Boat Inspection

[Loutheg]

I've owned my 1973 Catalina 27 for about 6 years now and love it.:dance: I have done a lot of restoration work on her including keel bolt replacement. I just found another keel bolt rotted off and started doing some forum searches on this. In doing so I've read about Catalina smiles, rotted bulk heads, post compression and all sorts of scary things. Been a motor boater all my life until I got my hands on my 27 so while I am very familure with boats, engines, etc, I am pretty miuch clueless on all the sail boat structural issues. So how do I go about finding someone who can inspect my boat and tell me what she needs. I've had some experience with hull inspectors for insurance but I need someone who KNOWS sail boats, especially an old Catalina like mine. I live in central Jersey on the coast.

 

[JK_Boston_Catalina310]

If you are not comfortable going through forums like this and find the issues yourself, than hire a good marine surveyor to do a survey. You can find a list of local guys by googling it and then ask if they know sailboats when you talk to them. Tell them why you are doing the survey, it will make a difference. Most surveyors have two different prices, one for insurance resurveys and one for pre-purchase surveys. You want the pre-purchase survey. In Mass, that would cost about $600 give or take.

Another good option would be to join your local Catalina's owner group. There will be a lot of knowledge there. If you spend 1/3 of the survey budget on beer and rum you will probably have plenty of volunteers crawling around your boat looking for these issues and helping you fix them.

By the way, motor boats have most of these same issues. It's just that most don't even know to look for them. Sailboaters are typically more proactive in looking for these things and fixing them.

Good luck,

Jesse

 

[Stu Jackson]

Jesse's right. There's also this:

http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=102541