The 360 Boat Care Protocol

What Not Knowing Costs

Every Season You Guess, Somebody Else Names The Price

A $15 impeller, billed back as a repower. It fails from sitting as readily as from running. Miss the warning in the first thirty seconds of a start and you are shopping for an engine, not a part.

A pair of gaskets, or $1,500 to $2,500 in risers. Exhaust risers rot from the inside where nobody looks. At year three in salt you either pull one and look, or you find out when raw water gets into a cylinder.

$300 of winterizing, or a block that starts north of $10,000. And freeze damage is normally excluded from the policy. The warm states file the most claims, because nobody down there expects to need it.

$1,650 for the boat, and thousands since. Nobody prices the year — slip, insurance, haul-out, bottom paint. Those barely move whether you paid four thousand for it or forty.

The marina wants a million in liability. On a thirty-year-old hull, and the carrier wants a current survey before it will write anything. This is where good deals quietly die.

A soft transom is around $3,000. Once the deck comes off, it is $8,000 to $20,000. On a boat you were about to buy for nine, and the price is the same either way.

The Whole Idea, In One Line

A Good Boat And A Money Pit Look Exactly Alike

Both are washed. Both start on the first turn, because he ran it that morning. The difference is inside the transom, under the deck and behind the exhaust riser — and every one of those places can be checked by a man standing in a driveway with a flashlight, in the time it takes to drink a coffee. Nobody ever writes those checks down in one place. This book is that one place.

The same goes for the engine. It does not die of hours — it dies of the calendar. Two identical engines out of the same factory: one is scrap at 1,100 hours and one is fine at 4,000, and what separated them was about a dozen habits, most of them under five minutes. The book is the inspection that keeps you out of the wrong boat, and then the calendar that keeps you in the right one.

What $27 Actually Buys You

211 pages, 77 illustrations, eight chapters and a one-page card for the garage wall — organized so you can act on it, not just read it.

The 5 Places Water Hides

Transom, stringers, deck core, flotation foam and bulkhead tabbing — where to look, what the stain means, and which one ends the visit.

The 10-Minute Walk-Around

Four things in your pocket, the knuckle walk, and the four times a hollow sound means nothing at all — plus the sentences that end a visit without an argument.

The First 30 Seconds Of A Cold Start

Why the hour meter lies, what the telltale stream and the smoke are telling you, how to read the gear lube before he dumps it, and what to insist on in a sea trial.

The Year, Line By Line

Slip by region, insurance and the survey that gates it, haul-out, bottom paint, anodes and fuel — the real annual number, and how big a reserve actually holds.

The 40 Habits That Decide 1,100 Hours Or 5,000

The flush that has to happen every time, oil by the calendar, the parts that expire in years rather than hours, bad gasoline, and winterizing that survives a claim.

The One-Page Card For The Garage Wall

Everything that decides a used boat, and everything that keeps one alive, on a single sheet you can photograph and take to the dock.

A Look Inside

See It Before You Buy It

Real pages from the book. Large type, honest photographs, and full-page charts you can read at arm's length on a dock.

Interior page: using raking light across a boat deck to reveal an old repair — Chapter One — reading a deck with raking light

Interior page: a full-page chart for building your own comparable-boat sheet — Chapter Five — pricing a boat against real comps

Everything In It, Part By Part

Part 1

Before You Hand Over A Dime

The ten-minute walk-around, then the full hour on the hull — transom, stringers, soaked foam, blisters, tanks and through-hulls — and the engine assessment that tells you what is actually left in it.

Part 2

What It Really Costs, And Buying It Right

The yearly number written out honestly, then what the boat is worth, when a survey pays for itself, the title and registration traps, and the trailer you are also buying.

Part 3

Making It Last

The thirty-day reset that makes another man's boat yours, then the yearly rhythm — the flush, the oil, bellows and risers, fuel that goes bad at ninety days, and winterizing.

Part 4

When It Goes Wrong, And When To Get Out

Five symptoms and what they really mean, the repower arithmetic, selling it for what it is worth instead of what you put into it — and the one-page card for the wall.

Before You Decide

No. Almost all of it is looking, listening and knowing the intervals. The whole inspection runs on a flashlight, a small screwdriver, a paper towel and your phone — about twenty-five dollars of gear, most of which is already in your kitchen drawer. Where a job genuinely belongs to a professional, the book says so plainly instead of pretending it is a weekend project.

Trailerable runabouts and bowriders, center consoles, cabin cruisers, pontoons, and trawlers and motor yachts up to around forty feet — outboard, sterndrive, gas inboard or diesel. It is not a sailing book: there is nothing in it about rigging, sails or spars. Prices, regulators and insurance practice are American throughout.

No, and it says so in the book. What it does is stop you paying nine hundred to eleven hundred dollars to have a professional tell you about a soft transom you could have found yourself in ten minutes — and then, when a boat is worth surveying, it tells you what a good survey covers and how to read the report. On anything you intend to insure or finance, hire one.

It is a PDF. The moment your payment clears, a download link is emailed to you, usually inside a minute. Read it on a phone, a tablet or a computer, or print the one-page card for the garage wall. The type is set large on purpose — this was written to be read at arm's length by somebody in their sixties or seventies.

A pre-purchase survey on a thirty-two footer runs nine hundred to eleven hundred dollars plus the haul-out. A set of exhaust risers runs fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred. A cracked block starts north of ten thousand. One walk-away from one bad boat pays for this several hundred times over — though what you save depends entirely on the boat in front of you and whether you act on what you find.

Because it is an instant digital download, all sales are final — that is the honest answer and it is why the pages above show you real spreads before you buy. If you hit a technical problem with your file or your download, email contact@liibro.com and we will make sure you get your copy. Full details in the Refund Policy.

Two Choices, And One Of Them Ends In A Boatyard

Option 1: Go and look at it on Saturday the way you always have. Walk around it twice, hear it start, like it, and pay. Then find out in June — in a yard, with a quote in your hand, for a boat you cannot sell for what you owe on the repair.

Option 2: Spend $27 tonight. Learn the ten-minute walk-around, the hour that decides it, the real yearly number, and the calendar that gets 5,000 hours out of an engine — and walk into that driveway knowing exactly what you are looking at.

What you get, today: 211 pages · 77 photographs, sketches and full-page charts · the 10-minute walk-around · the full hull inspection · the engine assessment and sea trial · the yearly cost, line by line · the paperwork traps · the 30-day reset · the maintenance calendar · the repower arithmetic · and the one-page card for the garage wall.

$27

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