[thomsonjd]

Eugene,
Make sure that your list includes surveyors recommended by persons other than your broker. (He / she may not like you choosing someone that they have not recommended - but an independent opinion is what you are after. When going through this myself recently, my highest criteria (after personal recommendations from people I could trust) was whether the proposed surveyor knew the class of boat. I believe that this allows the surveyor to focus some attention on things that typically "go wrong" with that class. Try to talk with each proposed surveyor for abot 10 to 15 minutes to get some feeling for how "open" he/she is to discussion - if you don''t get a warm feeling on this (when the surveyor in theory is trying to "sell" you his/her services, its likely that they will be more less inclined to discuss anything post-survey. Also, in your case, with the boat out of the water, you ned to discuss "post-splash" follow-up to cover those things that could not be assessed during the main survey (engine, transmission, sails, fresh-water system, heads etc). You need to find out whether a second visit will be charged for. (IMHO it would be reasonable for the surveyor to charge for travel time, but not for inspection time on the second visit, as in theory, time spent on the out of water inspection would be reduced)