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Does over plating increase the value of a boat?


nealeST

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Hello All,

 

I am working and saving my way to buying a Trad of around 58'/ 60' in hopefully a few short years from now. I am out on Apolloduck most days. I have watched a boat that had me twitching...if only I'd had the money now. I won't give details out as that seems disrespectful to seller and the new owner ( the boat has sold) but its enough to say that this 1998 60' Trad was listed at £52,000 which seems the going rate for lovely boats of that age by a much admired builder. After two weeks the price was slashed to £29,995. I'm really shocked. If I'd had my money I'd have been in the queue. My guess is that a survey revealed the need to have the bottom over plated as I understand that runs to £20,000. I am only guessing. My question is does over plating restore the value of the boat back to circa £50,000 or is the boat now from this moment on £29,995 with £20,000 spent on the over plating? Loads of boats from 1998 seem to be changing hands at £45 - £55,000. Must be serious to almost halve the price? I'm new, does this happen often? I'm happy the boat is sold, now I can move on with my life and continue saving.

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10 minutes ago, nealeST said:

My question is does over plating restore the value of the boat back to circa £50,000

 

For me NO !

 

I'd rather buy a boat that needs overplating (but I probably wouldn't - there are plenty of good boats about). Buying a boat thats overplated just to sell it can often be a bodge job with it not correctly welded - it is easy to just weld along the sides but the bottom needs welding across the beam several times over the length to stop sagging.

 

A badly welded boat can still leak and hold water between the 'two base plates'.

 

How do "you" know the quality of the overplating ?

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1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

The £29,995 could have been a scam, there is quite a bit of it going on, people selling boats they don't own

Do you mean that it's not paid for, that there is an outstanding debt or loan? That the finance company comes looking for their boat? Or are people actually passing themselves off as owners of boats they don't own? I wasn't aware that was possible. Sounds very nasty.  Mostly I'm just a bit bothered by the business of over plating. As Alan says, if done badly it just leads to more problems....I'd be curious to know how many people have to get over plating done and how successful it is. I imagine boat surveyors have all the answers....

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46 minutes ago, nealeST said:

Do you mean that it's not paid for, that there is an outstanding debt or loan? That the finance company comes looking for their boat? Or are people actually passing themselves off as owners of boats they don't own? I wasn't aware that was possible. Sounds very nasty.  Mostly I'm just a bit bothered by the business of over plating. As Alan says, if done badly it just leads to more problems....I'd be curious to know how many people have to get over plating done and how successful it is. I imagine boat surveyors have all the answers....

This ^

Because there are no official registration documents for canal boats it is all too easy to fabricate an advert. 

Over the years there have been several cases of fraudulent adverts for boats.

Some of these are stolen, get a quick repaint then put up for sale at a ridiculously low price.

 

One infamous case involved the then owner of a hire boat company who got into financial difficulty and sold one of the companies' boats to three different people. When the court case was resolved the first buyer got the boat and the other two lost their money. Multiple cases of fraud were also involved.

There were other boats involved in that case as well.

 

The old adage: "If it looks too good to be true then it is." 

Buyer beware. 

 

Edited by Ray T
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12 minutes ago, nealeST said:

I imagine boat surveyors have all the answers....

 

Imagine away and then come back to the real world.

The surveyors contract 'small print' absolves them from anything they say or write as being true facts - try taking one to court (I have) and you will not even get a solicitor as they just say - save your money, and, having to pay all the surveyors court costs as well - you agreed to their T&Cs you have no case to argue.

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56 minutes ago, nealeST said:

 I imagine boat surveyors have all the answers....

Don't assume that they (all) do - and anyway, the small print in any agreement you sign with them is basically a get out clause for just about everything. By all means hire a surveyor, and if at all possible, be there and ask lots of questions, but use your common sense regarding evasive answers. If the surveyor won't have you there, find another surveyor.

