After our sailboat had been on the market for a year, my sister-in-law suggested that I add some color to the interior. I spent $200 at Target on a new bed spread, pillows and throw rugs. The boat sold two weeks later.
THE BARGAINING PROCESS
My first listing was basically a gift. It came from a friend who had not actually used his boat for quite some time. If you're a boater, you know that boats, like dogs, need to go out for regular exercise. If they don't move, they get cranky.
That was the case with my friend's Catalina 36. The roller furling was frozen, which I didn't find out until the sea trial. The canvas was frayed, making the boat look much older than it really was, and the bilge was greasy. Still, the gentleman wanted top dollar.
After advertising the boat for three months I got a call from a fellow who was looking for a Catalina 36. There were two other Catalinas on the market at the time and the buyer had seen them both. We were last on his list of walk-throughs.
Kim HaworthCarved dragons are a major feature on the PT38.
I described the condition of the boat, said she belonged to the original owner and that she was at our dock. The boat wasn't in great shape: the canvas was tatty and the electronics were old. But I made a point of telling him all this on the phone. You never want to exceed the buyer's expectations and risk disappointment when he arrives at the dock.
The buyer was a young guy. He looked at the boat and didn't appear to be impressed. Fortunately, the other Catalinas he saw were seemingly in worse shape. He offered us $10,000 below the asking price.
That's when fireworks ensued between me and the seller, who thought his boat was worth top dollar and couldn't see its inherent defects. That's about the time I learned that you can't take the bargaining process personally. You can't get emotional. Rather, you have to be firm. To that end I used a method I learned in therapy called "broken record," in which you repeat the same thing over and over again until it finally sinks in.
The bargaining process can make or break a sale. It's a lot of back and forth between seller and buyer, during which every step is documented so that there can be no finger pointing after the transaction is complete. Sellers want what they feel their boat is worth and buyers want a bargain. It's the job of the salesperson to make each person feel that they got a good deal.
During this sale, dozens of phone calls and faxes were made before a price – $10,000 less than the $57,000 asking price – was set. A deposit check was written and a date set for the haul and survey.
SEA TRIAL
The test sail was held on a beautiful summer day on San Francisco Bay. The wind was light in the morning and the there was a strong ebb running. The engine turned over immediately. We backed out of the slip and motored past the Sausalito waterfront.
I am a fairly able sailor, often handling our sailboat solo. Our young buyer, however, was a novice who knew very little about handling a large sailboat. We had a fairly uneventful, pleasant test sail until the wind came up strong, which is typical of afternoons on the Bay. I didn't want to be out on the water in an unfamiliar boat, with an untested sailor, so I suggested we head for home. I tried to roll in the jib. No Luck. Then the buyer tried to roll it in, but no amount of pulling or cursing would encourage that sail to move. We finally gave up and raced for the Sausalito channel.
The docks at the brokerage are vintage WWII. A long, wooden pier runs out from shore with steep ladders descending 20 feet to a floating dock below. We sailed that boat into the dock running like Dennis Conner on his final winning leg of the America's Cup.
Luckily, the slip was upwind and the boat turned on a dime. The buyer had such a good time that he ignored the less than enthusiastic advice from his surveyor–who warned him that there was a diesel leak in the fuel system, among other problems–and bought the boat anyway.
NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS
While selling yachts has no life or death component, you wouldn't know it from the hours. I was on call around the clock like a world-class surgeon. Downtime didn't exist. It seemed like every time I settled down in our trawler's cockpit to relax, an irate buyer would ring my cell phone demanding that I lower the price. Or an owner would call, expecting me to raise the price on some greasy sinker. There was no respite.
