Buying a New Boat: The Search

After Wayne and I decided to start looking for a new boat to use on the chuck (salt chuck, ocean), we developed our mandatory and "nice to haves" lists. That helped us keep us focused during our search. The key item was our maximum dollar amount. This had to include any upgrades that might be required to make the boat conform to our mandatory list.

Geoff from Lake Union Sea Ray in Bellingham was a key player in our search. He also introduced us to Yachtworld.com where we could review boats available in the U.S. and Canada. Narrowing the search to the Pacific Northwest (including British Columbia) made the search more realistic.

If we purchased a boat in the States, as Canadian permanent residents, we would need to import it to Canada. This would be advantageous if we could find a boat that was less expensive south of the border. Importing a boat into Canada is fairly simple if it was manufactured in a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) country. If not, it could require expensive import duties. We definitely wanted to avoid those.

From craigslist we found several boats that we went to see. One definitely made it to the top of our list. We also went to several local dealers to see boats in their lots or on their docks. As I mentioned before, this process helped us narrow our search for three Bayliner models: the 2858 command bridge and the 2859 sunbridge (both 28-footers), and the 3058 (a 30-footer). Now all we had to do was find THE boat. -- Margy