Multihull Company, Inc. for buying a catamaran?
Maybe not.
This is the saga of my experiences buying and selling a 37’ sailing catamaran through a broker. I am writing this to try to spare other catamaran buyers some of the pain and anguish that we went through.
I began sailing as a child, as many others have, on tiny daysailers like the Sailfish and Sunfish, in the lakes, bays, harbors, and on the coast of Long Island, New York. Later, in my late twenties, I took lessons at the University of California, San Diego Sailing Center (for alumni) in Mission Bay, San Diego. There I learned to sail a sabot, Lightning, Omega, and J-24. In my late thirties through my forties I owned a 14’ O’Day Javelin, and a Catalina 22 on which I sailed the bays and lagoons on the coast of Northern California, as well as some of the larger lakes, including Klamath Lake, and the lakes and bays of Oregon when we lived there.
I loved - and still love - sailing. As anyone thinking of buying a large sailing catamaran already knows, the joys of sailing are boundless. The serenity of the passage through the water, the sound of the wind in the sails and rigging, the slap of water against the hull, the rocking and rise-and-fall of the boat, all contribute to a sense of peace that heals the ravaged edges of your soul, especially in these more troubled times. When I was a police officer in San Diego, living in a big city, dealing with horrible traffic, and the stresses of working the streets as a patrolman, and then plainclothes for the Crimes Against Persons Unit, sailing when off-duty was what kept my sanity.
My wife and I have wanted to live aboard a sailboat since we were each in our twenties. Over the many years in between then and now, we read everything we could about living aboard, cruising on a sailboat, other sailors’ experiences in America and different countries, and the vagaries of buying, outfitting, and cruising in boats. For the ten years before we actually purchased our one-and-only cruising sailboat, I researched the pros and cons of various types and brands of boats, the issues of monohull versus multihull, and how to buy and sell. I decided that a multihull boat was the way to go, preferring the catamaran design over the trimaran.
When I retired as an RN from the VA medical system (my last occupation :-), we were living in Southern Oregon. We sold our 11 acre property just before the bottom fell out of the housing market (thanks again, Dave and Holly!) and had a choice to make: buy another home somewhere or buy a boat. At this point in my search, I had just about decided on a monohull sailboat instead of a cat, due to the difference in cost. We could have purchased a longer and newer used monohull for less than a shorter catamaran, but a friend reminded me of some of the reasons catamarans seem superior to monohulls: sailing flatter with only a slight lean (better for cooking under sail, sleeping, etc.), two engines (on most cats), which allows a back-up if one engine develops a problem (came in handy several times for us - too many times, to tell the truth - although backing up with one engine can be difficult), slightly more living space and a great deal more deck space, great stability with a shallow draft - which allows access to harbors and coastline that many deep-draft monohulls can’t get to or anchor in. There are other pluses, as well as a few trade-offs where a monohull might be a better choice.
So, when we left Oregon, we contacted The Multihull Company, Inc., which can be viewed at multihullcompany.com on the Internet. It had been recommended by several catamaran owners whose blogs and e-mails I had read. They spoke of the personal service, attention to detail, and great deals they had received by using this brokerage. The owner, Philip Berman, has extensive experience with catamarans, has written several books, and generally seemed to be the best choice for a broker.
Well, let’s cut to the chase. Do you want to use this brokerage? You’ll have to decide for yourself, but you might want to be sure to explore some other options and actually contact some other brokers before you commit. I wish we had.
Phil Berman is a very bright and personable guy. He will take a great deal of time discussing pros and cons with you, why certain features on a boat are good and why some aren’t, why one model is a better choice than another. His wealth of experience is influenced by his own preferences, of course. I got the distinct impression from our various talks that he is more of a competitive sailor than a cruiser, although he has associate brokers who have lived-aboard and cruised quite a bit. He appears to have sailed or been on so many different boats that he is familiar with most of what is out there. He also is a dealer for several brands of catamarans, so there is a distinct lean in that direction for those clients who can afford those boats (we couldn’t).
Phil has some very pleasant office staff who try to be helpful as well, and usually are quite helpful. His office manager, Carol, was especially helpful on numerous occasions. His associate brokers are pleasant and personable as well, with a good depth of sailing and cruising experience among them. However, I learned that sometimes there is a difference between pleasant and capable, personable and effective.
My wife and I traveled from Florida to Maryland, New York, and Connecticut looking at boats, most of them suggested by Phil. He also had us look at several boats we really had no interest in, but which he felt would improve our understanding of catamarans and the difference in quality between makes of boat. After seeing them, we still had no interest in them. One did indeed appear to have been a quality boat at one time, but had been maintained so poorly that we wouldn’t have considered it at half of its listed price. So we wasted a fair amount of time and money looking at boats that weren’t appropriate for us.
