Submerged in paperwork and mechanical realities

Paper everywhere

We closed on the boat two weeks ago and the marine documentation finally came in the mail.  Or at least the preliminary documentation, as the Coast Guard won't process the registry change for something like 120 days with their current backlog.  But the good news is this batch of marine documentation included something missing from the actual "closing", a notarized bill of sale signed by the purchaser.

The closing process itself was really strange in my mind for an asset of this size.   We met the lender (whose office is about 40 miles away) at a halfway point and signed her paperwork and she handed over a check made out to the seller's bank.  We then sent that check along with our signed copies of the broker's purchase agreement AND two more checks, payable to the broker and the seller's bank....and waited.  Two days later we got the same purchase agreement back with the seller's signature on it.

What was strange to me about all this is that it was so unlike a house closing, despite the money changing hands being house-scale, not "recreational equipment" scale.  I had expected something like the experience at a title company for a house closing, where buyer and seller sign paperwork simultaneously and money is held in escrow until the "I"s are dotted and the "T"s crossed.

I had worried the process was leaky, and with the settlement visible to us, the fact that the seller was $10,000 in the hole could have meant he used our money to whittle down his debt and then walk away from his debt -- possibly low enough that his bank may have just seen it as a write-off and not collectible from him but collectible from the asset owner.  Leaving us with an asset of potentially uncertain title.  I actually went so far as to bounce this off a friend who happens to be a bankruptcy attorney and he said not to worry about it -- we had signed purchase agreements and money had changed hands, so there was no doubt we owned it.  And more importantly, the lender would have required a lien release from his bank and a senior position on the asset, rendering his remaining debt not our problem.

But still, a lot rode on the seller's good intent and follow-through and we didn't really know what his life circumstances were.  Desperate people can make desperate choices, but it looks like none of this is the case now that we have a notarized bill of sale.

Mechanical realities

Once I was reassured of the paperwork issues, I ran through the list of items on the mechanical survey to have some of them completed so we're not competing with a million other boats wanting pre-season service.

Among them was impeller service -- replacing both engine sea pump impellers and the generator sea pump impeller.  I knew this made sense from following another blog of live-aboard boaters.  I've followed their blog for close to two years and they have had more than one minor panic due to failed impellers causing engines to shut down.

Unfortunately I got a call a couple of days later from the service department that while removing the sea pump to replace the impeller that the housing had failed and needed to be replaced, to the tune of $400.  Ugh.  I was dreading a call like that with "...well, when we got it apart..." needs for more money and parts.  I pressed the service people on this and they said it wasn't apparent when they had tested the engine and that it had good water flow.  I gave them the go ahead (what choice did I have?) and made myself a sea pump "expert".

From what I read and online conversations, this is almost normal.  In fact, an aftermarket company actually designed a replacement sea pump to prevent this from happening.  The impeller itself is a hard rubber piece that looks like a gear -- the flexibility of its vanes is what creates suction.  But due to the design of the impeller housing, it wears against the housing and if the water its pumping has a lot of sediment, it creates a grinding action against the impeller housing.  The aftermarket one, besides being 316 stainless steel, has replaceable wear plates against the impeller faces so the impeller can't wear on the housing.

The whole design is kind of problematic, as the pump has to be removed to change the impeller (not enough access to just pull the housing cover).  And the impeller is hard rubber which can "give" or degrade from wear (again, faster with abrasive content in the water) so it pretty much has to be replaced regularly (1 to *maybe* 4 years at the extreme).  

The best advice seems to be to buy a complete spare sea pump, and when you change impellers just swap the entire pump, replace the impeller in the removed one (and any other repairs...like a new housing), use that for the other engine, and then at your leisure rebuild this one so you have a rebuilt spare.

I will probably end up buying the aftermarket pump next winter because I think its design is superior and then another a year later.  Hopefully with new impellers and my tendency to avoid shallows and sand bars I will get 2 years out of the engine sea pump impellers and it may take our third year before I have both pumps replaced with aftermarket units.

Overall I don't think we're facing more than the usual wear/repair lists for a boat this age.  The drive units were removed for inspection before purchase and were sound, and given their desire to sell us more stuff I'm (mostly) certain we would have been told of U-joints, bellows or other significant drive system problems.  Right now we're left with mostly a small list of minor items involving several light bulbs (spotlight, cabin lights) and the grill heating element which all have easy solutions.

