The following article was published in the Gemini Gems and is reprinted here for your convenience.

Your dreams are coming close to reality. After years of boat shows, lots of e/mails, maybe a few test charters, and a number of shopping visits, you have finally found the boat of your dreams. Now comes the hard part. How much do you offer the owner – or more likely, the broker – and how much are you prepared to pay.

New boat purchases typically don’t have much price discussion. Manufacturers typically set their prices and are relatively firm, negotiating on the fringes of electronics, fabric upgrades or additional equipment. There is nothing to compare with the smell, feel and thrill of a new boat or a new car, it may even be better than a new spouse in many ways since the honeymoon may be longer and the in-laws (or builder/broker) let you alone completely once the deal is closed. New boat purchases are a subject of a different article.

Newer previously owned boats are also the subject of a different discussion. Their purchase price is usually well known, often by the owner showing you their bill of sale. You can easily inventory the added equipment and you expect the condition to be like new or better. There have been many discussions about the value of purchasing a one or two year old Gemini and all seem to say you can get a great deal on a good boat if you like the first owner’s taste in canvas, electronics, and other additions. If your dream and budget are in the new boat range, this option may be the best use of your money if the thrill of the skippering the first sail of a new boat isn’t critical to your dream.

If your goal is to get the maximum sailing for your dollar and you are willing or eager to do significant work please keep reading. Buying and restoring an older Gemini has many significant advantages.

At the end of the journey, you have a Gemini. Every Gemini ever built is a good family cruising boat well suitable for coastal, Bahamas or Caribbean sailing. Every one has the carrying capacity to comfortably support a cruising couple on an extended cruise, regardless of age. If you pick the right restorable Gemini, you can sail her from day one and see her improve every week as you bring the systems back to life.

With patience and luck we found a 1993 Gemini 3400 that hadn’t been sailed in several years, was fairly close, and in restorable condition. She had hatches missing, no head sail, the boom was removed, the engine was in questionable condition and she had list of defects that never seemed to end.

The broker who showed her said she had been on the market "for a while." She seemed to be calling to us to take her home.

Negotiating for an older boat represented by a broker can be a trying task. We decided that in addition to offering a "bid", we would offer a logical explanation for the bid and hope the broker convinced the owner this was the best offer he could get for his once valuable boat

We ultimately followed a straight forward process. We determined the "good condition" value of the boat by plotting the asking prices of other Gemini sailboats offered for sale on YachtWorld http://www.yachtworld.com/.

This chart enabled us to determine what others are asking for our dream boat. Once we had this figure we were able to determine that the asking price (originally $79k, reduced to $69 over the two years she was on the market), was about in line with what others were asking based on the age of the boats compared.

The actual selling price of a boat is not a matter of public record like it is on a home. Brokers do cooperate by reporting actual selling prices in several ways. One of the benefits of using a broker is they should be able to tell you about what sister ships to your dream boat fetched during the past few months or years. This information is available by broker subscription on www.soldboats.com. You should expect your broker to furnish this information during the decision process. I didn’t have a buyer’s broker on this transaction so I "guessed" the selling price was 5% below the asking price.

During the several months we worked to have an offer accepted, we were able to obtain the original selling prices of new Gemini sailboats over the years. Lon Bubeck, and others, supplied much of this data. The balance came from broker web sites and YachtWorld.

I looked at the data for a while and asked myself how much of the original value did Gemini sailboats hold over the years? That is, what is the ratio of the factory price to the used asking price? Did a bit of arithmetic and found that with owner additions, improvements, attention, neglect, and uneven workmanship, the used Gemini sailboats were being offered at about 87% of their original factory price. I reasoned that a 1993 Gemini would be listed with an asking price of about 87% of her new price in 1993.

Now comes the hard part. My dream boat was in "restorable" condition. Roughly, this means she is afloat, some major systems are damaged, but she can move on her own bottom. The next lower designation, salvageable, is usually applied to a boat that has been sunk or badly damaged by an accident. These are rough designations, but you get the idea. On the Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor scale, the Gemini we were considering was restorable, one notch below Poor.

BUC Boats, http://www.buc.com/index.cfm, will provide your broker a history of the selling price for similar boats that are widely traded such as the Gemini Sailboats. Given an estimate of condition, that should provide a start for your offer.

I didn’t have this data. I did have a fairly good list of what must be done to bring her to good condition, the approximate condition of the boats in the data above. I examined the boat carefully and developed the following list and estimated costs to restore:

This gave me an idea of how I should lower my offer and what I should expect to spend to bring her from restorable to good condition.

I also made some assumptions of outstanding issues that were to be resolved at a future "subject to sea trial" discussion:

For example, if the engine could not be started and I were forced to replace it prior to moving the boat, I would deduct an additional $8,000, my estimated of the replacement cost for the engine, controls, labor and storage of the Gemini until the engine were running. My assertion was: These items were represented by the broker and the written listing as working, they would work – or the owner would repair them. The figures were the pre-assigned amount that would be further deducted in the event the items didn’t work and the owner wouldn’t repair them.

In common English, I offered to buy her in whatever shape she was in with reduction in the price if the items promised were not available.

Now we get to the good parts:

After some more discussion, the broker told me the asking price, listed at $79k, had been reduced to $69k. I determined from the above charts that if she were in "good" condition, the asking price should have been $65,500. Further, I was able to obtain a "Fair" estimate from a respected source of $47,295. The broker eventually agreed that the boat was in below "fair" condition so we were closing in on a number.

I finally offered $40,850 with the "subject to sea trial" assumptions. This number was finally presented to the owner who eventually accepted $40,000 with an "as is, where is" clause. That is, they declined by "subject to sea trial" conditions and I had bought the boat without knowing if the items promised as working were actually in usable condition.

The process had taken about three months from the time I tendered my first offer until the broker presented it to the owner and a final offer was accepted. We were able to repair and start the engine, the owner decided after the offer was made to purchase a new head stay and furling and a used, but serviceable, jib and to reinstall the roller furling main.

Each week she improves in appearance and functionality as the process of bonding a sailboat and her master continue. We sail her every weekend and work on her about three days a week and have, so far, enjoyed every moment of the process.