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Selling Your Sailboat? Do This First!
30 May 2026 · 13 min · 8K views
Crew inspecting sailboat rudder and keel on land
What this video covers
A complete pre-sale checklist for sailboat sellers covers every stage from pricing through closing. Sellers should choose between a private sale and a broker carefully — a broker who primarily sells center consoles in Miami is poorly suited to explain a cutter rig or a Westerbeke diesel.▶ 2:28 Pricing must be anchored to comparable boats by make, model, year, location, and equipment condition, not to what was paid or owed; overpriced listings go stale and attract suspicion when the price drops.▶ 2:55 Before listing, sellers should build a written inventory of what is included, declutter aggressively, and deep-clean for smell first — mildew, diesel, and holding-tank odor all reduce the final price.▶ 3:23 Every system should be tested: lights, pumps, winches, seacocks, bilge pumps, navigation lights, and the engine's cold-start behavior.▶ 6:17 Service records, yard invoices, rigging receipts, and lien-release documents convert verbal claims into verifiable facts.▶ 7:55 Listing photos should be shot in daylight, horizontal, with lights on below and clutter removed.▶ 8:52 Known defects — intermittent depth sounder, aging sails, non-working refrigeration — belong in the listing, because undisclosed problems discovered at survey become renegotiation leverage.▶ 9:41 Closing requires a signed bill of sale, title transfer, MMSI transfer, ePIRB ownership update, and insurance cancellation only after funds clear.▶ 12:27 Disclosed problems reflected in the asking price cannot be used against a seller at survey.
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