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.