“A surveyor should explain the likely cause or causes of gelcoat problems. This helps to keep the buyer from imagining something worse than the truth, possibly turning down the boat in a panic or being sold an overly drastic treatment by unscrupulous repairers." "I have yet to survey an imported boat in its twelfth year or beyond without finding at least one problem that was both serious and, with a bit more care in the construction, entirely avoidable." "I don't think there is a single recommendation I make more often in the survey of a fiberglass boat than that its deck hardware be given better backing plates." "If the boat doesn't break her paint on the seams, if no planks are loose or jutting out, and if all planking is tight against the frames and floors inside and smoothly contoured outside, she does not yet have a fastening problem."