Yacht & Marine Surveyors

What is a Yacht Surveyor? This was well answered by Ian Nicolson who’s work as a Yacht Surveyor I have greatly admired and who’s writing has taught me a lot. He says:

A Yacht surveyor has to be both a scientist and an artist. Basically his work is technical detection. He has to notice past troubles and impending ones; from small clues he has to deduce what has gone wrong and what may fail. Good eye sight is his chief asset, more important than ultrasonic testers or probes or drills or laboratory tests. It is most often the yacht surveyors’ eyesight that that gives the first clue, finds the follow up and interprets the results of scientific testing.

Some of the best yacht surveyors spend long minutes sitting and staring at one part of a boat, or leaning back in the cockpit mulling over how subtle signs of trouble fit together to form a basic pattern. Anyone can deduce that a (wooden) 32’ boat with two electric bilge pumps suffers from leaking. But it take experience to tell whether a fresh coat of paint is hiding a multitude of troubles or is there because the owner looks after his boat well and repaints as often as necessary. Once a yacht surveyor has established whether a boat is truly well maintained or not, much of his job is simplified.

This part of detection is complex because, in practice, boats tend to have successive owners, some who look after their charge and others who neglect her. Experience and study are needed to discern the signs of neglect which occurred years previously, if the current owner takes a lot of trouble with his maintenance.

An extract from Ian Nicolson – Surveying Small Craft 1974