Surveying Fiberglass Sailboats: A Step-by-step Guide For Buyers And Owners

Surveying Fiberglass Sailboats will help you screen out the bad from the good when buying a new or used boat; educate you in the craft of surveying, enabling you to hire a good surveyor and get better value for the fee; enable you to inspect your own boat, identify incipient problems, and design a maintenance program; prepare you for the practicality and cost of repairs and improvements and their probable effect on a boat's market value; identify common flaws in the way boats were or are being built so that you can be on guard against these problems in new or old boats; and answer the question, When is a boat too far gone to resuscitate?

Mustin's part-by-part look at hull, deck, rig, and machinery is both a minicourse for transforming used-boat shopping from a game of craps to a science, and the first step in a holistic boat maintenance program. His discussion of the significance of cracks found in aging hulls and decks is the most thorough in print. He is not shy in assessing the lack of regulation of professional surveyors, nor does he shrink from pointing a finger at shoddy building practices.

Having a used boat surveyed is a critical prelude to buying it. Yet a professional survey is expensive--several hundred dollars. "Surveying Fiberglass Sailboats" will enable you to conduct your own surveys while narrowing the field, then monitor a professional surveyor's performance when selecting your target boat.