Before You Sign

The problem

By the time the surveyor arrives, you have already decided.

You have seen the boat. You have pictured the two of you on it. You have told people. And now a stranger you are paying $1,500 is going to spend six hours looking for reasons to ruin it — and some part of you is going to want him to be wrong.

That is the worst position anyone ever negotiates from, and it is the position almost every buyer is in. The entire point of this guide is to move the hard looking to the front, where it costs you nothing.

The stringer nobody sounded

Rot in the beams under the sole does not show on a walk-through. It shows two seasons later, as a structural repair that costs more than the boat is worth.

Hours that lie

Low hours are not a selling point on a diesel. They are a question — and there are three service-record checks that answer it in ten minutes.

The survey that missed it

Not every survey is a survey. Knowing what "recommend repair" means, and what a surveyor will not put in writing, changes what you do with the report.

The insurer who says no

Underwriters are quietly refusing certain hulls and certain ages. Finding that out after you own the boat is an expensive way to learn it.

II.

The math

What the four deal-enders actually cost.

Every buyer knows a bad boat is expensive. Almost nobody knows the numbers until they are holding an estimate. Here they are, and here is what checking for them yourself is worth.

What it costs to put right — 40-foot range

Wet deck core, re-core one section	$8,000–30,000
Stringer repair, engines out	$15,000–60,000+
Osmotic blistering — peel, dry, barrier coat	$20,000–35,000
Repower, twin diesels, turnkey	$120,000–220,000
A full survey day — hull, engine, haul-out	$3,000–4,500
Guide	$19.99

Yard ranges and published rate cards, current for 2026. They move — sometimes by a factor of three — with region, yard rate and what turns up once work starts. The shape of the number, not a quote. Get three local bids.

The buyer's arithmetic — shopping three boats

Survey three boats, two of them fail	$9,000–13,500
Travel and time on boats that never had a chance	3 trips
Weeks lost to boats that were never going to pass	6–10
Same three boats, two ruled out on the walk-through	$3,000–4,500
Kept in your pocket	$6,000–9,000

The guide does not replace the survey on the boat you buy. It stops you paying for surveys on the two that were never going to pass.

One finding pays for this several thousand times over. A soft patch of deck core caught on a Saturday morning is the difference between a bargaining chip and a five-figure surprise in year two. That is the whole argument. Twenty dollars against a two hundred thousand dollar decision.

III.

What's inside

Eight parts. Forty-one checks. One boat at a time.

Everything I would tell you across a desk if you rang me before you made an offer. Written for trawlers, express cruisers, cabin cruisers and motor yachts — the boats people buy to retire onto. Work the parts that fit the boat in front of you and skip the rest.

Part one · 6 checks

The 30-minute walk-through

Rule a boat out before you spend a dollar.

The order you walk a boat, and why it matters
Sounding a deck with a plastic hammer
What a soft spot sounds like, in words
Reading the bilge — the tide line, the smell
Where a seller cleans and where he never does
The four things that end the visit immediately

Part two · 11 places

Where water hides on a motor yacht

Every one of them, and what each costs.

Deck core, side decks and the cabin sole
Rail stanchion and cleat bedding
Window and windscreen frames
The transom and swim-platform mounts
Lazarette, shower sump and the four others

Part three · 5 checks

Engines, hours and service records

Why the engine survey outranks the hull survey.

Why low hours is a warning on a diesel
Six signs the records were written last week
What an oil analysis is worth, and what it isn't
Cold-start, smoke colour and what each means
The gearbox check nobody does

Part four · 4 checks

Reading a survey report

The language, decoded.

"Recommend repair" vs "recommend further investigation"
What a surveyor will not commit to paper, and why
Which findings are leverage and which are noise
How to hire a surveyor who works for you

Part five · 4 defects

Blisters, delamination, rot, corrosion

What they are, and the real repair range.

How each one starts and how fast it moves
Yard ranges for each, 2026
Which are cosmetic and which are structural
Bargaining chip, or reason to walk

Part six · 5 moves

Negotiating off the survey

Turning a findings list into a number.

Ask for the repair, or ask for the money
The nine questions that make a broker stop smiling
Getting a yard quote before you re-offer
The re-offer letter, word for word
When walking away is the cheapest thing you do

Part seven · 3 checks

The questions insurers ask

Find out before you sign, not after.

What underwriters want from a survey report
Which hulls and ages are quietly being refused
How to get an indicative quote before you offer

Part eight · 3 checks

Buying at 65, selling at 70

The resale side nobody talks about.

Which boats hold value and which lose half in three years
The paperwork that makes a boat easy to sell
Buying one you can get out of

The eleven places water hides

Part two names all eleven and tells you how to check each in under two minutes.

Deck core, under the non-skid
Side decks at the stanchion bases
The cabin sole and its bearers
Cleat and windlass bedding
Window and windscreen frames
The transom, around the drive or platform
Fuel and water tank shelves
The lazarette and its hatch gutter
Shower sump and head plumbing runs
Cockpit locker seams and drains
Chainplate and rail penetrations

IV.

Included with the guide

Three things you take to the boat, and one that keeps arriving.

What comes with it.

Printable

The dockside inspection checklist

One page. The 30-minute walk-through in the order you actually walk it, with space to write. Print it, fold it, put it in your back pocket. You will look like a man who has done this before, and the broker will notice.

Printable

The sea-trial checklist

What to ask for before you leave the dock, what to watch on the gauges, the three things you insist on doing yourself, and the mistake that costs buyers more than the survey does.

