Guides
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The three things sellers mean by "no title", why the boat, the trailer and sometimes the motor are separate titles, how to read a hull identification number, and when the paperwork is a discount rather than a dead end.
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.
A glossary of the phrases used boat sellers reach for, what each one usually means mechanically, and roughly what it takes off the price.
The order to check things in, what a compression test actually tells you, and the three findings that should end a viewing early.