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29 minutes ago, billS said:

I think it does increase the value - the scrap value.

It certainly increased the value of mine as it stopped the water coming in. Being done by a reputable yard, extremely carefully and well, means the boat is saleable, probably for what I paid for it thirty years ago, which was eight grand, which is a bit less than the replating cost.

I don't think boats have a scrap value, do they? There's so much work involved in getting any decent metal out of one I'd be surprised if it was an option.

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1 hour ago, nealeST said:

Mostly I'm just a bit bothered by the business of over plating. As Alan says, if done badly it just leads to more problems....I'd be curious to know how many people have to get over plating done and how successful it is. I imagine boat surveyors have all the answers....

 

You are dead right to be bothered. 

 

If the boat is actually floating and overplating is carried out, there is no way of testing to prove for certain the overplating is watertight and doing its job. It could easily have a millimetre (or a metre!) of weld missing or overlooked and the gap behind full of water and going rusty. 

 

I've no idea why you think boat surveyors have all the answers. Like house surveyors they talk a good talk but their only real use is to give you that phantom confidence that middle class home-owners get from seeing a nicely formatted Word document. One that says Everything Is Fine except for a long list of trivia you could have spotted yourself. The surveyor actually relies on a few months passing before you discovering anything serious going wrong and then they they say "Well it was fine on the day I surveyed it"

 

Cynical? Moi?

 

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Yes good point, if the boat was actually sinking before the over plate then at least you'd know it worked. But I was thinking boat surveyors see lots of boats, they probably have a fair idea how many boats do get over plated and how successful it is? Steel rusts in water no getting away from it. Steel can be poorly manufactured. I think on reflection you would be crazy to negotiate the price of a boat down with the idea of over plating it to restore its value. I guess to answer my own question a £52,000 boat reduced to £29,000 ...it can never be sensible to then go and spend £20,000 on over plating. Nobody would do that? Whatever could have been used to reduce the price will remain a mystery.

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17 minutes ago, nealeST said:

Yes good point, if the boat was actually sinking before the over plate then at least you'd know it worked. But I was thinking boat surveyors see lots of boats, they probably have a fair idea how many boats do get over plated and how successful it is? Steel rusts in water no getting away from it. Steel can be poorly manufactured. I think on reflection you would be crazy to negotiate the price of a boat down with the idea of over plating it to restore its value. I guess to answer my own question a £52,000 boat reduced to £29,000 ...it can never be sensible to then go and spend £20,000 on over plating. Nobody would do that? Whatever could have been used to reduce the price will remain a mystery.

20 grand on overplating is a bit extreme, unless you get it done in London. My forty footer cost nine, new bottom and sides well above the waterline. Most overplating seems to be ok, I've not heard of more than one boat sinking because of a bad job and that was twenty years ago. If it's done well, you've basically got a new hull, so where's the problem?

It depends what you want a boat for. If it's for a year or two and then sell up, best avoid it. If it's to live on, or a hobby boat you expect to keep for a lifetime, it'd be fine.

Whatever you buy is going to cost you a bomb over the years anyway, and if you're getting anything except a brand new boat, what you get is a gamble. The survey is only any use if it says the damn thing's about to sink, otherwise you can't rely on it.

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45 minutes ago, Ianws said:

Out of interest. What happens to "dead" boats. Who takes them out of the water and who pays for 

 

 

They usually get removed by a contractor to CRT, each region has one. They then get sold on or scrapped to recover costs. Both of my boats have been bought through this method. 

 

Scrap price of a 50ft shell is roughly £1200...

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1 hour ago, MtB said:

 

Your little "If" at the start of your sentence encapsulates the whole problem with overplating.

 

 

Indeed, that's the problem. The one that sank was done by the same people who did my first one, they left a pinhole in a weld and glug. Mine, they didn't leave a sacrificial strip on one side and in the end the weld rubbed through, though it took twenty years to do it. The last replate was done at Stoke, who have done a first rate job of it. I had enough experience this time to watch it done.

