Why unplanned work is the signal in a yacht's refit and dry dock history

What a docking record is and who requires one

Where a yacht is in class, the examination of the outside of the hull runs on a published cycle. The common requirement across classification societies is a minimum of two examinations of the outside of the ship's bottom and related items in each five year survey period. One of those falls together with the special survey. Some societies call that the class renewal survey. The interval between any two examinations is not to exceed thirty six months. An extension of three months beyond a due date can be granted in exceptional circumstances. Those circumstances are themselves defined: dry docking or repair facilities unavailable, essential materials or spare parts unavailable, delay caused by action taken to avoid severe weather.

The statutory side mirrors it. For ships subject to the international conventions the United Kingdom's guidance sets the same shape, two inspections of the bottom within five years with no more than thirty six months between them, one of which is to be conducted out of the water.

That gives a buyer something unusual. The dates are not a matter of opinion. Where a vessel is classed, the record either shows examinations at the required spacing or it does not.

On many private yachts nobody has required anything

Classification is not mandatory for a private pleasure yacht. Many large yachts are classed and many are not. Where a vessel sits outside class and outside the commercial codes, no society and no administration has required her to be taken out of the water at all. The cycle above is then not a standard she has failed. It is a standard that never applied to her.

For a buyer this inverts the enquiry. On a classed vessel the question is whether the required examinations happened. On an unclassed vessel the interval between dockings is itself a finding. Somebody chose it. A hull that has not been seen out of the water for a long time is not in breach of anything. It is simply a hull nobody has looked at.

The line nobody tells buyers to read

Here is the part that makes a docking report worth asking for. When the hull is examined, the shell plating is inspected for excessive corrosion, for deterioration from chafing or contact with the ground and for unfairness or buckling. The requirement then says something a buyer should sit with. Important plate unfairness or other deterioration which does not necessitate immediate repairs is to be recorded.

Read that again as a buyer rather than as an engineer. The industry's own procedure anticipates that an examination will find deterioration, judge that it does not need fixing now and write it down. That note is dated. It names a location. It describes a condition on a hull that is still floating.

It is worth being precise about how this differs from the artefact we have written about elsewhere. An outstanding condition of class is required work with a date attached. The vessel's class is at stake if the date passes. A recorded item is the opposite case. Nothing is required. No date is attached. Nobody is obliged to act and nothing happens if nobody does.

That is precisely why it survives a change of owner so quietly. A condition of class announces itself. A recorded item waits to be asked for.

A clearance means little on its own

The same procedure requires certain measurements to be taken and recorded rather than merely judged. The clearance in the rudder bearings is to be ascertained and recorded. So is the clearance in the stern bush, together with the efficiency of the oil gland where one is fitted.

Recorded is the operative word. A single figure describes a moment. Two figures taken three years apart describe a direction. Direction is what a buyer is actually trying to buy. Wear that has moved slowly over three dockings and wear that has moved sharply since the last one are different propositions. The most recent report cannot tell them apart on its own.

So the request a buyer should make is not for the latest dry dock report. It is for the series. Sellers offer the most recent document because it is the most flattering and because it is the one to hand. The sequence is the evidence.

Unplanned work is the signal

Volume of work tells a buyer very little. A heavily maintained yacht and a troubled one can produce a similar quantity of paper. What separates them is whether the work was scheduled or forced.

Planned work appears in the record as a task that came due and was closed out. It is the planned maintenance system doing its job. Unplanned work appears as a repair with no interval behind it. Something failed or something was discovered. The vessel was dealt with in response.

Unplanned work touching the hull or the vessel's statutory condition is the item to pursue hardest. Those two categories matter because both are expensive to put right and because neither tends to be the result of ordinary wear arriving on schedule. Something was not anticipated.

The follow up question is the one that decides whether it matters. Was the cause established? A repair that fixes a symptom leaves the mechanism in place. A mechanism that is still in place produces the same repair again. Two dockings showing the same remedy in the same area is a stronger signal than either one alone. Where a temporary repair is recorded, treat it as unfinished work rather than as work completed, whatever the invoice says.

A survey in the water is a conditional substitute

Buyers sometimes meet a history made up largely of in-water surveys. These are a recognised alternative to taking a vessel out of the water, used under defined conditions. They are not presented as an equal by the authorities that accept them. The United Kingdom's own guidance concedes that such a survey "may not always be as effective" as one conducted in dry dock. It attaches a plain condition to its acceptance: a survey in dry dock is to be arranged if the in-water survey does not satisfy the surveyor.

Age changes the position again. Both the classification requirement and the flag guidance call for special consideration before a vessel of fifteen years or over is permitted an in-water examination in place of a docking. Two independent instruments draw the same line at the same age.

None of this makes an in-water survey a weakness in a history. It makes an unbroken run of them on an older vessel a question worth asking out loud. The hull has then not been seen out of the water for as long as that run has lasted.

What to ask for and when

All of this is paperwork that already exists. It costs nothing to request and it is best requested before anybody boards. What it says determines what the physical examination should concentrate on.

The dry dock and refit reports themselves rather than a summary prepared for the sale. The series rather than the most recent document. The scope of each visit and not only its dates. A docking for a paint job and a docking for structural work occupy the same line in a list. The items recorded as not requiring immediate repair. That is the request almost nobody makes. Any area where the same remedy appears twice. Where the vessel is classed, the class survey status alongside it. Required work and merely noted work can then be told apart.

A reluctance to produce any of it is informative in itself. We have set out what a refusal tends to mean in the context of physical access. The same reading applies to documents.

Why this is a reading rather than a defect list

A history of this kind rarely yields a single number. What it yields is an account of how a vessel has been treated and where the unresolved matters sit. Some of what it shows will have a quotable cost. Some will not. The honest report of a gap is the gap itself together with the plausible reasons for it rather than a figure invented to fill it.

Where the docking history, the maintenance record and the class status cannot be reconciled with one another, the correct conclusion is not that the vessel is in poor condition. It is that her condition cannot be established from the documents. The buyer is carrying an unquantified risk rather than a costed defect. Those are different things to take into a negotiation and they are priced differently.