The seller’s debt: the check missing from every list

Seven months after buying our ketch, the marina told us the boat was impounded: the previous owner owed them more than €14,000. The sale contract said the opposite, in black and white. Here is what we should have checked, and how we got out of it.

What happened

We rang the marina to line up the November launch, at the end of the works. The answer: the boat cannot go in the water, it is impounded. The previous owner had never paid his berth or his lift-out charges — for four or five years.

At the time of the sale he had assured the marina, in front of the broker, that everything would be settled out of the proceeds. He did not do it. And the address he had given on the contract was that of a restaurant in liquidation.

The contract itself was spotless: boat sold free of debt, previous berthing charges settled by the seller, boat sound and free of hidden defects. A contract that was already void at the moment of signing, since the debt existed.

Why the contract does not protect you

A contract that lies gives you a remedy, not a solution. We could have cancelled the sale or claimed a refund. But someone who does not have €14,000 to pay his berth has probably not got the proceeds of the sale either. And a case like that can drag on for years.

The broker? He takes between 5 and 10% commission and proved incapable of checking anything beforehand. Checking that there is no debt is precisely his job.

The previous owner, who had always replied up to that point, left the message on read.

The five checks to run before you sign

None of them costs anything. All of them can be done by phone or email, before you hand over a penny.

• Ring the marina directly and put the question as plainly as that: “is there any debt on this boat, and is the owner’s account settled?” Ask for written confirmation. It is the question we did not even know we had to ask.
• Ask whether the owner has signed the marina’s terms and conditions. In our case he never had — and it was precisely that legal gap that saved us.
• Check the registration document and that the seller really is the owner named on it. Not a relative, not a company that has been wound up.
• Check there is no marine mortgage. A boat can be secured against a loan, like a car.
• Check the seller’s address. Ours was false, and one search would have shown it.

This happened in France, where the registration document is the acte de francisation, but the five checks translate directly to any country: the harbour office, the registry, the mortgage register and the seller’s identity.

What saved us

Two things, and neither of them came from us.

First, the marina eventually admitted on the phone that it was not sure it had the right to impound the boat, the debt following the previous owner rather than the boat. They checked with their lawyers.

Second, the absence of signed terms and conditions. How you store a boat for four or five years without signing or paying anything remains a mystery, but that gap worked in our favour.

Two weeks later, confirmation: the boat would not be impounded, the work could carry on. The marina started proceedings against the previous owner’s bank account, with no way of pulling us into it.

If it happens to you

What we take from it

Administratively, a boat is handled like a vehicle: no notary, no escrow, nothing securing the transaction. The checking is entirely the buyer’s job.

We had the technical survey done by a professional. Not the financial one. That is where it all turned.

The other seven things to check before you sign are in the guide Buying a second-hand sailboat, the sixty-six checks to make on board are in the printable viewing checklist, and what the boat really costs once bought is set out on the budget page.