Been awhile since I’ve been on here, but for good reason, I’ve been working on the boat.
The challenges I’m having with the boat are NOT mutually exclusive to a Hunter, but they do seem to be coming on fairly quickly. I can’t blame the surveyor, I won’t blame the surveyor, but I’m a bit bummed because some of the challenges should have been found early, and may have prevented us from buying this particular boat.
1. The boat has been leaking, but as you’ll hear from all Marine Professionals, all boats leak somehow, most boats have water in their bilges. Ok,,,but to me this means there’s been a failure somehow and if my automatic bilge pumps fail in the middle of a significant emotional event or a long sail, I’ll have water shipping into the bilge at a rate that may compromise the boat. So, I’ve had a second, industrial size bilge pump put in,,,and after literally seeing water coming through fiberglass; I called my broker and the owner of the survey company. They both came to see me the next day (which is very impressive) and both said the same things. Except, while the owner of the survey company was there, he may have thought me a nutcase, because we completely dried the bilge, yet there were NO leaks at all, anywhere. And,,,the next day the bilge was still dry. This is a case that’s yet to be solved, as I’m going to be so interested in seeing the boat in two weeks to see if there’s water in the bilge-
2. The boat has a dripless shaft seal,,,but the surveyor may have missed an important point during the inspection, which is that there’s a piece of it that’s supposed to be aircraft grade materials, but appears to be deteriorating,,,,supposed to have a nice smooth shiny surface but instead appears rough, rusty and cracked, like something’s been hitting it. No pun intended, but the rub of all this is that the only way to fix a dripless shaft seal if to haul the boat out of the water and have the prop moved,,,,which of course I have to pay for fully,,,,instead of finding it during survey and having the previous owner or the other broker fix it before final paperwork was signed. I am NOT bitter at the surveyor, but I wish I had known about this beforehand.
But, the good things are that the boat is easy to sail, appears to have a decent engine (Yanmar), and now has 300 feet of new chain and a new anchor. I had to go with an anchor the reviews all say is decent and uses new technology to surpass some others (a Rocna- 55 pds), I feel pretty good about this choice. I’ve also gotten rid of the 740 feet of chain the boat had, replaced with 300 in front and 40 in back plus rope rode. I’ve cleaned out the back locker which had a large amount of stuff that I don’t think we needed and I’ve had to get ride of other stuff the boat just couldn’t use. I’m bummed we have to eventually get a new radar and chart plotter, but that’s part of the game I guess.