Understand, now - we were at the bottom of the price range that Multihull Company bothers to broker. As purchasers, we were not responsible for the commission involved, which I understand was either 6% or 8% at the time. Even so, Phil took a lot of time to talk to us about boats, and based on what he said, it sounded like he actually did check quite a few boats listed on the Internet that were available in our price range. One model we had been interested in from the start was the Lagoon 37. It was a make and model that one of the people who recommended Multihull Company owned. They said that Phil had saved them about $20K, buying a boat listed for $160K for $140K, and that he was just an all-around great guy.
At the beginning of our search, Phil was discouraging about this particular boat model. He didn’t feel it was a good choice for us. When we (by ourselves) discovered one for sale in Daytona, Florida, after months of searching and looking at boats he suggested or we discovered, he appeared to change his mind, and extolled its virtues to us. (Maybe he despaired of finding one we liked, and just decided to “go with the flow”.)
I believe that may have been the beginning of the destruction of our dream of living aboard a boat.
The boat, named “Reference Point” listed for $165K. We didn’t get the $20K savings the other couple got on their Lagoon 37. We ended up paying $160K. $5K savings, not the screaming deal we were hoping for based on the other sale. Now, it is possible that this happened because Phil had stopped dealing with us at this point and had passed us on to an associate broker named Darrel McDaniel, but I don’t know for certain that Phil actually handled the purchase of the other Lagoon 37 that listed for $160K and sold for $140K. But we were tired of driving all over the Eastern Seaboard looking at boats, wanted a Lagoon 37, and agreed to buy it for that price.
The next problem - and probably the worst mistake we made, other than the initial mistake of choosing Multihull Company as a broker - was accepting the surveyor that Phil Berman hired to survey the boat. This fellow was described to us by Phil as a very skilled surveyor who would - if anything - be too picky and particular in what he listed as being wrong with the boats he surveyed. Unfortunately for us, he listed a number of small problems that actually weren’t problems at all (equipment he stated didn’t work but which actually did work), and missed a number of large problems where equipment didn’t work or need major repair.
Consequently, the boat needed major work from Day One. Instead of paying top dollar for what we thought was a reliable boat, we ended up paying top dollar for a boat requiring thousands of dollars in repairs. Now, we knew we would occasionally have to make repairs, and would definitely have to spend time and money doing maintenance. We had enough savings to maintain and cover occasional repairs on the boat, but we were under-capitalized - in money, emotional preparedness, and knowledge - in what would be required to fix and operate this boat.
We also knew we did not yet have the skills to operate a large sailboat for cruising. Our Catalina 24 was fun and had similar rigging, for example, but we had little knowledge of the various systems on this boat. We needed some instruction in how to use the heads (toilets for you land-lubbers), the water system, electrical system, the navigation system, how to fuel the boat, etc. Carol, the office manager, assured us that the Multihull Company would never just cut us loose without walking us through the various systems on the boat, but that is exactly what happened. This was not Carol’s fault. It happened because the associate broker, Darrel McDaniel, needed (or simply wanted) to return to Fort Lauderdale the day after the sale closed, and he left. No thanks to The Multihull Company, the seller’s broker there in Daytona came aboard and showed us a little bit about the boat. The rest we fumbled through on our own.
With the assistance of another couple who owned a Lagoon 37 at a marina in Daytona that was a short distance north of where we were docked, we located a marine repair company, and hired the fellow to come align our engines, as the engine drive shafts were not properly aligned. He quoted us $700-800 to do the job. $1800 later, he was done. (We eventually got - somewhat - used to this. “BOAT” stands for “Break Out Another Thousand”.) While he was working, he discovered a lot of the things the surveyor that TMC (The Multihull Company) hired had missed. One was that the drive shaft on the port engine had a shaft seal (to keep sea water from entering the boat around the drive shaft) that was completely loose, almost disconnected. If it had come completely off, that hull could have flooded. The surveyor also recommended putting a “main output breaker” on the diesel generator the boat had installed in the starboard engine compartment. I wanted the marine repairman to install it for me, but - lo, and behold! - there was already one their, factory installed and in plain sight to anyone who knew what to look for (I certainly didn’t.)
Bottom line? I ended up making many repairs to major systems - bilge pumps, macerator pumps for the heads (toilets), wiring for the navigation system, etc. During the seven months we lived aboard the boat, there wasn’t one week when I didn’t have something major to fix. Three of those months were spent in the Bahamas where it was difficult and expensive to get needed parts.
This really soured me on the “joys” of living aboard a boat, but it was worse than this. We were adequately capitalized for living aboard and maintaining a boat, but were quickly running out of savings making all of the necessary repairs. Between the frustration of all the repairs and our fear that we might end up needing a repair we could no longer afford (like replacing an engine), we decided to sell the boat.
Now, in discussing this with Phil, he “determined” that we simply did not like sailing enough to stick with it. I explained that we were terrified we would end up with a boat that needed repairs we couldn’t afford, leaving us with a boat we couldn’t use and couldn’t sell, but in his wisdom and great experience, this translated to simply not wanting to sail badly enough to continue. That seemed like a cheap shot, to me.
