Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Friday was another work day on the boat. The roles panned out much as they do these days. Helen spent a lot of time outside making the boat look really nice, something we were not able to do before for all the obvious reasons. The shipwrights came round and buffed out the light scratches left on the boat following the last survey and moved the stern light so it couldn’t be obscured by the wind gen support pole. Something I’ve meant to do for years.

Another mistruth that surfaced during the last survey was that 110V are uninsurable in Australia which was a little ironic as we are now and then insured here. We now have it from one of the company presidents that 110V boats are indeed insurable. It’s a bit like the gas regulations in that there is more disinformation out there than good. The answer is pretty obvious when you ask the insurance company directly.

I’ve also shared, in detail, my discoveries of poor practice and false statements from the previous survey with our new brokers. I have also stated my requirements for future surveys. The responses I have received so far have echoed our own horror but also essentially stated that my requirements are essentially in line with their own expectations and how they normally handle surveyors on board a customers boat. The implication here is that we were badly let down by our previous broker. At this point, I am not surprised to learn this.

You can be assured that any future survey will require the surveyor, prior to leaving, to walk through and discuss each proposed issue with a representative I have chosen. If the issues are not seen to be documented and photographed prior to departure or any added later nor a copy of the final survey given to us, we will reject the entire survey. Turns out this is fairly normal practice.

I also knocked a few items off the list (and generated some more) relating to health/financial/travel planning for our return to the UK. The list is not getting smaller so the back is not yet broken on this segment of the task list.

Today we have the first of a few potential buyers aboard. I’m actually looking forward to this. We’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way. It won’t change how we initially interact with the new prospects but if there is interest we are now far better prepared to move forward, for both our and the prospective buyer’s sake.

I really don’t like to be disingenuous to people but this word is whirling around my mind right now when I think of the guy who surveyed our boat for the past buyers. You see, in my mind when you survey something you take accurate written or verbal notes of any issues as one goes around the boat and take photos to support your direct and recorded observations. After all, you are representing your client and hopefully not trying to malign the other party. Simple professionalism.

I’ve been trying to figure out some of the few items that came through from the survey that was performed on Dignity.

Take a look at this photo :

This is was provided as evidence of a crack found in weld in the non-structural wire at the bow that supports the nets. I agreed this looked like a nasty crack and was an item I had agreed to fix and spent some time hunting down to find. Neither I nor the shipwright could find this crack during our last visit.

Today I tried again to find this. This time I took some photos myself to try and compare now and then. Look at this one I took.

Hmmm. In this better picture you can sort of see the crack but hang on a minute. Isn’t that a reflection.

From a different angle you can see it is a reflection and nothing else. So what happened? Did the surveyor leaf through his fuzzy photos making up issues he had not directly observed? A*.

How about this one :

This picture supported the ‘observation’ regarding wires running into the dinghy davits under the deckhead. Well, there are no wires running into the davits but I found where this is :

Er, that’s the top of the bimini support pole. Just for those of you interested, here is a dinghy davit :

Forgivable mistake? Nah. If you’re charging money to survey a $400,000 boat you better know the difference between a davit and a bimini pole.

There are others. The privacy door in the starboard hull was called out as requiring replacement/repair. There were two loose screws. I tightened them. Is this the sort of thing that goes on a survey and brought to the attention of the seller? Not in the world I live in. Stop, stop. It does go on but no more.

There were some valid issues of course. I’d agreed to deal with them and we’re sorting them out now. But I’ve got to stop before I start really ranting.

Ok, so A* wasn’t appropriate. W* is better.