Reference

The survey-report decoder

A two-page sheet of surveyor's phrases and what each one actually means in plain English — the wording that looks routine on the page and is not, and the wording that sounds alarming and isn't.

Free forever

Every future revision

Prices move and so do the boats people are buying. When I revise the guide you get the new edition at no charge, in the same place you downloaded the first one. No account to manage.

Frank Pellerin at a workshop bench with cut-out hull core samples, a moisture meter, a sounding hammer and calipers.

About the author

I was the man whose job was to find the reason not to buy.

I started in a boatyard in the seventies with my hands on engines, and I became a surveyor in 1990. For thirty-four years I inspected boats for the people about to buy them, the banks about to lend on them and the insurers about to cover them. Trawlers, sport-fish, express cruisers, motor yachts up to eighty feet. Somewhere north of four thousand hulls.

I testified twice in lawsuits over hull damage a seller knew about and did not disclose. I told buyers to walk away from boats they had already named. I retired in 2024, when my knees stopped letting me crawl bilges, and I keep a thirty-four foot trawler I bought at a bank auction for a third of what she was worth — because I knew what to look at.

I am not selling you a boat. I get no commission and I do not care which one you buy. That is the entire reason this is worth reading.

This is not a course in becoming a surveyor. It is a way of not paying for the wrong boat — and of getting your money's worth out of the survey you do commission.

Watch the channel

VI.

Order

$19.99 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

Instant PDF download · 44 pages

The Used Boat Buyer's Survey Guide

$19.99$39.99

One-time payment. Nothing renews.

The guide — eight parts, 41 checks, 44 pagesThe walk-through, the eleven places water hides, engines and records, reading a survey, the four defects and what they cost, negotiation, insurers, resale.	$19.99
The dockside inspection checklistOne page, printable, in walking order.	Included
The sea-trial checklistWhat to insist on before you leave the dock.	Included
The survey-report decoderSurveyor's phrases, translated.	Included
Every future revisionNew editions free, forever.	Included
Regular price	$39.99
You pay today	$19.99

Get the guide · $19.99

Instant access — download link in your inbox within a minute of paying.

🔒 Secure checkout·Visa · Mastercard · PayPal·Money-back guarantee

Covered by the money-back guarantee.

VII.

The guarantee

Seven days. No argument, no form to fill in.

Buy it, read it, take it to a boat. If it does not earn its price back the first time you use it, request a refund inside seven days and the $19.99 goes back the same day.

Ask for it

Open your Gumroad receipt and request the refund there. One line is enough — you do not owe me a reason.

I refund it

Same day, back to the card or account you paid with. Gumroad handles it; there is no phone call and nothing to cancel.

Keep the files

I do not take the download back. If a checklist is useful to you on the boat next weekend, use it. That is not a loophole, it is the point.

Why I do it this way

I spent thirty-four years being paid to tell people things they did not want to hear. The whole value of a surveyor is that he has nothing to gain from the answer — and I am not about to spend that on a twenty dollar download.

So there is no window to argue about, no proof to send, and no questions on the way out. If it is not for you, say so and it is done. I would rather have your good opinion than twenty dollars, and I would rather you came back for the next edition than felt caught by this one.

What the guarantee does not cover: the boat. It covers the guide. Nothing in here replaces commissioning a survey on the vessel you actually buy.

Get the guide · $19.99

Seven days, same-day refund, keep the files.

VIII.

Questions

What buyers ask before they click.

Is this a physical book?

No. It is an instant digital download — a PDF. The moment you pay you get a link. Read it on a phone, a tablet or a computer, or print the whole thing on any home printer. Nothing arrives in the post and there is nothing to wait for.

Does this replace paying for a survey?

No, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. On a boat you are serious about, you hire a surveyor. What this does is stop you paying for surveys on boats that were never going to pass, and make the survey you do commission worth several times what it costs — because you will understand the report and know what to do with it.

I don't know anything about boats. Is this still for me?

That is exactly who it is written for. Every term is explained once, plainly, the first time it appears. You do not need to know what a stringer is before you start — you will by page nine. If you can hold a plastic hammer and follow a list, you can do everything in part one.

I'm looking at a boat this week. Is it too late?

No. Start with part one, the 30-minute walk-through, and the dockside checklist. That is the part you can use tomorrow morning without reading anything else first.

I already have a boat under contract. Is there anything in it for me?

Parts four, five and six. Reading the survey report, knowing the real repair ranges, and turning a findings list into a number are the three things that decide what that contract ends up costing you. Buyers routinely leave thousands on the table at exactly that moment because they cannot tell a bargaining chip from noise.

Is it for sailboats?

It is written for powerboats — trawlers, express cruisers, cabin cruisers and motor yachts. Roughly two-thirds of it (deck core, hull structure, water intrusion, survey reports, negotiation, insurance, resale) applies to any fibreglass boat. The engine and systems chapters are diesel-powerboat specific.

Are the repair figures accurate for where I live?

They are ranges, not quotes. They come from thirty-odd years of yard work and estimates, updated for 2026, and they move with region, yard rate and vessel. Use them to know whether you are looking at a four-figure problem or a five-figure one — that distinction is what changes a decision, not the exact number.

How do I get it after I pay?

Checkout is through Gumroad. It emails a download link immediately and keeps the files available in your account. If a link ever fails, the files stay in your Gumroad library and can be downloaded again.

Four thousand hulls. I found something on nearly every one.