T&T: Digging a hole in the water

[Faure, Marin]

One thing you might find helpful is to put together a list of everything
you want to check on a boat in advance of looking at a boat.  We did
this prior to our flying down and inspecting, sea trialing, and
surveying the boat we now own.  It was a lot easier to put together a
"check this, operate that, inspect this" list at home at the computer
than it would have been to try to remember all these things under the
pressure of being on the boat itself.

Based on what knowledge we had from chartering a similar boat and just
common sense about the systems on a boat, I put together an extensive
list that  included everything from turning on the nav lights, to
lighting the stove, to opening and closing all the drawers, to testing
the bilge pump.  I did not know if every item I included on the list
would be on the boat we were going to look at, but I tried to list every
possible thing that might be.  The broker's listing sheet helped in
terms of including things like what sort of electronics would need to be
checked out and so forth.  The resulting list was several pages long but
it was a great aid in checking the boat out, as we simply marched our
way through the list once we got on board.

______________________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington