Marine Surveying Explained with David Pestridge

Summary

Marine surveying is a fascinating part of the surveying profession that many people never hear about.

In this episode, Nina Young speaks with David Pestridge, marine surveyor and owner of White Hat Marine Surveying. David shares what life is really like inspecting yachts, narrowboats, and barges across the UK.

From pre-purchase inspections to identifying serious structural defects, David explains the realities of marine surveying and how the role shares many similarities with property surveying.

They also discuss the importance of inspection routines, report writing, communication skills, and professional judgement.

Along the way, David shares some memorable stories from the field and explains why he is passionate about helping people understand boats and the marine surveying profession.

What We Cover

• David’s journey from army engineer to marine surveyor
• What marine surveyors inspect on boats and yachts
• The process of a pre-purchase boat survey
• Why routine and consistency matter in inspections
• Common defects include corrosion and fatigue
• Writing clear and defensible survey reports
• Managing difficult conversations with clients and sellers
• The realities of working outdoors and travelling for surveys
• Advice for people interested in marine surveying careers
• Educating boat buyers through guides and YouTube

Guest Links

David Pestridge LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpestridge

Useful Links

• International Institute of Marine Surveying (IIMS) - https://www.iims.org.uk
• Free ebook: How to Buy Your First Boat https://boatchat.beehiiv.com/products/how-to-buy-your-first-boat

Guest Bio

David Pestridge is a marine surveyor and the owner of White Hat Marine Surveying. He specialises in surveys of yachts, motorboats, narrowboats, and barges across the UK.

Before becoming a surveyor, David served for 17 years in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as an engineering officer. After leaving the army in 2008, he retrained as a marine surveyor and has since built a successful practice inspecting boats for buyers, owners, and insurers.

David is also Deputy Vice President of the International Institute of Marine Surveyors and is passionate about improving standards across the profession. Through his writing, YouTube channel, and educational resources, he helps boat owners and aspiring surveyors better understand marine surveying and boat inspection.

If you want to connect with surveyors across the UK and keep up with the profession, join The Surveying Room. It is free to join and open to all types of surveyors, students, and professionals who work with them. Surveyors UK & The Surveying Room  

Connect with me - Nina Young on LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello and welcome. You're listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I'm Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let's dive into our latest episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to This Is Surveying. Today's guest is David Pestridge. Welcome, David. Hi Nina, thanks for having me on. Super to have you on, David. I have honestly been looking forward to this one because you are, in fact, a marine surveyor and the owner of White Hat Marine Surveying, which I can clearly see here on your on your top. And also the Deputy Vice President of the International Institute of Marine Surveyors. And also David is many other things which you are going to hear about. And I'm very interested to hear the things that David gets up to because I've been following David for about a year on social media, and I must admit, he's one of the most prolific, best marketing surveyors I have ever known. So welcome, David. What's about you, really?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, by way of way of introduction, I'm I'm a reed surveyor. That means I look at uh yachts and small crafts. In the UK, that's pretty much defined as anything under 24 metres. And I've been doing that since I left the army in 2008. So my workload is mostly either pre-purchase or reinsurance surveys of yachts, motorboats, narrowboats, the occasional houseboat and big old Dutch barges. I came to this um from a 17-year career in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as an engineering officer. And I left the Army in 2008 without a really clear idea what about what I was going to do. And at the time I was helping do the amphibious trials for RFA Mounts Bay. And the chief engineer said to me, Well, I think it's pretty obvious what you should go and do. You're a chartered engineering yacht master, become a Marine Surveyor. Okay, then? I said. So I went and looked into it and did a year-long diploma with the IMS, and here I am, 18 years later, still going around looking at boats for people.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Yeah, super. Great intro. Thank you. So do you travel all over the UK? Do you ever go further afield? Or I'm interested in sort of the areas that you cover.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah, it's mostly southern half of England, really.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So so surveyors generally charge by unit length. So we'll charge a certain amount per foot or metre of the boat. And then we'll adjust that price depending on the age of the vessel, its complexity, with the depth of survey that's required, or and where it is. So no one's going to pay for me to go to London to look at a I live in Devon. No one's going to pay for me to go to London to look at a 26-foot yacht, but they will for a 26-meter Dutch barge. And that's kind of how it rolls.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I see. Okay. That makes sense. And are there, because it's one of those things, obviously I talk to surveyors across all areas, all disciplines. Are there many marine surveyors in the UK? Would you say?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

There are. There are. And they're quite quite clustered. I mean, I left the army in 2008, but my wife was still serving. So my my first eight years as a marine surveyor, kept moving house every two years, which is uh is not great for building a business. And for a while, um I was up on uh up on the Moray Firth, up in uh northern Scotland near Inverness, and I was the only surveyor up there, which was great. So I kind of had the market to myself, which was lovely. Uh and and every now and then I get a phone call from someone up there because some pages on Google still think I'm up there. Whereas down here, down here in Devon, oh, there's a few surveyors down here in Devon. It gets a bit more crowded once you get up to Southampton, Portsmouth, up to the Hamble and rivers like that. But I think, yeah, as in any industry, you make a name for yourself and sort of slowly that repeat business starts to come in. You know, I do a job for you, you tell your three friends one buys a boat the next year. And that kind of takes a while, that inertia to get things rolling takes a little bit of getting going. But I've been down in Devon now for 12 years now. So I'm doing quite well, don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So if I was to buy a boat, where do people go to find out? Like if if I needed to find a marine surveyor, where'd where do you go?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Plenty of the map uh are online, so you can find do sort of a general sort of search of marine surveyors in your area. So Google Maps can be quite useful because most surveyors, I have a Google Maps reviews page where people can find you on that. I'm also through the IIMS, we have uh an online surveyor search function. So you can search for any of our 1,000 members all around the world and decide whether you want large ship surveyor or small craft surveyor, and then you just dive straight in and it just brings them all up on a map. And you can either find the one that's closest to you or scroll through. Um what I always say to people is you don't always try and find the surveyor that's closest to you. You know, good surveyors travel because clients are willing to pay for them to travel, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Totally agree with that. I think that's the same across most most surveying. Can you just explain a bit more about when you said about the different types of boats that like so within marine surveying, you've got different categories that you do. What are those?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, very much so. So within the IIMS, we kind of break our membership down into two halves, really, the big ship guys and the small craft guys. And so across those two disciplines, it's small craft, you'll find some surveyors will only do fiberglass boats, some surveyors are inland waterways uh surveys because they're up in the Midlands, and that's pretty much all you've got access to.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

On the canals. If you're on the Norfolk Broads, you'll be getting a nice mixture of boats. If you're down on the Hamble, it's probably all going to be fiberglass yachts and motor boats. So your surveying workload is very much kind of driven by where you are and the type of boating that's done around you. So for instance, down here, I I'm I'm the only kind of like a recognised barge surveyor in Devon, but there aren't many barges here. But if the the ones that are here, I'll get the phone call saying, right, we've got an 80-foot dumb barge tucked to the top of some river, and that brings with it real challenges. Whereas other times it's very easy to access the boat. It's on it's at a marina down in Plymouth or Falmouth or Dartmouth. And you just go and find a way. So, yeah, there's the concentration of surveyors around the coast and in land, yeah, there's there's clusters of us, I think, is the best thing to say.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

It makes sense, actually, doesn't it? Where the boats are, the type of boats that there are, it's like property as well. Types of property, like thatch houses are only in certain parts of the UK.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, I'm saying that I live 600 feet up on the western edge of Dartmoor. There's no boats there.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, that's that's that's why, like most of us, have to travel.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So, how many surveys would you say you do a week?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

You know, is that a I try and limit it to two weeks. Uh simply simply because, you know, let's say I come and do a survey for you, you're looking to buy a nice 36-foot yacht. I'll spend a day on board the boat. On bigger boats, I might need two days on board to get around all of the complex systems that are sort of hidden away behind the floors and the cupboards. And then I'll come home and I'll spend two days writing about it. So for me, each survey is a three or four-day evolution. So if I try and limit it to two in a week, that's great. And usually the scheduling allows me to do that. Sometimes I can't get around that. And if I have to do three in a week, then when you when you start writing up the reports, you start to trip over yourself and go, oh, which one had that? Hmm. And yeah, you take notes on the day, you see photographs, but sometimes just that little bit of knowledge inside the head can catch you out when you go, I can't remember which one had the dodgy bilge pump.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Self-limiting it to two a week is kind of a good self-preservation mechanism.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

