Marine Surveyor in St. Petersburg, Fl

[sailbum]

Hello - We think we have found a boat but the downside is that it is located in St. Petersburg and we live in Washington, can anyone recommend a marine surveyor in the St. Petersburg area? Or who not to work with?

thanks in advance,
-AJ

[dsprygada]

I''m having a survey done on May 20th in St Pete and can let you know how how he is then. The first 2 or 3 information gathering calls that I made to him were very professional and helpful.

DAVE

[DuaneIsing]

We just had our boat surveyed a stone''s thgrow from St. Pete by Rick Shelley and thought he was very thorough and knowledgeable. He seems to have a very respected reputation, except many sellers don''t like him because he''s so nit-picky.

Best of luck to you.

[RichH]

.... so how many weeks did you have to wait for the written report? .... and how many times did you call him to ask again & again for the said report? .... and then after a few months I discovered that he missed all the rotten chainplate bases. I wouldnt recommend him.

[sailbum]

Ouch, sorry to hear that the chain plates were bad. I assume you are talking about Rick Shelley? Can you recommend anyone else? BTW I have had a lot thumbs ups for Rick and a guy named Pete Brown.

-AJ

[Falcow]

Having seen and used different surveyors, I would heartily recommend Pete Brown. I first met him when he was surveying a boat that I was selling. He was very thorough. I later used him for my next purchase and for an insurance inspection. He literally looks and checks everything, including inspecting the standing rigging with a magnifying glass. I recently sold my boat to someone who used a different surveyor and was greatly surprised (although as the seller, not upset) by the cursory nature of the other, supposedly seasoned, surveyor''s inspection of the boat.

Incidentally, Pete Brown was in charge of Quality Control at Morgan (pre-Catalina) and also worked at GulfStar so he knows how to find manufacturing weaknesses and the damage that they do over the course of time. As a final note, I have no relationship to Pete and haven''t seen him in several years but the pleasure that comes from a good survey (and complete report) lasts years. Pete lives on Treasure Island ph. 727-367-2489 at last report.

[WHOOSH]

Just to tag another anecdotal view on this: Pete Brown is very thorough; he is known as All Day Brown by St. Pete sailors. OTOH chain plates fail where they intersect the deck (IOW not above the deck and not below) and it is highly unlikelz one is going to spot a failed plate without pulling it, including Mr. Brown.

I have used Rick Shelley twice (both times for insurance surveys, which can be a bit of a different situation, and I was surprised at how thorough he was the second time, after knowing the boat and despite a sale not being part of the survey. And both my surveys were emailed to me promptly, in Word format, which made both retention and forwarding to my broker very easy.

Jack

[sadie14]

We have used Pete Brown on 3 of our 4 boats and been extremely pleased with his work. We also used him for an insurance survey. He is very good, and very honorable.

Chainplates are best inspected removed and dyed. This is not SOP for surveys.

[mmccoy]

Speaking of surveyors I have a question:

Obviously if I wanted a wooden boat surveyed I''d avoid a surveyor with experience surveying only fiberglass boats. On a finer point, all boats have their own peculiar ''idiosyncrasies'', design weaknesses, manufacturing issues, etc..

How important is it to find a surveyor that is familiar with the particular boat in question? For example, wouldn''t Pete Brown (head of QC at Morgan) be the prefered one to survey a Morgan than someone that may only have a ''generic'' knowledge of Morgan sailboats (or worse, none at all)?

[dsprygada]

To an earlier post on Rick Shelly...I had a survey completed on a Friday and had the survey E-mailed to me on the following Wednesday. Rick was VERY thorough and the Survey lasted from 9 to 4:30 WITHOUT A LUNCH BREAK!!!

He found several things of concern, none were deal breakers...and the seller antied up to take care of all the repairs to the tune of probably $2000 or so. The price of the survey easily covered the cost of the repairs. In addition he was very obliging to take the time and explain things in great deal to me as I''m going to be the fix it guy when we become liveaboards. I''d recommend Rick in a minute.

Dave