The Next Boat..............Finally!

It was a long process, but it was worth the wait, and we are pretty sure we have a boat that we can enjoy for many years. The Prestige 460 is a good size for us and was our favorite model when we were first looking at boats 6 years ago. The path getting to this point had quite a few twist and turns, and I'm not sure I want to go through it again. Here is the abbreviated (believe it or not) version.

The boat market changed dramatically after the start of the pandemic. Dealers had little inventory and due to supply chain shortages, the build process for new boats became drawn out with customers waiting for a year, a year and a half, and even longer for new boats. Prices for new boats went up, and as a result, the prices for used boats jumped up as well, and availability went down. The market has shown a little softening and we feel lucky to have sold our 420S last fall after being on the market for about three months.

We were initially looking at a 2016 Prestige 500 that was becoming available and went through a successful survey in June of 2022. The boat had a few issues, but that was expected on a boat that age and we knew we would have to invest in some repairs and upgrades. Deposits were paid and agreements were signed. We just needed to wait for our boat to sell. 

There were a few showings of our boat so we were minimizing use and keeping her in a good show condition. Ironically, we received a sight-unseen offer and a survey was scheduled. Unrelated to boating, Martha ended up having surgery on her knee and that put her out of commission. I had to clear out the boat to get it ready for the survey, so we rented a storage unit in Rock Hall and during the hottest weekend of the summer I moved all the boat items into it. As I was closing the door to the storage facility after the final load, I received a phone call from our broker. As I am standing there holding the door, he told me that the survey had been cancelled by the buyer. That was disappointing enough, but then he told me that there was some other bad news, the 500 we were planning to buy had run aground and was going to be out of commission for a while. He assured me that there was no structural damage, but some assessment was ongoing. This was disappointing to say the least. I was exhausted from cleaning out the boat and drained by the high heat. All I could do was go to the marina pool and try to relax.

The potential buyer of our boat rescheduled a survey, but cancelled again and then completely backed out of the purchase. We were done with him! Another buyer came along, looked at the boat and scheduled a survey for later in September. It was successful and he took ownership in October. We were now without a boat and unsure about the future of the 500 we had a deposit on, but optomistic.

The broker let us know that the 500 was going to be brought back to Maryland (the grounding happened out of state) and another survey was scheduled for the beginning of December. The survey results came back pretty rough and indicated significant work needed to be done on both the engines and the pods. There were a few other issues as well, but everything was fixable.

What I didn't mention earlier, was that each delay caused us to lose our loan rate locks and the rates had started to climb fast with the Federal Reserve hiking the rates to combat inflation. Great!! In the mean time, we were looking for other boats, but the selection of good available boats......at affordable prices and fitting our criteria.......was very thin.

I was informed by our insurance agent that a policy could not be written on the boat while it had open claims, meaning we could not close on it until all work was done and claims closed. So work continued on the boat throughout the winter, but some things had to wait for the weather to warm up. Once we got to the end of March, we were very concerned that we may never get a boat.  

We attended the Bay Bridge Boat Show in April, saw the 460 and decided to make an offer. We were sorry to back out of the other deal, but we just had no idea when we would be able to get the 500 and didn't want to miss this opportunity. We had a successful survey in early May and took possession of the boat right after Memorial Day. It's now time to get used to her out on the water and learn how she runs. I'll let you know how that goes in upcoming blogs.............