Buying a Boat Out of State Without Seeing It First

Most people get the sequence backwards. They fly out, fall for the boat, then start arranging the checks that should have decided whether the flight was worth taking.

Do it the other way round and a remote purchase is calmer than a local one.

How do you buy a boat sight unseen?

In this order:

1. 01Bindable insurance quote. Fifteen minutes. If nobody will write the hull, stop here.
2. 02Purchase agreement, subject to survey and sea trial. Written contingencies, not a handshake.
3. 03Deposit into escrow. Ten percent is standard, held by the broker's trust account.
4. 04Your surveyor, your mechanic. People you hired, not names the seller suggested.
5. 05Read the report before you book anything.
6. 06Travel for the sea trial.
7. 07Accept, renegotiate, or walk.

The first flight in that list is the sixth step. That is the whole point.

Why the deposit goes to escrow

A deposit sitting in a broker's trust account is not the broker's money and not the seller's. It is yours, held under the terms of the agreement, and it comes back if the survey turns up something the contract says it can come back for.

A deposit sitting in a private seller's checking account is a favour you have done a stranger.

Wire fraud in boat sales is common enough that it deserves its own habit: call the escrow agent on a number you found yourself, not the number in the email, and confirm the account details by voice before sending anything. Payment instructions that change at the last minute are the classic tell.

Hiring your own people

The seller's broker will happily suggest a surveyor. Some of those recommendations are excellent. Take one anyway from a source with no stake in the sale, because the report you are buying is the only genuinely independent thing in the transaction.

Two people, not one:

• A surveyor for structure, systems, moisture, safety and valuation.
• A marine mechanic for the engines, which most survey reports explicitly exclude.

If you can only be in one place at one time, have them attend the same haul-out. It saves a lift fee and it means both are looking at the boat in the same condition.

Ask the surveyor for photographs of anything they flag, and ask for them the same day. A good surveyor expects this from a remote buyer and will already be shooting.

What the sea trial is actually for

Everything that only happens under load.

The survey tells you the boat is sound sitting still. The trial tells you whether the transmission slips at cruise, whether the port engine creeps up in temperature after forty minutes, whether the steering wanders, whether the trim tabs work, whether the vibration at 2,800 rpm is a shaft or a prop.

Run it long enough to get everything hot. Twenty minutes is a demonstration. An hour and a half is a test.

The part people underestimate

You will spend real money before you own anything. Survey, haul-out, engine survey, flights. On a 40-footer that is comfortably $2,500 to $4,000, and it is spent whether the deal closes or not.

That is not a reason to skip the checks. It is a reason to do the free ones first, in order, and to be ruthless about the boats that do not survive them. The insurance call costs nothing. The lien search costs almost nothing. Use them to disqualify boats before the expensive stage rather than after it.

I have watched buyers spend four thousand dollars proving a boat was wrong for them, twice, before learning to make the cheap calls first. It is a tuition fee, and it is avoidable.