Re: Owner does not have Title in Hands
I was out in my boat today too! Not exactly 70 here today, but not a bad day!
While we are talking about this issue, there is another scenario that sometimes comes up - that of a seller with current papers, but you know something just doesn't "compute" about them.
I recently passed on a boat, because of this. It was a clone of an 18' Boston Whaler Outrage. It looked just like the BW, but was missing a few things that the Whalers have, plus it had a 20" transom and Whaler never made an 18' Outrage with anything other than a 25" transom. The boat made me so curious, that I called BW twice to get info. They had no idea what the boat is, but based on my description, said that it wasn't a BW.
The seller told me that it is a Seasport and has a current registration with that info on it. The HIN begins with SSB, which is the correct identifier for a Seasport. The problem is that the HIN looks like it has been altered and I can find no information at all, suggesting that Seasport ever made a Whaler clone. Further, there are a number of manufacturers who have made clones of the old Whaler Montauk hulls, but I have never seen one of the Outrage hulls.
In this case, I don't believe that the current seller knows that the boat is bogus. This case is not one of feeling like the guy is trying to pull one over on me. What I believe happened, is that he unwittingly bought a stolen boat and/or a boat that someone built from a mold of a real Outrage hull.
My philosophy is that walking away from a boat that has obvious or apparent paperwork problems, is generally a good idea. There are just too many headaches that can come up later. This is especially true in a case like yours, where a seller was obviously trying to "buffalo" you, in regard to the paperwork.
???
