Per our last post I noted that the boat had acquired some new dock rash. After pointing it out the owner did get it addressed (as seen in the picture I was sent here). With some research from their broker they confirmed my thought that the prop might be in overdrive configuration. The owner confirmed this and supposedly dove under the boat and manually switched the prop out of this mode. The workers addressing the gelcoat were done on Thursday evening and the owner wanted to close on Friday. This would have been ok as our surveyor was available and willing to stop by per our conversation that Tuesday except for the fact that the owners were convinced he did the damage to the gelcoat and now were treating to sue him with no evidence he had done anything wrong. Note: This is the second time they had baselessly called him incompetent and treating legal action as they did not like some of his findings from the survey. Thus by this point in the week he was not very excited about heading back to the boat. Of course they are hot to close ensuring they get their money and are done with this sale.. which I get. Anyway some drama ensued and I feed into it. Luckily our broker was wise enough to give us some space. We decided we would fly down look at the work ourselves and ask their broker/rep to show us the engines are both turning the same RPM with the prop now flipped out of overdrive mode. Unfortunately as the owners have now threatened legal action against the brokerage their and our broker are both afraid to get on or touch the boat so ours helped us find another surveyor that was available on Wednesday to start the boat and put it in gear at the dock. Yep this is silly but seems to be the point we are at. Probably best to not ask yourself what all this silliness cost eather. So I'm now told to expect their broker, our broker, the president of the sales department, us, and our surveyor to all be at this event Wednesday. I'm pretty sure at this point everyone has been offended at some point in this process and are just looking to finish the deal. Oh yea and one more poke in the side. When we put the boat under contract we listed in the terms that whatever was on the boat as of the survey day would be conveyed with the boat as well as anything included in the listing. So today our broker calls to check in with us and informs us that the sellers have now removed one of the dive tanks on the boat that apparently did not belong to them. I was kind and let it go but I really wanted to say that was ok as long as they were replacing it with a new one.
Purchasing this boat has been quite an emotional ride and I now have a new appreciation for a brokers job. I realize marketing is just a small part of their job with the bigger part managing all the people and emotions involved. In the case of this boat I think we had a seller that seems to automatically blow up anytime bad news comes their way. Fortunately after they blow up it seems they can process it and seem to do the right thing then move on but that initial reaction does not make them pleasant to work with (even between two brokers trying to soften their blows). I'm sure it also does not help that I'm cheap, they accepted a low ball offer and then I pushed for the three most expensive items identified in the survey to be addressed (Note: there was a 4 page list of items). If I had lost as much money as they were on this boat after only owning it for a year and a half I'd be miffed to. Hopefully this will be a good lesson learned and will help us in selecting the right broker when it comes time to sell our tug. In the mean time I'll have a few years to come to terms with the massive depreciation we will most likely incur on this boat when we sell it (hopefully) after ten years of adventures.
One way or another this deal will come to an end Wednesday. Hopefully it ends with us owning a spiffy new to us catamaran.
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