Northwest Dive Club

Hello all. I find myself in need of the services of a professional marine surveyor. If anyone has someone they would recommend I would be very grateful. The boat is located in the Everett area if that makes any difference.
Thanks for your suggestions!

for a yacht or commercial vessel?

Global is the nearest and one of the best in the area.

Not commercial but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a yacht. Wooden hull from 1944, 44' oal, ex navy boat.

Sorry I've forgotten who we used when we bought our 34footer. I would ask your broker for a list of surveyors. Most are not 1940s wooden specialists so interview them carefully. I wouldn't start out directly asking them about 1940s vessels for instance. Try asking them about ex-navy vessels, restorations, conversions, and topics like that. Only towards the end of the interview bring up the exact vessel you are looking to survey and see if all their answers up to that point justify their experience in 70yo wooden hull conversions.

You might want to find a separate surveyor for the power plant. At the very least have someone examine compression, the valves etc. I would not spend the money on oil analysis, some try to upsell that and believe its god's gift to surveying but its really not very useful unless you know what the analysis was like last year and the year before to examine the trends.

CaptnJack wrote: You might want to find a separate surveyor for the power plant. At the very least have someone examine compression, the valves etc. I would not spend the money on oil analysis, some try to upsell that and believe its god's gift to surveying but its really not very useful unless you know what the analysis was like last year and the year before to examine the trends.

This has crossed my mind. The two things I'm most concerned about are hull condition and mechanical condition. It seams that it would be rare to find someone to look at a hull such as this and then at the Volvo TAMD60 powerplant.
Thanks for the confirmation of that hunch.
On a completely separate note and just guessing, how much would it cost to correctly dispose of such a vessel? Put her up on the hard, salvage anything worth salvaging and then cut up and load in a dump truck for the land fill? Or, I could donate her to NPR? HA! They are always asking for boat and car donations!

Yes hull surveyors and mechanical surveyors are separate specialties.

Almost everything would go to a landfill, so scrapping her would not be cheap. Tens of thousands for 44ft vessel I'd guess. Almost nothing will have value, perhaps the engine block at the scrap yard but they only pay $0.10/lb or something like that for steel.

The state has a pilot volunteer turn in program for old vessels as part of the derelict removal program.
-Curt

oldsalt wrote:The state has a pilot volunteer turn in program for old vessels as part of the derelict removal program.
-Curt

Why would mateo bother to buy it then? (or acquire it free) Let the original owner deal with this headache...

Mateo1147 wrote:Not commercial but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a yacht. Wooden hull from 1944, 44' oal, ex navy boat.

Global will do everything, probably your best bet. give them a call and they should be able to give you a quote as well. they are in Lake Stevens.

A good source for a list of surveyors is the insurance company you plan to use. If you happen to be wanting to insure the boat. I have always been told never to just use the surveyor the broker recommends because most of the time you have competing interest. However looking for people on both the broker and insurance companies list helped me narrow down who I used.