Buying
How to check if a used boat is stolen before you buy
How to check a used boat for theft before you pay: match the HIN on the transom to the title, decode it, spot a tampered plate, and check the trailer on its own.
Guides
Reading a boat listing before you drive out.
What the seller's words are worth, and what they cost you.
Everything here is written for the twenty minutes between seeing a listing and deciding whether to drive out to it. The guides are filed under buying, listings and trailers, and every one of them will tell you to walk away from a boat if that is the right answer. New ones show up in the RSS feed.
Buying
What it means when a boat is listing
A listing boat leans to one side at rest. What causes it, how to tell water in the hull from gear stacked on one side, what the waterline gives away in a photo, and when a list is a discount rather than a walk-away.
Buying
Boat title requirements by state: what paperwork a used boat needs
Does your state title boats at all, which boats need one, and what a bill of sale alone can do. All fifty states and DC, each row read off that state's own agency and linked so you can check it.
Trailers
How to get a boat home the day you buy it
The money has changed hands and there are forty miles between you and your driveway. Weights, hitch match, chains, lights, how the load sits and the stop twenty minutes out.
Listings
The boat scam patterns that repeat on Facebook Marketplace
The listing shapes that turn up again and again: the price that is too far under, the recycled photo set, the same boat in three towns, and the move off-platform. What each one is doing and how to check it in a minute.
Buying
What "no title" actually means when you buy a used boat
What "no title" means on a used boat: separate boat, trailer and motor titles, bill of sale vs title, bonded titles, and whether you can sell without one.
Trailers
The trailer checks that save you a roadside disaster
Bearings, tire age, lights, the capacity label and the second title. The trailer is half the reason a cheap boat stops being cheap, and it takes fifteen minutes to check properly.
Listings
What "ran when parked" actually costs you
A glossary of the phrases used boat sellers reach for, what each one usually means mechanically, and roughly what it takes off the price.
Buying
How to inspect a used boat before you hand over cash
The order to check things in, what a compression test actually tells you, and the three findings that should end a viewing early.