No, it makes sense for that amount of reporting as well that you have to do over two days. And that out that the old uh reflective. So you reflect on something, sleep on it next day, you're like, oh, hang on a minute. Your brain's sort of yeah. So with regards to the actual surveys, so I'm and you'll forgive me if I keep comparing to property surveys, but I kind of concede similarities. But I'm curious about valuations. Did you mention that you do valuations? So you can just do it. Do you do it whereby you can simply have like a valuation, that's one price, you have a certain level of survey. I'm trying to think, do you have different levels?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Or yeah, so before you can give a quote for any survey, you need to understand what the client wants from you, what it what is the output. Evaluation done by itself is tricky for a surveyor. And the way I often describe evaluation is a broker comes at evaluation for a boat knowing not much about the boat, but everything about the market, whereas a surveyor comes at evaluation for a boat knowing everything about the boat, but not much about the market. So you the two of us come at come at evaluation from a very different perspective. And you can only do that as a surveyor if you've actually taken the time to go and get to know the boat properly, which means a survey. Doing a valuation without a survey as a marine surveyor is, I find not a particularly useful exercise.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, okay. So you think the hole's dropping out the bottom? It's not going to be worth a penny, is it? It's not going to be worth anything. And what is a typical routine for you? So do you like the thing I always think outside in, inside out, this kind of thing with the boat? What do you tend to start with?

SPEAKER_01 8:50

So this is what we call the survey routine. And so um every year I yeah, I get involved in training some new surveyors and I always kind of impress upon them the importance of having a survey routine. So I've got a survey checklist, which is 19 pages long. That's a it's a pretty generic checklist I can use on any type of boat. Some sections will be applicable only to yachts, other sections will be only applicable to motorboats, and yeah, you just kind of work out which sections you need on the day. If we assume the boat is out of the water, then my basic routine is to do the outside first, do the hull on the outside, then look at the stern, stone, get the rudder, the props, the prop shafts, all that sort of stuff. Then I'll go on deck and do the deck, all the deck fittings. I might look at the if it's a sailing yacht, I'll then do the rig, have a look at the sails if they're on the mast, or I'll have to see those later. Then I'll go inside, I'll do the inside of the boat, look at the engine, look at all the uh domestic infrastructure, all the pipe work for all the tanks and all the pumps and everything else, and then look at all the electronics, and then finally I'll finish with the safety equipment. So having that sort of routine laid out from start to finish in my checklist is really important because sometimes you can't start because the boat's in the water. So you have to.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

That's what I was going to ask about that. Is it is it a case of do you literally get in the water and have a look at underneath, or do you get the boat lifted out?

SPEAKER_01 10:05

In an ideal world, I would get to see the boat both in the water and out the water and take it to sea or run up and down the river. But every survey is a compromise. There's generally something you can't do or test.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

And so something I really try and get across to surveyors is it's as important to write about what you could not access and could not test as it is to write about what you did access and did test, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, limitations of inspection.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Yeah, very much so. And it's something as as a new, newly qualified surveyor. So here's the story. So I sometimes, just for a laugh, reread some of my very early survey reports. And at the time, yeah, I was a I was a chartered engineer. I've got a diploma in yacht small craft survey. I assumed I was doing a pretty good job writing my reports, blah, blah, blah. And now, 18 years down the line, and I get to see surveyors' reports from all over the world when they apply to upgrade their membership in the IIMS. So I read a lot of reports, and I now sometimes reread some of my very early reports and just how how on earth, how on earth am I still in business and writing? And yeah, at the time I thought they were good reports. And because I did I didn't know what I didn't know. That whole Jihari window thing. There are things and things you don't know, you don't know. Because over time you get better and better. And so yeah, I can read other surveyor's reports and go, I noticed they're not mentioned any testing of that or looking at this and so on. And that's as you grow in your skill set, having that survey routine just keeps you honest to make sure you check everything on the day. That's a really important part of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Okay, consistency. Is other things that you find really common issues with boats, common defects or whatever you call them? I don't think it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Roughly universal?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Until I'll find out on every boat. Age, wear and tear. All boats are complex things. Even the most basic of boats is a relatively complex structure. And once you start adding one or two engines, you start adding a sailing rig, you start adding all the what a fancy interior, all the nice things that make a big, a nice, big, comfortable hubbergrassi 43 that can cross an ocean is full of stuff to make your life comfortable. But that's a lot of stuff that can go wrong. And I think that's the key thing, is wear and tear and corrosion and fatigue. Those those are kind of like the biggest killers in all boats. And keeping on top of that and understanding how the boat, how well your boat is aging, is probably something I spend a lot of my time explaining, particularly to people down in the southwest with older boats like Westerlies and things like that. Well laid up, thick hulled boats that can last for half a century or more, but you've just got to keep on top of all of the bits that can go wrong, not just the hull.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

