Back Again (insider tips)

I have to expose now some "secrets" about assessing brokers and boat owners, when approaching them to buy your first boat. Doesn't matter at this stage if you buy a motor boat or a sailing one. Let's presume you don't have the minimum budget for a brand boat, like the samples exposed in my previous posts. They can be "custom" made, definitely no name brands, like a few that I'm going to show you here.

 This is the boat, as real as it could be. Seeing the name is no help in a better society. 

  This is what you got. No name. You depend exclusively on the broker. Please click on each picture to see the difference. In a better organized society, if the broker spoke beforehand with the boat owner, they'll have at least an agreement, if not a "concrete molded" contract, so he will not start negotiating with you, the client, to "cut off" the broker. What is happening when there are no brand names involved? For example, in a country like Turkey, a foreign customer, and believe me, the farther away he is, the "better" he'll be "treated", there is no way for him to find the real price a boat owner will be happy with. That is the "not written law". If you act alone, you will be told a bunch of lies. The broker has his own price, not even the owner knows. Of course, the owner "agreed", verbally agreed to an asking price when contacted by the broker, but if you, as a customer, try to contact directly the owner, you'll be told a different price, maybe bigger than what the broker will tell you. In Turkey, this is called pazarlik, and they, the Turks think of themselves as "good" traders. If you accept the asking price, you're done. It is always more than he expects, because he expects from you to try to down the price automatically. If you come from a highly civilized country, you'll accept maybe just a little reduction from the initial price, a 2% perhaps, which is actually with something between 40 to 50% more than what the owner told the broker. And it's done.
If a broker is not experimented, he won't have an answer for any question. He'll lie, and lie, and lie some more, just to close the agreement, to have some 10% of almost any price, (as advance payment, or deposit, or whatever it's called) money you'll lose in any good designed contract if you change your mind to buy. If he has some experience, he'll know the real price of the boat (the owner will be happy with any sum close to the real price), he'll put separately the commission and start negotiating with the boat owner exactly in your name, because he represents you. In reality? There is no such a broker in Turkey. Also, the bunches of owners dream to big money for their boats, even if they worked them up to more than their value, sometimes without refitting, but pretending the contrary. 
In Turkey, you will be advised from the beginning to not survey the boat. "It's not necessary" you will be told. And it's right, in a way. The greater majority of the boats for sale in Turkey, don't have what is called Class Certification. If the surveyor is Turkish, he'll be in an agreement with the broker, 99%.
If he's foreigner, he'll advise to not buy that peculiar boat, but if you made your mind, he'll know of another one, with a "positive" survey as recent as possible done, so you "will save the money for surveying this one". If this is the case (and I've seen plenty), he'll absolutely have a commission from that deal, even greater then the broker's, from the surveyed one. The difference between the two boats is minimum, the second one maybe dearer, being "freshly surveyed" and all.
Unfortunately, I've seen brokers in other countries who are the same. Check this:

"Part of our offer will be to have a marine survey completed with the findings to your satisfaction.  I know many certified surveyors and I’ll recommend several that are “top shelf” and ask that you interview and select the one you prefer"- this is part of an American broker presentation. It continues with some Q&A style : "I've heard that surveyors and Brokers team up just to sell a boat?"

"I've heard of that happening but I do nothing of the sort.  I know surveyors from a professional standpoint". That is a lie. It is better for you to come to buy with a specialist you know from before, a guy you trust, and it is not a local, that of course, if you are new to anything related to yachts, boats, and the stuff... To be continued... 

Some Nautical Terms and other Tips

Some nautical terms need to be mentioned, this blog is for everybody, not only for specialists.

LOA means Length Over All, and is the longest length of the yacht.

LWL is the Length of the Water Line.

Hull is the shell and framework of the floating part of the boat.

As a tip, you can know what could be the approximate speed of a boat, just knowing the LWL. This is called Hull Speed, sometimes displacement speed, and is the square root of LWL in feet, multiplied with a constant, calculated to be 1,34.

“v” is measured in Knots (kn), which defines another important nautical term. So, 1 kn is a speed unit representing 1 nautical mile per hour (mph)
1 nautical mile is 1.852 km/h or 0.514 m/s and approximately 1.151 mph
In the modern naval architecture, the hull speed is too "yesterday", more important is considered the Froude Number, or the speed/length ratio, given by this formula:

where “v” is the velocity (speed) in kn, and “LWL” is the length at the waterline. Actually, the Froude Number is

where  “g” is the gravitational acceleration (this is also a constant, 9.8 m/s² ) and “L” is actually the waterline length.

courtesy of Wikipedia

 I considered this a tip because when you ask for the maximum speed of the boat, you can check the answer by calculating quickly and discretely the hull speed. If the difference is less than a knot, than the owner is a good guy. This may be especially available when you buy in Turkey, I've seen people lying about the speed and about a lot of other things, another one being the qualifications they have.
Originally speed was measured by paying out a line from the stern of a moving boat. The line had a knot every 47 feet 3 inches (14.40 m), and the number of knots passed out in 30 seconds gave the speed through the water in nautical miles per hour. This method gives a value for the knot of 20.25 in/s, or 1.85166 km/h. The difference from the modern definition is less than 0.02%.

 Of course, when you buy such a yacht (this is a Ferretti 800), you don't need the discreet check I was telling you about, :)