I hate to be a pain in the a--, but I found a boat in Lake Charles LA. I live in NJ I have seen posts where TOO OLD and guy,s have purchased boats, and had them surveyed and shipped. Can someone steer me to a good person to handle this and ship it , Or do you think I should Fly down and see it myself???? It,s a privite seller?? Am I right in assuming that some of you guy,s have purchased boats like this??

Thanks, I,m kinda a newbie at this

I thought buy now I,d have all sorts of info?????

Do a search on this. There has been a few posts. There are two national organizations of Surveyors, which can point you to folks in any area.

Your best bet is to fly down, do your own inspection and be present when the survey is being done. I bought my boat out of Chicago area, I too am from NJ, and relied soley on the advise of the surveyer and photos, big mistake!! He missed some major points, some of which I specifically asked him to look for. Another idea is to ask another OSO member who lives in the area to look at it first. Many people here are more than willing to help a fellow member out.

Wow that would be great , how do I go about contacting a member of this board who lives near there?

I would simply make another post asking if any OSO member lives in that area.

Then in the message part of the text you can go into more detail and see if anyone would be willing to give the boat a once over and give you some feedback on it before you hire a surveyor.
It's nice to have a trained eye look over the boat before you buy it but they can get expensive if you have to do it several times.

I would get as many pictures and as much information as you can from the seller. I would also have to look at it for myself because how I view something is going to be totally different then someone else.

I did a search and there are surveyors in that area but I am reluctant to post any but I would use one that is accredited. Again you can ask for more feedback from board members living in that area. You might have to push this up to the first page a few times to get a good answer.

Cordell

Good idea Thanks

You can get a list of surveyors for the area through SAMS (Society of Acredited Marine Surveyors). I'd get a local OSO member to do a first look for you and if you're really serious, come down yourself. I bought my Fountain out of state and didn't think twice about flying up to do my own look-over.

I just bought my boat out of state. I hired a SAMS surveyor. He had to travel over 100 miles each way to see the boat. I was very pleased with his report. It was very thorough. He also sent pictures of specific items that I requested. I was 850 miles away from the boat also. Things worked out well in my case. Good luck in your search and purchase.