I see. So part of your reporting also gives what guidance, advice on the maintenance of the boat as well, or the cost, the ongoing costs.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, exactly. So try to. So the idea is that if we assume we're doing a pre-purchase survey and you're looking to buy a boat, kind of the main output from that is the defects list, which you could you could look at as a to-do list. And depending on the seriousness of the defects you find, if you're buying a boat, that might offer you scope for negotiation on price, or maybe to negotiate with the seller to get certain things done or fixed, or it just it's a it's a tool to help you when you're when you're buying your boat. And you know, I prioritize those defects according to the severity of the impact on the safety of the vessel and its crew, but also on the insurability of the vessel. So, for example, for example, on a on a sailing yacht, yeah, the mast is held up by what we call the standing rigging. Typically, stainless steel wires or rods that hold the mast upright. Now, stainless steel wire doesn't corrode well, if that makes sense. It'll start to start to throw it away, and then you don't get that nice sort of predictive stretch to go, ah, the rig is here, it'll just snap.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

It'll just snap.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

And the mast comes down. So most insurers will say, Yeah, I need to change the standing rig and change those wires every 10, 12 years. Typically, it's a good average. So on a survey, you want to know how old is the rig. And if you don't know how old the rig is or the seller doesn't know, then you've got to come to a sort of a reasoned conclusion to say, okay, this boat needs the rig checked by professional rigger within six months, two years, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

See. Something just come to mind. So obviously, there are a lot of companies around the UK that what they do is like estate agents, they're selling boats. How do you work with them or do you work with them? That kind of thing. I'm just thinking of estate agents that will mention surveyors or they don't, or they don't want surveyors involved because they don't want them to pick up on the defects. Is that similar in boats?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Does that mean there's there's bits of that? So I'm I'm in a very independent surveyor. So um most established brokers will have what we call a surveyors list. And that is generally a list of surveyors that they know to be operating in the area, competent, accredited, adjured, whatever their parameters are, most brokers will have a list of surveyors that they recommend. Some some brokers' lists are harder to get onto than others, I think is is kind of the polite way of putting that. If I'm on a broker's list, that's great. I'd I'd never strive to be. I'd far rather someone found me through searching either the IMS or online and finding me going, yep, that's the one I want. And I think for me that's that's kind of the best way. Or better still, yeah, a former client recommends me to another bow buyer.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, it's the best, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

It is, it is. And and there is there are some yards where I know I'll never get work because I I'm in the wrong trade body, or they they prefer surveyors who maybe less fastidious.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, yeah, this all resonates.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

