Offer to Purchase - Thursday 15th (2024-02-15)
After spending more than a year checking Yacht Hub every single day (ok, more than once a day if I’m being honest!) I finally saw a likely candidate.
We were after something larger than 44ft (we’d chartered a Jeanneau 44i up in the Whitsundays for a week over the June/July holidays in 2023), ideally with 4 rooms and set up for cruising.
The yacht that came up for sale was ‘Exocet Strike’, a 2001 Beneteau First 47.7, that had been extensively kitted out for and actually sailed around the world.
Most of these 47.7’s come in a 3 cabin layout, with an off-set master cabin (i.e. someone is going to be climbing over someone else to get out!). This one had a different layout that I wasn’t even aware existed: 2 rooms up front, each with two bunk beds.
The price was about what we were expecting to pay, and it had all the gear, and then some.
We first went and had a look at her on a very wet day in January. The three of us (Kristie, the broker, and myself) spent a good hour looking over it. We went back to the brokers office and had a good chat about the buying process.
Buying a yacht is basically:
- Find the boat you want
- Go have a look over it, see if it’s suitable, and what needs doing
- If you’re happy go make sure you’ve got cash to buy it (you most likely won’t be able to get direct finance on a 20yr old boat!)
- Put in an offer in writing.
- Seller counters your offer with theirs (most likely)
- Sign paperwork to say you’ll proceed (subject to survey), and pay a 10% deposit to a trust account managed by the broker
- Organise a survey - in water survey, lift out and check underneath, then quick sail test (our survey went from about 8am through to 2pm)
- We also got a rigging survey, as the standard survey only checks to about 2m off the deck. Worth it for the piece of mind as it picked up a few things we would not have found.
- Chase up quotes and decide if you want to renegotiate the asking price
- Sign another bit of paperwork to say you proceed to purchase. Transfer the remaining funds.
- Organise insurance (maybe even do this before #10)
- Organise somewhere for the boat to be kept.
- Question your sanity, but then realise it’s too late,and you’ve already committed to buying ;)
I ended up going back for a 2nd look at the boat a few weeks after the initial look. It was dry and I could spend more time on deck and looking through everything I’d missed the first time around.
After looking around I went back into the brokers office and had another chat, and ended up agreeing to put in an offer.
The broker would prepare the Offer to Purchase, send it to use to sign and return, and then forward on to the owners (who were in the UK).
Rigging Survey - Monday 26th (2024-02-26)
The rig on Exocet Strike was about 7yrs old, and she’d done quite a few miles since then. We engaged Colin Quin to come and perform the inspection of the running and standing rigging.
For a bit over $500, it’s a good investment to get someone to do a thorough check of the mast and rigging. They discovered one or two minor items that we’ll need to rectify upon taking ownership.
Survey - Thursday 29th (2024-02-29)
At a recommendation from a friend (of my sister), we engaged Barry from Colson Yacht Design to perform the survey.
Barry is a great bloke, and was great in including us in the survey and pointing out findings (both good or bad) during his time on and around the boat.
We got a lot of comfort from his process and thoroughness.
We had to remove the back stay to fit in the travel lift:
Barry giving her a thorough check of everything below the water line:
Quick (slow) test sail. We had maybe 5-6knts max, but she still sailed well:
Whilst you’ll get a feel for what the surveyor thinks of the boat by the time they’re done, the end result is a written official survey document that you will most likely need to provide to your insurance company.
(some marine insurance companies offer policies without requiring a survey, but they were twice the price of one that did!)
Note: really listen to what they’re saying, they can’t directly tell you not to buy a boat, but they’ll give enough hints that you should be able to read between the lines and do a runner (this didn’t happen to us thankfully!).
Costs:
Expect to pay more than $2k for the privilege of getting a survey!
The surveyor will charge you their fee for the survey, and the marina will charge you for the lift out, and clean (if required), and time for the survey to be performed (generally 1hour out of the water).
If the owners don’t want to shuttle the yacht to and from the bert to the lift out, the marina will also send a crew and boat to tow you over at the owner’s expense, not you as purchaser.
Conditional Acceptance - Friday 8th (2024-03-08)
We then signed the “Conditional Acceptance of Vessel” document, stating we will proceed to purchase the yacht at the agreed price, subject to any additional clauses.
I had organised insurance prior to this, in case there was anything in the survey the insurance company wasn’t happy with.
As Barry had predicted, the insurance company replied back asking how we were going to remediate the items listed by Barry on the survey. I was able to inform them we’d already made bookings with various trades to address these items, and that was sufficient.
With insurance sorted, we transferred the remaining funds to the brokers trust account.
For a yacht to be sold in Queensland/Australia, it must have a current gas certificate if gas lines are installed (same with caravans and camper trailers with gas stoves etc). This needs to be provided by the owners/sellers, to the buyers.
It turned out a bit of work was needed, new gas lines and regulator, and the stove to be properly certified for AU standards.
This was the original gas fittings, so hope these are all getting replaced:
She’s finally ours - Saturday 23rd (2024-03-23)
With the gas finally certified, we could now get the keys and jump on board. Bad weather changed our weekend plans: what was supposed to be a kid free weekend away diving to celebrate our Anniversary turned into a boat-sorting-out-weekend instead.
Kristie and I spent the Saturday taking off all the boxes and equipment that we didn’t 100% need to bring them home and sort there. We also rearranged a few things and brought some essentials in from home.
The next day we took the girls out to see the boat for the 1st time. Impressions were favourable, and boat gifts (bribes?) readily accepted.
Quick family photo before heading out to Morgans for lunch with mum and dad who’d driven up to check out the boat.
We now have a new EPIRB (previous one had expired last year), three new inflatable life jackets (previous ones expired quite some time ago). Just need to inspect and probably replace the (5) fire extinguishers, and we’re pretty much good to go safety wise.
There is still one room that hasn’t really been processed, and the quick tender drive wasn’t successful so there is still a little more work to do before we set sail for some short trips around the bay.