April and I began going through my photographic inventory of the house and garage and identifying the items to keep, to decide about, and to ship to others. Everything else is a strong candidate for the estate seller. It's simultaneously agonizing and exhilarating.
We also reviewed Vigor's Cosmo quiz for seaworthy boats from TSOS. I need to apply that to all the boats we consider from now on. It scores boats (and crew) with 56 questions on a scale from 60 to 242, where a score of 131 means that you shouldn't even pay for a survey. Lower is better. On the basis of my personal experience, we go into the quiz for any boat with a score of 8. Most of the questions are ones I'll be able to answer for myself by looking at pictures of boats, but several will need answers from the sellers, including:
- number of through-hulls?
- material of through-hull fittings?
- type of seacocks?
- signs of leaks at the hull to deck joint?
- underwater blisters?
- number of built in bulkheads?
- visible signs of hogging at the chainplates?
- emergency tiller?
- soft spots on deck?
- leaks at through-deck fastenings?
- backing plates for through-deck fastenings?
- cockpit self-draining (number, size of drains)?
- layup of rigging?
- standing rigging material?
- rigging terminators?
- 2-way toggles at both ends of all rigging?
- permanent backstay?
- what type of rigging turnbuckles?
- going to windward, is there a lee or weather helm, slight or strong, or balanced?
I don't envy the seller who gets this homework assignment!
96 days.