It does, yeah. And yes, it's true in Indian Street. I'm I'm not here to not here to moan about that. That is what it is. You know, and I think my advice to all new surveyors is just do the best you can, as we used to say, it's called play with a straight back.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah, absolutely. So, how would you how do you go about getting into this? If someone like is listening and is like, oh, I'm interested in being a marine surveyor, where'd you start?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Uh you might be surprised to know that if you wish to, you could call yourself a marine surveyor tomorrow and start training. There's no requirement for any qualifications, there's no registration process, there's nothing. You can quite literally set up your own business, call yourself a marine surveyor, and off you go. You might not last very long until you get sued, and that's that's really the challenge. So my advice to most people is is yeah, consider whether they need training. Not all do. If you've come from a career spent at sea as a marine engineer, you probably don't need much retraining to set yourself up as a marine surveyor. So when you when you come ashore from your final job. But conversely, if you've never been on a sailing note before, then yeah, maybe you're going to do familiarisation with rigs and sails. So you can look at those bits of a boat and go, okay, and come to a reasonable conclusion. Yeah. But other than that, no, insurance is important. There are some surveyors out there who practice without insurance. I think that's quite a brave move because you know we often describe marine surveying as a low-fee, high-risk business, in that I fee maybe several hundred pounds for a survey, yet my liability may run into several tens of thousands of pounds.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah, insurance is a common thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Insurance is a key part of that.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yeah. And that's one of the biggest pain points I hear across survey is your professional indemnity insurance.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

I tend to measure how many surveys it's going to take me to do to pay my premium.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

And then I kind of use my premium to set my minimum fee, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Okay. So that's interesting. So there isn't like anyone could just set up and it's not like in valuation in uh in property, you have to be a child surveyor to do valuation. So, what does the IMS do? I'm interested in to understand more about the IMS, a professional body.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, so the IMS is a professional marine surveying body. We only use marine surveyors, large ship and small craft. And you know, we bring all the usual benefits of being in a large trade organization, regular newsletters, CPD opportunities, a head office to manage things, which is yeah, it's all part and parcel of what we're doing. But for me, the IMS is we're we're trying to kind of develop a through life pathway for surveyors. Okay. So we do we do training courses for both large ship and small craft. We bring our people through those things. We offer them practical training weeks, we offer services to sort of mentor them and guide them on the early part of their journey, help them improve their reports. We do a report writing course that that that uh is run four or five times a year to help improve the standard of writing of reports. Like I said earlier, I read a lot of reports from all around the world. Some of them are pretty ropey. You know, so if we could improve the general standard of report writing amongst newer surveyors in particular, learning how to write defensively, as I say. Uh some surveyors get a lot of flack from the public for oh, the report's so full of caveats that didn't say anything. Caveating is important because it protects you legally, but it's also about helping people understand what you couldn't test on the day. Yeah, in an ideal world, if you if you want a perfect answer on the condition of a boat, let me take it apart and I'll tell you. But that's not very practical, is it?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

So is this like, okay, now that's that's really interesting to understand a bit more about them. So is that like, for example, when you go to boat, I think we we discussed this before we started recording. It's a case of you're not, you're like, what was the word? What was the phrase that you said? You kind of things that all are high level are general level.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Master of all, my jack of all trades, master of done, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

