The Condition Register
2
Individual, moored pleasure boats built in New Zealand between 1960 and 1987 generally fall into one of four categories:
Mint Around 15 percent are in mint or fully-restored condition. Surveying these boats will reveal nothing more than minor cosmetic issues. Good Around 30 percent are in good condition, but showing their age around the edges. A survey would reveal one or two moderate engineering or structural faults, with a number of minor and cosmetic issues. Scruffy Around 30 percent are really showing their age. Surveying these boats will create sobering reading, with two to four moderate to serious structural or engineering faults and a long list of cosmetic issues. REL The remaining 25 percent have reached REL status. These are boats where maintenance has been ignored for years, compounding into numerous serious defects. Surveying them will reveal four or more serious structural or engineering faults, the need for significant expenditure such as a new engine or rig, and much more. Paintwork/gelcoat and cosmetics will require extensive work.
Any honest marine surveyor would classify these REL boats as defective and unseaworthy.
Such REL boats have two serious issues – safety and insurability.
REL boats owners often sell the vessel via a Trademe auction. At the cost of answering numerous inane questions from dreamers and tyrekickers, a week or two later the boat’s sold. While the owner’s solved his problem, in reality the problem’s just been transferred.
Unfortunately, these cheap boats are often bought, sight unseen and without a marine survey, by inexperienced people with little prior boating and/or boatbuilding knowledge.
What these buyers often fail to appreciate is their $500 to $5,000 purchase hasn’t bought them a safe, seaworthy craft. Instead they have an unsafe, uninsurable, potentially dangerous boat which legally can’t be used.
To make the boat seaworthy will almost certainly require a full restoration costing 20 to 100 times more than the purchase price. Regardless of its purchase price, a cheap boat needing expensive repairs is no longer a cheap boat.