the broker and the surveyor confirmed that the work had been carried out adequately. We have now started moving onto the boat and found that some of the work had not been carried out or had been done badly (e.g. just drilling big holes through the floor to fit a cable). We also found that the survey missed some defects (such as a leaky accumulator). Finally, on our first trip, our gearbox (PRM 120 mechanical) was destroyed by the drive plate because the drive plate that was installed wasn't compatible. Do we just have to accept all these problems, suck it up, pay to fix everything and move on, or is there something else we can do? Is this a common problem with brokers?