Buying a Boat

This is not an activity for the weak of heart or for inexperience people like myself to undertake lightly.  

Many problems arise, if you like me have not limited knowledge or understanding. This makes having an advisor with knowledge of boat value and what is required is essential, to be successful. 


First lesson learned was not every boat listed is truly available.  In some cases they are sold already and people are trying to find buyers for other boats or they never really existed and people are just trying to find new clients.  


The second lesson is not many boat dealers really want to help out finding a boat from another company.  After talking to several dealers we spoke with a guy by the name of Jay (Sting Ray Jay) at Riggs Yacht sales.  We promised to pay him if he worked with us. He agreed and the search started.


We found Jay as he had a boat that was perfect an 25 foot Ranger tug. He already had an offer but after talking with him he agreed to work with us and we agreed to work through him.  


The next lesson was I had a lot to learn. Jay educated me quickly indicating what boats were good and what were bad.  I spend hours looking at different boats for sale.  Some were too expensive some did not have all the stuff we needed and lot were just wrong.  


So I needed focus following Jay’s advice we decided on the following must have requirements:

  • Sleeping Berth
  • Stove of some sort
  • Refrigerator
  • Heating and cooling system
  • Some deck space with cover for shade
  • Generator
  • GPS, with sonar and radar as option
  • Auto pilot
  • Diesel engine
  • On board toilet and showers
  • Length started out as 30-35 ft.
  • Thrusters to make it easier to dock.  


Finally after several tries no one wanted seemed to want to deal with Jay (fear of losing commission) I finally found one a 34 ft Nordic Tug.  The problem was it had been submerged and was repaired.  Jay made an offer and the owner sold it to someone else.  


Then we found another Nodic Tug in IL and drove out to look at it.  It was 34 ft long and needed work.  A lot of work including new paint and from the look of it an overhaul.  In addition in our heads another $15000 in new equipment to update navigation.  After much discussion we made an offer and they thought about it for a long time.  After a week, Dianne was getting cold feet about driving something that big and I thought the amount of work was daunting.  


We then started another search looking for something smaller 25ft to 30 feet but with the same gear.  After 2 weeks we narrowed it down to 4 boats all on the east coast.  We planned a 4 day trip to drive out and look at all in a concentrated rush.  The best was a Ranger tug for $135,000.  Just before leaving, Jay called to tell us his offer had fell though and he had a Ranger tug for $70,000.  After looking at pictures and much soul searching we agreed.  It looked Old but solid.  We canceled and set up an appointment to see his boat the following week.  




As the picture shows it did not look good but it did run.  The inside had stains, needed cleaning and a lot of teak oil.  We discussed the price on a Tuesday and went to sleep on it. During a BBQ dinner on the beach we kept saying this is something we needed to Just Do It.  The boat did need a lot of work but we believed we could fix it up and still come in under $100,000 and with a new budget of $150,000 it seemed to be a good deal.  So the next day we signed an offer and it was accepted and we then owned a boat.

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