The dock and the decks
Eight photographs of quays, decks, cockpits and cabins. They show the kind of sail and power boat the brokerage deals in, roughly 24 to 62 feet. None of them is a vessel currently listed by Ashwell Foyle Yachts, and no boat, builder or owner is named.
I Moorings
One photograph, because a marina reads as one long line and not as a set of views.
-
01 Masted boats lying along a quay beneath a stone harbour wall. Most of a brokerage day is spent on a walkway like this one, going from one berth to the next with a buyer.
II On board
What a viewing actually looks at: the run of the hull, the gear on deck and the space below it.
-
02 A motor yacht seen from straight overhead on clear water, the one angle where the beam, the cockpit and the foredeck can all be read at once. Hull shape settles far more about how a boat behaves than its length does. -
03 Deck fittings and a hatch on the foredeck. Cleats, tracks and hatch seals are opened and worked at every condition appraisal, because they are cheap to renew and expensive to leave alone. -
04 A saloon berth below deck, blue cushions against varnished joinery. Buyers sit here longer than anywhere else on a viewing, and headroom and stowage are usually what settles the visit.
III On the water
Two photographs taken away from the dock, in the weather a sea trial is actually booked in.
-
05 Two sailing boats with crew on deck in flat grey fog. A sea trial goes ahead in weather like this as readily as in sunshine, and it tests the boat, the instruments and the crew rather harder. -
06 Yachts and small craft moored off a wooded shore. Most buyers who walk into the showroom describe sheltered-water cruising that looks close to this, which is what the length and draught questions are for.
IV Detail
One instrument and one hull ashore in a yard, both at the distance a broker looks at them.
-
07 A compass on its binnacle, close up. It is checked on every commissioning and swung where the reading warrants it, because it is the one instrument aboard that still reads true with the batteries flat. -
08 A hull ashore on stands, sheeted over amidships. Yards fill from September onwards, which is why lay-up and crane time are booked months early rather than in November.
Start with a showroom viewing
It carries no charge, runs about an hour, and ends either with a boat worth a sea trial or with a plain statement that nothing on the floor answers the brief.