So. Our second biggest mistake was to trust TMC, The Multihull Company, Inc., to sell the boat. Now, instead of a 6% or 8% commission we were told it would be 10%. Believing it would be easier dealing with the devil we knew, rather than trying a different broker and potentially having even more problems, we signed a contract. We listed the boat at a very reasonable $159K at Phil’s suggestion. Please note that we had only owned the boat for seven months at this point. We had added a brand new custom dodger, bimini, and full enclosure of high quality fabric and isinglass that cost us $5000 in Daytona. We also added a $6700 new electrical system of AGM batteries (over 850 amp hours), a Freedom 2000 inverter, Balmar high-output alternator (for charging the huge battery bank), Link 1000 monitor, etc. Plus about $1500 of spare engine parts, new MOB equipment, $400 worth of charts and guides, $1000 improvements to the dinghy davits, and a number of other improvements. So the $160K we paid for the boat was up around $180K. $159K was a pretty reasonable price. Because of this, we had two offers almost immediately. Both were quite low, but one of the people making an offer came to look at the boat. He raised his bid to $140K in a written offer.
Now, you need to know that we wanted out, and we wanted out quickly. We had specifically told Phil Berman that we would be willing to take any offer that would net us $120K simply because we wanted to sell now (June 2009), without waiting around for months, paying dock fees, etc. This offer would have netted us $126K, so we were willing to accept the offer. Phil strongly advised us to pass on the offer. He said it was too early to sell the boat so cheaply, and he assured us he could get us another $5K. So, we countered with $145, which the buyer turned down.
It was January of 2010 before we got another offer. Darrel McDaniel, the associate broker assigned to help us sell the boat after Phil advised us to pass on the first offer, had a friend who had a slip available at a mere $500 a month (actually pretty good for the Fort Lauderdale area.) From the beginning of June 2009 to the middle of February 2010, when the sale closed, it cost us $4250 to dock the boat. It cost us another $250 to get her bottom cleaned twice during that time. We ended up selling her for $130K. Minus 10% in commission left $117. $126K minus $117K equals $9K. $9K plus $4250= $13250. Add in the $1000+ we would ave gotten back from the company that insured the boat if we had sold in June of 2009, and you get $14250.
That being the case, I emailed Phil Berman after the closing of the sale. I suggested that, having been the agent of costing us over $14000, perhaps he would see his way to reimbursing us just 10% (remember the commission rate?) of the money we lost due to his assurance that he could get us more money. [And that doesn’t include the time and money we lost waiting around for the boat to sell for over eight months, waiting to recoup the funds necessary to find another home.] I told Phil that I would feel he actually cared, that he accepted some responsibility for our eight months of suspension, if he would send us a check for a mere $1400. I fully expected him to refuse - as he did refuse - but wanted to see if he was man enough to step up to the plate. He wasn’t.
I’ve mentioned the fact that we were at the bottom of the monetary range Phil and The Multihull Company deals in. Phil buys and sells boats in the range from several hundred thousand to over a million dollars. He frequently flies to France to purchase catamarans and to transport them, or arrange their transportation, back to the United States. He is a dealer of the Dolphin line of catamarans (well-made, but expensive), and - even in these uncertain times - has significant income. I’m no socialist. I don’t believe Phil “owes” me money simply because he has more than I do. However, I do believe he could easily afford to reimburse me for a measly 10% of the loss he caused me. As I told him, if I had not insisted at the start that I was willing to settle for $120,000 net, I would take full responsibility for not accepting the first offer that came through. Since he assured me that he could get us another five thousand, and advised us to turn down that offer, I feel he needs to take some responsibility.
Might this have happened with another brokerage besides The Multihull Company? Of course. But do you want to take a chance of having the same bad experience we did with this company? Do you think we were dealt with fairly? Consider this: Darrel McDaniels is a very pleasant fellow who is also always willing to talk to you and discuss the issues involved in buying and selling a catamaran. But call you when he says he will? Often he didn’t. He was “busy” and just wasn’t able to do so. He promised to get a refund of the last slip fee (the boat sale closed February 12, 2010, so we got a prorated refund), but we had to call him ourselves - after the sale had closed. We were never called to be told that the sale had actually closed, and only knew it had because the funds were deposited in our bank. Not to mention taking off without showing us anything about the boat when we bought it in the first place.
So, our dream was destroyed. By being told the boat was in good condition by a surveyor who should have known better. By running through our savings making repairs we shouldn’t have needed to make. By experiencing frustration instead of fun for the seven months we spent in Florida and the Bahamas. Finally, the loss of money involved (approximately $80,000 when we add up all the costs and expenses involved in buying, owning for seven months, and selling the boat , not including living expenses) without having enjoyed much of that seven months.
Do yourself a favor. Research the various boat brokerages. Ask about commissions, what services are provided and which aren’t. Then take all of that with a large grain of salt, as some of those services they say they will provide may fall by the wayside, once the company has its money. Consider whether or not you want to risk having your dream derailed or destroyed by buying a boat that should have been rejected, and would have been if the company involved had provided the knowledge and experience you simply cannot bring to this process, that you trust them to provide. Maybe the Multihull Company, Inc. at multihullcompany.com shouldn’t be your first choice.
