Steel Hull Construction

[sailingdog]

Umm... you could click on his userhandle, in the post above the one you just made (#69) and PM him.

[Valiente]

Ahoy there!

I can't recommend anyone outside of the Toronto area, but will say that fibreglass surveyors are NOT appropriate for steel. You are looking for a steel COMMERCIAL surveyor who has a sideline in steel yachts (a small sideline indeed as I think steel/aluminum is maybe 4% or less of the entire boat market in North America, but possibly 15% in Europe).

If you do a search, you will find many posts by me and others as to "deal breaking" findings, vs. stuff you can leverage into savings. A lot of this depends on your capacity for work, your handiness, and some common sense. A lot of steel boats are overbuilt or poorly built by amateur welders and aren't a good buy even if pristine; other boats that look like crap on deck but pristine below (and fully accessible below the waterline) can be had quite reasonably.

If you're serious, buy the book "Metal Corrosion in Boats" and learn about the pluses and the minuses of steel. It is to my mind about the best choice for "off the beaten track" passagemaking, being easy to repair and hard to damage, but you have to like to paint and scale rust to a fairly high degree. In return, you get to keep sailing after the uncharted reef fails to punch a pillow-sized hole in your bow. You just arrive six hours behind the Bendytoys.