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8 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Buy you said that was 30 years ago and a 40 ft boat.

Prices have more than doubled since then

So £20k today seems about right

No, the £9k was it's second replate, about three years ago. I think the first, which was just the bottom, cost about £2000, but I can't really remember. Seemed a lot at the time!

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21 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Buy you said that was 30 years ago and a 40 ft boat.

Prices have more than doubled since then

So £20k today seems about right

 

When I was looking about 6 years ago I was quoted £200 per foot - in view of the price rises in steel and labour in the last year I wouldn't be surprised if it was now £300 or even £400 per foot.

£20k would not be unexpected for a 60 footer.

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  A narrowboat was ashore recently near us and chocked up high enough to paint the baseplate as well as the sides.  I did not inspect it closely but It did not appear to be corroded. It  was well prepared and re-painted below the waterline  . Perhaps attention to  regular maintenance  every  couple of years would be money better spent than spending thousands on an overplating  job every 20 odd years .  

 

 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, MartynG said:

  A narrowboat was ashore recently near us and chocked up high enough to paint the baseplate as well as the sides.  I did not inspect it closely but It did not appear to be corroded. It  was well prepared and re-painted below the waterline  . Perhaps attention to  regular maintenance  every  couple of years would be money better spent than spending thousands on an overplating  job every 20 odd years . 

There wasn't much wrong with the overplated baseplate of mine apart from the weld at the edge which had worn away. That had obviously been leaking for years, adding to the rusting of the original hull. I hadn't had the sides done previously, and they were the main problem. The boat is at least sixty years old now, so it's not done too badly. And it had been blacked every two or three years since I got it, though I still think painting the baseplate is a waste of time and money.

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4 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

 And it had been blacked every two or three years since I got it, though I still think painting the baseplate is a waste of time and money.

I've just spent a week moving a boat that was built in the early 90's buy a well known and quality builder, blacked every 3 years and is now down to 3mm around the waterline. 

The issue was highlighted a few years ago when it last changed hands,  it was basically blacked over the existing corrosion and never bottomed properly. It has been now, blasted and epoxied,  and I would definitely rather keep it that way than overplated  - even if it is now fully uninsurable.

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25 minutes ago, noddyboater said:

It has been now, blasted and epoxied,  and I would definitely rather keep it that way than overplated

Well I don't even own a boat yet but I'm forming a strong idea around going that route above. I'd want the boat I bought to last me 10 years and still be something I could sell on at the end with some value in it. (I am aiming for semi retirement between age 58 -68 and spend 6 months a year on the boat). Blasted, epoxied and painted seems to really work from what I gather. I'd want everything below the waterline done that way for peace of mind once I'd bought my boat. I know opinions are very divided. I have welded up and fixed quite a number of 'classic' cars over the years to understand that the main job of steel is to return back to the ground from which it came as quickly as it can. I have sandblasted an entire 50 year old car top to toe 'rotisserie' style and its amazing how well old steel cleans up. Pity you can't 'rotisserie' a narrow boat!

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1 hour ago, MartynG said:

  A narrowboat was ashore recently near us and chocked up high enough to paint the baseplate as well as the sides.  I did not inspect it closely but It did not appear to be corroded. It  was well prepared and re-painted below the waterline  . Perhaps attention to  regular maintenance  every  couple of years would be money better spent than spending thousands on an overplating  job every 20 odd years .  

 

 

 

 

You have a point. For many years baseplates were not painted, there was a myth that they didn't corrode and any way the paint would rub off.  Many brand new boats had no paint whatsoever on the bottom and just a cosmetic coat of black stuff on the sides. Plus the only paint ever used was bitumastic and frankly most boats had little or no protection at all. These older boats are likely to have all been overplated by now. A newish boat that has been properly painted with modern paint and hauled out every 3 or 4 years is likely to last a very long time before needing any repairs 

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