So just what does a seasoned charter captain, who is also a naval architect and yacht surveyor, look for when he sets out to buy a new boat?

The editors at Mad Mariner asked me to explain my thought process as I research and shop for a vessel. Looking back, I have owned one boat or another since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, more than a dozen boats over four decades. In fact, I am so accustomed to having a personal "command" that I feel naked when I don't have a boat.

CAPTAIN ALAN HUGENOTI was looking for a single-engine fiberglass trawler with a single-owner pedigree. I was able to get pretty close. But about three years ago I sold my 16th personal boat, a carefully restored 1961 mahogany 33-foot cabin cruiser with twin Chrysler 318 engines. I parted with it during the spring buying frenzy, which is always a seller's market, and banked the profits. I did not replace it at the time because I knew I was going to be spending much of the year out of town and would be unable to handle the maintenance and upkeep.

But it didn't take long before I was aching for a new hull to call my own.

There is no magic formula when it comes to buying a boat. In fact, the key to getting a good deal is exceedingly simple, though it does take some hard work. You should understand your needs and the market; do enough research on your target boat to know exactly what you are buying; and do enough advanced preparation to be able to confidently make offers, write checks and obtain whatever leverage you can.

The best time to buy a boat is after Labor Day when there is traditionally a shortage of customers, and moorages open up as people haul their boats or trailer them for the winter. Sellers who didn't find buyers the previous spring and summer know they will have to pay moorage fees until the buying season starts again, motivating them to consider any reasonable offer. That enhanced my purchasing leverage, along with the fact that I had cash in the bank from the previous boat's sale. So I moved quickly.

FINANCING

Like any would-be boat owner, the first thing I had to do was establish a price range. Since my total investment in my previous vessel had been $27,000 – and I wanted to re-invest at the same level – I set $25,000 as my upper price limit. I also checked my liquid investments and available, low-percentage credit offers to make sure I had the ability to come up with the cash I needed a week after making an offer.

Knowing your cash position is important. Assumptions will get you in trouble. For example, you don't want to make an offer on a $50,000 boat hoping to put $10,000 down and assuming you'll get a loan for the rest. Because when you get to the bank you may find that interest rates have risen and suddenly you don't qualify for a loan over $20,000. If you aren't buying with cash, the lenders will always decide exactly how much boat you can afford in the current market.

To improve your buying position, you should pre-qualify for a loan. You can contact your bank or BoatUS Boat Finance to find out how to become pre-approved.

SELECTING A BOAT

I chose to buy a vessel that was more than 20 years old. This is because when you ignore inflation and temporary market spikes like the dot-com boom, you will find that the real market value of boats always drops off over the first 15 to 20 years, and the value hits a stable plateau that rarely drops any further.

If you are careful, you can purchase a boat that is at the bottom of its value curve. Later, as many of the identical sister ships are scrapped or fall apart, it may become a classic and its value may actually rise. The key here is to buy a well-built hull from a yard with an excellent long-term reputation, one that only built only a finite number of each model. Production boats with thousands of hulls on the water, like Searays and Bayliners, don't often become classics because so many of them are built. But semi-custom fiberglass vessels may become commodities late in life.