That was it, that was it. And then I'd refer to the the analogy of being a GP. And so it's the same thing in boats.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, very much so. I mean, yeah, I know my way around it. I'm a charter mechanical engineer, so yeah, I know my way around an engine room, I know I I know what to look for on engines, but that doesn't mean I'm the Volvo Penter expert with a diagnostic laptop who can plug it in and do the real detailed stuff. The job of a marine survey is to look at it and go, do you know what? Like the GP, something's not right here, beyond my skill set to diagnose what it is today, and give the client a point to say, right, it's time to get the diagnostic laptop on, or maybe it's time to get the rigger up the mast to go and look at the quality, the quality of the standing rigging. And that's very much what we do is we try and understand as much about the condition of everything on the boat. Yeah. I know some surveyors who say, Oh, I don't do engines. And I I don't think that's a particularly defensible point of view. If you don't know enough about engines just to comment on it, then you should really be learning about it. And there are loads of courses out there you can do to help you do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Oh. Do you always, I'm guessing no, take boats out for a test trial? I'm just like, I was just thinking like a test.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah, if I can, I'll I reckon probably around about one in four surveys will involve a sea trail or a river trail, which is not a very high percentage. But sometimes, yeah, to lift a boat in and out costs several hundred pounds a time. So it's about i I often say that, yeah, every boat is a compromise, and every boat survey is a compromise. Yeah, you can't you can't go out and do everything. So on a on a bigger boat, higher value, then the clients normally more willing for me to pay for two days of my time. We then might be able to sequence in, let's go outside, get it out of the water, get the sales up, sail around a bit, see what that's like, put the engine through its paces, get a lifted out, look at it outside. So the better an answer you want, the more time it takes, and the more it's gonna cost.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Of course. Of course, that makes totally sense. And I'm I'm interested because I'm I always think that you must have some incredible stories. There must be there must be some amusing stories or something that you could share with us. Is there anything that you could share with us today that you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah, I mean probably the most dramatic thing is so there was a company called Springer Engineering who made narrowboats in the sort of 70s and 80s. And yeah, uh they were they were built to, you know, you know, a a very, very well-worked out spec, but that meant they built them out of relatively thin steel. And some of them have lasted well, some of them have been kept well painted, and they've got at sacrificial anodes fit on the outside, so they they've lasted well, others less so. And I was doing a survey of a spring of narrowboat that was out the out of the water, thankfully. And and we there's two ways of testing the thickness of the steel in a in a narrow boat. You can test it with an ultrasonic thickness meter, which you know, many surveyors will be familiar with the idea of those, but then the other one is to hit it with a hammer, or to give it its proper name to what we call percussion testing. But if you take a piece of if you take a piece of sound steel, you hit it with a hammer, it should kind of ring a bit like a bell. And yeah, when you when you hit it with a hammer, you get the the feel of the hammer comes back at you, the rebound, how much energy is absorbed, what the noise is like. And the thinner the steel gets, the more it starts to sound like. Like flicking an empty baked beans in. Yeah. So I started doing the uh bottom plate of this narrow boat, uh this yard, and uh I started at the back end and it was like ding ding ding crunch crunch. So I made two holes in the bottom of this narrow boat. And it was it was around about lunchtime in the yard, the yard was quite quiet, and then these these two heads appeared around the bow of the boat, which was the yard manager and the senior welder, and they sort of both looked at the boat and went, This sounds like it's gonna be the expensive one. I went, the bottom plate was was pretty, pretty, pretty ropey along its entire length. And of course, yeah, to replace the narrow the bottom plate on a narrow boat to that sort of size, it's gonna be between 10 and 16,000 pounds worth of work.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

So yeah, a a a big job, and this is a pre-purchased survey, so yeah, yeah, the client had to walk away. Yeah, that no one, yeah, you've got to be really keen on the boat to take on that sort of project as your first thing to spend that much money and never see, never see it. It's not like you're buying a beautifully varnished piece of wood that you can go past every day and just put your hand on and feel that you know where your money's gone.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

It's kind of not, is it? Is it? I mean, within sort of the market, do you find like like with other areas you have dips and troughs, like people because boats aren't cheap. So so how do you find is it seasonal?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

I don't really notice the seasonality, but in part that's because I'm a very, very general surveyor. So I do yachts, motorboats, narrow boats, and barges. So if you've got a steel-hulled boat, your insurer's going to want a re-survey done every five to seven years. So I do quite a bit of re-insurance work, pre-purchase work, pretty tied to the market. At the moment, I think 2026 is off to a slightly more positive start than 2025 was. But last year it was strange. It was like three months on, three months off. Three months on, it was a strange market. And I speak to quite a few brokers just over a cup of tea when I'm down doing their boats, and everyone's saying the same thing. There's there's a little bit more confidence in the market at the moment, but it's quite subdued.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

So do you do things like obviously you do full surveys, but do you ever do things which is like just a particular issue, like an engine problem or you need something looking at? Do you ever do anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, sometimes. So sometimes I quite often I get former clients for whom I did a full survey a year or three ago. They might say, right, this is the problem we've got at the moment. We'd appreciate your views. And then I would go along and then have a look at something very specific. So a good example would be I surveyed an old moody sailing yacht from the late 70s, which had a lot of what we call osmotic blistering. So the hull below the waterline is covered in blisters up to about something 15-20 mil in diameter, and they're full of this kind of like acid y liquid. This is a process called osmosis where water gets drawn into the laminate of the hull and finds pockets of uncured laminate, which then absorb the water, that creates the blister. Yeah, the easy way to treat this is to do a gel coat peel. So you take a gel coat peel and take it, take all of the gel coat off the outside of the boat, dry it out, and then build it back up again. Not difficult. And normally there are quite a few yards that do this work for people. It's quite expensive work. So my client who's also a child's energy said, I'll do it myself. So he did a shed in a boat yard, put a big top port in around the boat, put some heaters and dehumidifiers in and got got to work. So I've been going back to revisit the boat just to kind of take moisture readings and see how that work is progressing as the year goes on. So that's that's quite common, that sort of consultancy work.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Okay. So typical day, we've kind of touched upon like the typical week you do two surveys a week. I'm curious to know of everything you do, what do you enjoy the most?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah, all of it. I mean, people often say, Yeah, how do you describe your job? And I say, Well, people pay me to be a nosy engineer and go look at both of people, get to crawl around them, sometimes go and play with them, you know, blasting across Plymouth Sound in a fairline target 43 with both engines wide open. Oh, wow. You know, or or being out on a beautiful big, you know, category A sailing yacht, sails are up, just making progress down on the south coast. Other days I'm crawling around in the mud underneath an old houseboat.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Anyone who goes onto my YouTube channel will see the kind of the- I've seen you in overalls, that one in particular with the mud.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah, crawling around in the mud. Yeah, and I think that's the way I often describe it. You know, the office changes every day. And there's there's two offices. There's the one where the boat is, and there's the one that I'm standing in, you know, where I do all the writing. So the you know, the office changes every day, people change every day, uh, and you meet an ever-changing cast of people, you know. And I like meeting people and hearing their stories as well. So that's uh it's it's a really good line of work, but you've got to be willing to get dirty, you know, have sore knees because you spent too much of the day kneeling down, get wet, get cold.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

I guess it's the other thing. A surveyor said to me the other day, he said, we become a master at delivering bad news or uncomfortable news. Yeah, so like people must like fall in love with a boat. I can imagine that being quite an emotive thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

And it's interesting, I did a uh a small narrow boat uh up in the Midlands uh last year, I think it was. And um boats out of the water, and I'm starting to do my ultrasonic survey and very quickly realized this was going to be a walkaway recommendation. My client was there, so I was able to show him the numbers and keep give him a real feel for that. But also the seller was there. Now the seller had owned the boat for four years, and he was a bit surprised at the very thin readings we found on the boat. And I said to him, Did you get your boat surveyed when you bought it? And he didn't. So yeah, Paul Bloke came as a real sh real shock to him. He'd bought it on someone's recommendation. Oh, yeah, the boat's really good condition. And as it turned out, it wasn't. So he he he bought a lemon.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Sometimes you have to break bad, it's not necessarily to your client, sometimes it's to you know, someone else you've never met and had no dealings with before. So yeah, there's some there's an element of people management skills required.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Absolutely, communication as well. Like, yeah, it's I think it's one of those things that most survey is you you don't get trained for that. You there's no training on that. You just get thrown into these situations, you've got to deal with it, and it can be quite awkward.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

And it is, it's what yeah, that's that's that's part part of the draw is you know go to meet the brokers, getting on with them, you know. Yeah, I enjoy meeting lots of new people, which is great fun.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah, okay. What I would like to talk about before we uh wrap up for today is your some of the things we're talking about was with regards to a free e-book. So this is for members of the public. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Yeah, I mean, a lot of my clients over the years have been first-time buyers, and that's for narrow boats, sailing boats, motor boats. And obviously, a lot of the questions are quite common to all of them. And so I decided, you know, it's probably worth putting something down on paper to give to give for free to members of the public. Um so I I've written uh written a sort of about a 45-page long uh booklet called How to Buy Your First Boat, a very general book with advice on the boat buying process, whether it's a narrow boat, motorboat, or a yacht, just to try and answer those questions and help educate people about what to look for in an online advert, what to look for when you go and view a boat, how the process works, how to deal with a broker, what the stages are. But most importantly, it's to you know help people work out what's the right boat for them. And right means right for your skills, time and budget, which I think is a really key thing because a lot of people buy boats that are too big, they can't handle them, or they need lots of crew and they can't get crew, or they buy boats that can't do what they actually really want to do with the boat. So spending time just really working out what it is you want from your boat, what you want your boat to do helps you narrow down because there are all there are always loads of boats on the market. You need to work out which one's gonna be right for you. And so getting some good advice from that is really important. Yeah, so the book's free to download. Just search how to buy your first boat by David Peshridge, you'll probably find it.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Okay, cool. We'll we'll include all the links to everything that we discussed today, especially your YouTube channel as well.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yep, yeah, very much enjoyed. I mean, yeah, the mission I've I've got is yeah, is helping people understand boats better. And that's that's kind of what I do professionally. So I kind of it was about uh three years ago on a dog walk with a good friend of mine, and I was just sort of frustrated that how do you how do you sort of share your knowledge? And and he said just that he said, Oh, why don't you start a YouTube channel? At the time I laughed, but then I kind of looked into it and I've sort of started making little videos, and it just kind of become a kind of a background hobby, really, just trying to help people understand what surveyors do, what surveyors can and can't do, but also help people understand boats better.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

