I made an offer on a boat and am trying to locate a qualified marine surveyor in connection with the purchase. My yacht broker gave me a list of three surveyors, but none of them are available to inspect the boat before the...
David Weil has been the proud author of the “Ask a Maritime Attorney” column in The Southern California Log Newspaper and Sea Magazine since 2006, with over 300 installments of the column. We have provided links in this section to those articles, covering a wide range of topics of interest to the California maritime and boating communities.
We are in the process of buying a new boat from a dealer, but we just learned that he filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy several days before we finalized the purchase agreement. Now his office is closed and he won’t return our...
Can Liens Go Unpaid When a Boat is ‘Arrested?’
May 11, 2009
I own a dive service and I have a lien against a boat that has been arrested by a bank. I don’t know anything about a vessel arrest, but I have recorded liens with the Coast Guard on other boats and I made sure to get this...
I own a 38 foot sailboat that I keep on a mooring in a local harbor. During a recent storm, my roller-furling jib somehow unfurled while the boat was on the mooring with no one aboard. I received a call from the Harbor...
Should I Sell My Boat Without a Broker?
April 15, 2009
I have been trying to sell my boat for almost a year, but in this economy, there has been little interest from prospective buyers. Last week, I received a letter from someone who said he had found my name in the Coast Guard...