I wasn’t able to post most of the pics here because of the size. She was cracked all over. We walked away from this one. We were all set to bring her home today. The owner was devastated when we found the issues.
My search for a 300 Marlin continues.
I imagine the owner of the boat very much likely realized there were issues with it and was getting excited to sell the boat so they could pass it on to someone else. I hate to sound so negative but unless the owner is completely naive, incompetent or isn't honest... issues on a boat should be abundantly clear to them. It sounds maybe like they weren't exactly being forthright with you from the beginning and/or the surveyor wasn't either? If the cracks were on the transom above the waterline, the surveyor definitely should've seen those last month when the boat was inspected. Especially with the second picture and what I'm assuming is the rub rail? to where you've got multiple cracks, mold and I'll bet at least some water intrusion. Second, did you pay/hire the surveyor or was it the owner of the boat? If it was the owner, and unless they have a copy of the survey, I'm going to assume that never happened, or at least it didn't happen last month. If you personally paid for the survey to be done, I'd ask for my money back from the surveyor. I'm not sure how much experience you have with boats or as a boater in general but if you spotted what they as a professional surveyor should've seen without any sort of issues and decided to walk away from the deal, then that's a huge red flag. Which again, that would make me question whether or not the owner actually had the boat surveyed or if they just claimed it was done then.
If it was the fault of the surveyor, they sound as if they're completely incompetent at their job as I don't imagine all of these issues presented themselves in the last couple weeks alone. Either way, if you've got money down, I'd ask for it back and be glad that you didn't get into the can of worms that this situation sounds like it could've been. I'm not sure where you're located at, but it's coming up on wintertime in the next couple weeks and to where boat prices should drop off considerably. Of which, unless you're in a place like Florida where you can use the boat year round, it doesn't seem like you need to have the boat right now or anything. I would be, and was with my boat, very patient and not just jump at the first one available. Have a competent, marine accredited surveyor look over the entire boat for you, and make sure that you're the one to hire them, not the owner. Have them go over everything with a fine tooth comb so that you don't have any surprises in the near future. I would post your location, your budget as well as what you want specifically for a boat and then others on here can try and help you find what you're looking for. Either way, sounds as though you passed on a boat that was concerning at the least, which happened to me when I was looking for my boat. Had a surveyor go out and inspect the boat, found a considerable amount of damage to it that the seller, go figure, never mentioned existed in the first place. Take a deep breath, have an adult beverage or two, or whatever it is that you do to relax a bit, don't let it get you down and keep your search going.
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