So my buddy Joe and I drove to Oswego to pick the boat up. We jumped in my 3/4 ton Suburban and drove the 600 miles Halloween afternoon. Oswego is a college town and we got there early enough to watch all the students going through the bars in their costumes. It was big fun to to watch until I realized that I was much too old to be one of "them", instead I must have stuck out like a sore thumb. Its been 25 years since I was in college and hanging out in the bars. While it seemed like just yesterday for me, to them I must have been the creepy old guy at the bar. Pretty funny actually. A few beers later, and we checked into the hotel with plans to meet the seller in the morning.
Morning came and off we went to meet the seller. Buying a boat over the internet has its risks. A buyer is relying heavily on the seller to accurately respresent their boat. They rarely do. When I sell boats online, I take 50 or so hi-res photos and share them with the seller. Not just the glory shots, but photos of the "worst" parts of the boats as well. I want the buyer to feel like they've seen the boat before they actually make the trip to come see it. In the case of Luna Nova, the seller actually used photos from the seller from whom he bought the boat. While they were very nice photos, they were several years old. Moreover, there was equipment / instrumentation in the photos (from the cooler to a Sailcomp) that weren't on the boat when I saw it. The "new" tires on the trailer were dry rot. The deck which "had not been swiss cheesed", was no where near the condition it was advertised. The cabin sole was completely delaminated. The teak was in decent shape, but the painter apparently had never heard of masking tape. The bottom... the seller told the bottom had never been barrier-coated because barrier coat "weighs too much". I'm thinking the weight of a barrier coat is a pretty good trade for a dry hull without blisters, but what do I know. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the boat and surprise surprise, the bottom had ben previously barrier coated with Interlux 2000E. But the seller was oblivious to it. Sadly, whoever barrier coated the boat never bothered to sand it smooth, so while I was happy to see the condition of the bottom, I was not looking forward to sanding the barrier coat smooth. More frightening was the sellers obliousness to the fact had been barrier coated. Perhaps I should have listened to the alarms going off in my head when the seller told me the engine ran so well, he almost never had to use the glow plug (Yanmar 1GM10's do not have glow plugs).
Long story short, the boat was not as described or photographed. And sadly it seemd to me that everything the last couple owners had done to the boat was crap and needed to be redone. Very frustrating. But here I was 600 miles from home, cash in hand, and looking at a boat that was repairable. And honestly, reparable J29 MHIB's are hard to find. I should have called him on the false advertising, on the equipment that was photo'ed but not on the boat, on the shit workmanship, on the photo's that he didn't even take.... I should have walked. Instead, an hour or so later and Joe and I were driving through New York, with an unregistered wide load on back roads, white knuckled in fear of low bridge overpasses and two upcoming international border crossings.....
No comments:
Post a Comment