But generally speaking I'm already starting to miss the stone-axe simplicity of our Yamaha jet drive.  Stern drives are a weird compromise between outboards and inboards with a lot more complexity.  They do benefit from the rudder effect of the lower unit, where jets tend to drift without constant thrust, though.  I'm hopeful though we won't need major maintenance in the next couple of years on the stern drives.

Survey Says

The survey came back and it looks....positive?

I've never seen a marine survey before, but mine looks good considering it was a dry land survey with no actual disassembly involved.  The market value estimated by the surveyor was actually more than we're paying for the boat and far more than we're actually borrowing (although I believe the lender said 80% of survey value was what they would loan, so it's not that far off).

On the good news side, the survey didn't find anything wrong with the boat that the mechanical inspection didn't cover, and it included some structural issues that would be long term problems as well as evidence of other mechanical issues that could be hidden (like oil/fuel residue in the bilge) as well as water infiltration in the interior.

On the bad news side, the condition of the boat only rated fair based on the minor skeg dings and zinc replacement needed.  The zincs are getting replaced and I don't actually see the extremely minor prop and skeg wear as worth the rework costs right now.  They probably would be if the boat was going to be run hard and fast in big open water, but I doubt we will run hard and fast that much and it won't be for a ton of distance, so that work can wait.

The other "bad news" aspect of this was cost of the survey vs. useful information.  This survey was primarily for the bank's benefit for underwriting purposes, not what I would consider a "real" marine survey to be about.  That being said, the survey did cover some useful mechanical condition details, and it's winter and it's on dry land, but I wish it didn't cost what it did.

Overall, though, it's all good news because now we have the go-ahead to close on the boat!

Getting into port

I've started this blog to document our boating adventures in a Sea Ray Sundancer 310, which we don't even technically own yet.

The Backstory

The actual boating adventure started 5 years ago when we bought a new, 2013 Yamaha SX190.  We had never owned a boat before -- my wife's family had an old pontoon, but my family had never owned a boat at all, but we did have a series of motor homes.

We largely bought the boat on an impulse.  Our son was hitting age 7 and we lacked a kind of unifying family activity.  Some friends owned a cabin on Lake Minnetonka (an actual cabin, one of the disappearing ramshackle old houses with lakefront) and we spent a weekend or two with them several summers in a row.

They seldom used the place in the summer and actively encouraged us to use the place, and their boat, a 28' Chaparral bowrider.  This seemed a bit much (and some risk), so we approached them about adding a lift and our own boat at their dock, with no real intention to use the cabin other than for an occasional bathroom stop.  Well, the husband agreed but the wife dissented.  I was so into buying the boat that I ended up finding slip space on my own and buying the boat.

There's an old adage about "buying your second boat first" -- well, we didn't.  We bought the Yamaha, the smallest one they make, first, and new.  In some ways a financial mistake, but in other ways a good risk -- with jet drive, it had little maintenance and new, I wasn't inheriting marine problems I wouldn't understand.  Plus it was a manageable size for learning to navigate.

After about two years it became apparent "we were going to need a bigger boat".  The Yamaha was great for the three of us alone and with 2-3 others, but by then it was really crowded.  We anchor out a lot and with the great swim deck and people in the water it worked even then, but we wanted to more easily bring 5+ people with us and our boat was just too small.

We also wanted to be able to overnight on the boat.  Minnetonka allows boaters to overnight on the lake, and doing so would require a boat with a cabin and the amenities of a cabin -- toilet, beds, power, and so on.

After some discussion, a bit of soul searching, and an Excel spreadsheet to judge the cost increases, we decided to "go for it" and hunt for a Sundancer-style cabin cruiser that would fit our needs (ok, desires, but they feel like needs!).

Begin the begin

The challenge with boating on an in-demand lake and wanting to upgrade is that you need a slip sized for what you buy.  Our slip space wouldn't accommodate what we wanted, so we first had to go on the waiting list for a slip.  Our marina owner was willing to put current customers who wanted a larger slip at the top of the list, and so in the fall of 2016 we went on it and were lucky enough to get a 34' slip right away, around October.

The current occupant was even selling his boat, a well-cared-for and very clean Formula 31 PC.  It fit all the check lists, but was older (2002) than we might have wanted but priced in our desired range.  It was tempting, but I wanted to check out the market for other options and to sanity check the pricing against what was on offer.

The Hunt

Buying a used boat is a complex process.

Viewed nationally via the web, there are a lot of boats that fit our category.  But buying one out of region is even more complex, and adds a lot of costs -- travel to the existing vessel to check it out (and probably more than once during the process), arranging financing, cross-country delivery, and so on.  I had seen some boats that seemed good values (price, features, condition) in out of state locations, usually mid-south on large reservoirs or rivers and had entertained the idea that a good deal out of state would be worth the extra expense.

Besides the obvious problems with doing this outlined above, there was an added wrinkle that made it even harder.  Our new slip had a hard limit of 34' and the nominal sizes of boats of even identical make and model vary by year.  Bow spits, swim decks, and so on make knowing the actual size impossible unless you get an actual tape measure reading.  One year's 31' would fit, but a previous year's 30' model wouldn't.

I started my actual search focusing on local brokers.  One thing I found kind of disappointing about this process was that no broker I talked to was in the "find a boat for you" business -- they wanted to sell their current inventory under brokerage. The independent guys would act as buying agents if you brought them a boat someone else listed, but nobody was willing to take my list of desired features and price and locate that boat, even among local inventory.

The hunt itself began to seem daunting.  I was left searching online listings if none of the brokers had what I wanted and then "kicking tires" to see if it was worth further effort.

By chance, I had called a broker at Marine Max.  Got his voice mail and didn't leave a message.  He ended up calling me back in 10 minutes and we had a nice conversation.  He had some boats in my area of interest under brokerage, and since they were stored indoors we could go see them in the winter.

My son and I went up there and looked at 4-5 of them.  The one that interested us most was a 2006 Chaparral Signature 290.  It would fit our slip, it was extremely clean and had "bonus" features like a generator and air conditioning.  But it had an offer on it.  We really liked the 2007 310 Sundancer there (the eventual long-term subject of this blog), but it was $30,000 over our target price.

I got a call back from the broker two days later and the Chaparral was now available.  The odd thing about it compared to others was the use of Volvo-Penta VRP composite outdrives.  These were odd ducks, unlike the metal outdrives on other boats (usually Mercury Marine, but there are a lot of non-composite Volvos as well).

I was curious about those drives and I Googled them -- to my dismay, the overwhelming consensus was run away -- they had major design flaws which resulted in lots of maintenance headaches.  Discontinued, hard to get parts for and the only real fix was a $20,000 drive replacement.  This killed the Chaparral, but made the Sea Ray 310 Sundancer seem more appealing.

I brought my wife up to look at it and she was impressed.  By this time, I had worked the math and found that the extra $30k wasn't an issue if the financing worked (more on that later).  I got her to -- reluctantly -- agree on an offer.  I got lucky and didn't have to haggle to get the price down about 10% (maybe I could have gone lower, but I doubt it) and my offer was accepted.

Nail Biter

Now came the nail biting.  A lot of hoops to jump through.  I paid $995 to have it mechanically inspected.  This just made sense, the challenge of course being that if it didn't check out it would have saved me a lot of headache, but I'd be out $995 with no contender to buy.  The summary came back -- $7,500 in recommended fixes.  Ugh!  After going through the list, it was more reasonable.  Some of the stuff was straight-up periodic maintenance, and I had gone in figuring $2000 would be spent on minor items.  My total for needed mechanicals was only $3000, and $1000 was a labor-intensive repair of the cabin door which was very sticky.   All the major systems worked, and the rest of it was unnecessary ($1100 in trivial prop and skeg ding removal), bottom painting (less critical in fresh water), and a lot of troubleshooting for out light bulbs.

The $3k in mechanical I didn't deem worth trying to renegotiate on price, since only the $1000 cabin door repair was the only non-periodic maintenance item.  So it was off to finance.

Financing the boat was the first thing I looked into, and I lucked out getting a referral from an independent broker.  She was very helpful in describing the process and her rates couldn't be beat.  But submitting for financing was a real pins-and-needles thing, because it's where you find out if you're paying too much or if they think you're worth the risk.

Fortunately our credit is great and the loan came back better than I expected.  That was just yesterday, but there's one more hoop to jump through -- the marine survey.   The lender requires a marine survey (and I've been read you should have one) for underwriting purposes and I'm sure it has a lot to do with low rates and a healthy loan book.

We're at the point now where the survey has been ordered.  I don't expect it to change our financing, our price is very market competitive and the boat in excellent condition and we're an excellent credit risk, but there's always a risk that the guy lowballs the boat value, submarining our financing.

On my next entry I hope to detail the survey results and, hopefully, the closing and outline what comes next.  January was a mild month and it feels like I'll be at the slip before I know it.