That's it, you do the whole thing, and that's what I've noticed with your well, also the newsletter as well, is that it's not just the public, you're also talking about the work you do. And that's I think that's interesting for everybody and uh and other surveyors, because I think marine surveying is one of those that I find isn't commonly talked about, like on social media or anywhere. And uh so when I come across someone like yourself, I was like, wow, suddenly you've got all these different media channels. And I I was really, really impressed. And I was like, I just want lots of other surveyors to to take note. So everyone that's listening today, check out David's blog, YouTube channel or LinkedIn. We'll probably it's okay for us to share a link to your LinkedIn because that's good if anyone's ever interested in becoming a marine surveyor. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we'd wrap up today, David?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, the key thing for me is yeah, as an industry, like like all industries, I started doing this when I was 38 when I left the army. And a lot of people said, oh, you're a bit young to be a marine surveyor, aren't you? And here I am now, eight years later. I'm in my mid-50s, and I still get oh, you're the surveyor. You're a bit young, aren't you? I'm in my mid-50s. And there's there's a real perception that it's a it's an old man's game. And I'm I kind of I've taken that as a slight sort of side mission to like, let's just show people what's involved. Now, I wouldn't say this is something you do fresh out of university, but certainly if you've got five or ten years relevant technical expertise in something to do with the maritime industry, you could probably become a marine surveyor. And kind of a part of what I do is is not only just helping people understand boats better, it's but also helping people understand marine surveying better as well, so that we might bring bring some more young talent into the group. Because I mean, across our institute, we're we're less than five percent women, 95% male. Yeah, we don't have I I did ask the head officers if they could give me a breakdown of people's ages, because I thought that'd be really interesting, but we don't have the data for that, which is a shame.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, because across um I think it was the RICS or but don't quote me on this anyone. But I think it the average age of surveyors across property, for example, is about 50-55. And that's young, because I'm just 50. This is young. We are young, David. We are definitely old. Absolutely, we are young. Okay, I I think, yeah, I think it's great what you're doing, and I definitely won't. I'm I'm looking forward to showing this one out because I know there's lots of people that be interested in this one, because you just don't hear or know about marine surveying. And there are so many similarities in what you do, the valuation, the defects, the dealing with people, the reporting, the process, the rigid consistency of applying a routine is applicable to so many other types of surveying. And I think um just goes to show. And you mentioned again about which most surveyors do on this podcast is about the importance of the people's skills or the interest in talking to people. And every day is a school day, every day is different, and I think I think it's great. And I think people need to check out your channels. You're you're an inspiration. Every time I come across you on LinkedIn, I'm good. They always watch your videos, they're just entertaining, especially that one when you're in the mud. Oh, I found that very funny. Yeah, under the house book, yeah. Indeed. But thank you very much for uh today, David. I really appreciate you coming on today.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Oh, thanks for inviting me on, yeah. It's been great fun. Super, thank you. Cheers. Bye now.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Thank you for listening to This Is Surveying. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and supports the work we're doing to raise awareness of the profession. You can also join the Surveying Room, the free and independent community from Surveys UK, bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and of course making surveying visible. Just head over to surveyors UK.com to learn more and join today. All the links discussed in today's episode are included in the show notes.