It's Off

No boat exchange. Tom is not trading up to the 26-foot boat and will keep his 22-foot sailboat and trailer.

Last week, Tom had the outside hull of the new boat cleaned and inspected and the divers found a small area of rust on the outside of the hull, though there was nothing conclusive.

Titles and transfer of ownership were to be exchanged yesterday (Monday), so we went up to the lake Friday afternoon to do a cursory inspection of the inside of the new boat.

Our attempt to inspect the interior was nearly impossible because there was so much crap inside the boat and in the storage compartments in the cockpit, you really couldn't inspect much of anything, so Tom got started early Saturday morning cleaning out the interior and inspecting it as he went.

After he removed five 30-gallon garbage bags of trash, Tom was finally able to start cleaning and going through the boat. It appeared to have not been cleaned in YEARS! At one point, Tom removed the makeshift teak flooring to examine the inside of the hull and he found a spot that was delaminating. Although he repaired the spot, it nagged at him for the rest of the afternoon and through the night. His fear was that the damage to the inside mirrored possible damage to the outside of the boat and would require thousands of dollars to repair should the delamination develop into a full blown crack in the hull.

Tom said it looked at though the boat hit something, which caused a crease in the hull, which ultimately cause the delamination on the inside of the hull. Sunday morning Tom called the boat owner and asked him if he had ever run aground in the boat. The owner said no, but Tom was not satisfied. He called Bill (his brother-in-law) and asked him if he would come and take a look at the delamination. Bill agreed and would also have a friend of his (with years experience with boats) inspect it as well.

Their collective opinion: Don't take the chance.

Tom called the owner to let him know that the trade was off. The owner didn't seem surprised. As a matter of fact, he said he had already made arrangements to take the boat out of the water and store it at his father's house if the trade didn't go through. Hmmmmm. Do you think he was just hoping Tom wouldn't notice?

I'm glad it's over. All we lost was a weekend and Tom has finally stopped hyperventilating.