A surveyor's kit is small. Most of the work is looking, tapping, listening and writing it down. Tarn Kelsey, describing his days as a surveyor in Good Old Boat, sums up the tools as a note pad, a camera, test equipment and a computer. This is what fills that out.
The hammer
Kelsey sounds the hull with a phenolic or plastic hammer. A solid laminate and a cored one sound different, and a dull note where the rest rings means delamination or a wet core. He says any discrepancy is a cause for concern. Use it on the hull, the deck and the rudder, and mark what you find.
The moisture meter
Use a pinless meter. Bill Sandifer writes in Good Old Boat that pinless, capacitance meters are completely non-destructive and quick, and that you don't want a thousand pinpricks in a fibreglass hull. Pin meters suit wood. Practical Sailor tested five models: the Sovereign, Tramex Skipper, Caisson Novanex, Protimeter Aquant and Protimeter Surveymaster SM.
Kelsey uses his on the deck around chainplates. Sandifer adds tracing a leak back to a portlight and mapping a wet area in chalk before a repair.
How to read one without fooling yourself
The numbers are relative. Practical Sailor found that the scales on the meters aren't true moisture content in fibreglass, and notes that a fully saturated hull holds no more than 2.5 to 3.5 percent water. So:
- Take a baseline first. Read several dry areas of the topsides, then compare everything else to them. Both sources say the same.
- Get rid of the bottom paint. Scrape back to clean gelcoat. Graphite in black antifouling pushed one meter from about 5 to about 55 percent in Practical Sailor's tests.
- Watch for metal. The meter can't tell metal from moisture. Foil under a test panel read like wet paper, and steel webbing inside a rudder will do the same.
- Skip carbon fibre and frozen laminate. Every meter pegged on carbon, and Practical Sailor says not to trust readings below freezing.
- Dry the surface. Sandifer lists surface water, dew and even sweat as causes of false readings.
A high reading tells you where to tap and look harder. It's never the finding on its own. Our moisture readings log keeps the baseline and each reading together.
Electrical test gear
Kelsey checks shore power cables with a clamp-on amp meter for signs of AC leakage, and tests polarity, grounding, GFCI function and the battery charger. A multimeter covers battery voltage and charging. Our battery state of charge and wire size calculators turn those readings into a finding.
Mirror and light
Kelsey names places that can't be seen without a mirror, such as corrosion on the back of hose clamps. An inspection mirror and a good torch get you behind tanks and under engines.
Engine checks on the sea trial
On the sea trial Kelsey compares engine RPM to factory specifications, watches temperatures and confirms charging voltages. Our sea trial report template has a table for those readings, and the compression test calculator checks the spread if an engine surveyor runs one.
Camera and notes
Every finding needs a photo and a note of where, what, why it matters and what to do. That's the slowest part of the job: notes on a pad, photos on a phone, matched up at the desk later. Axsail does it on board. You talk through the boat, take photos as you go, and each photo lands on its finding in the draft report.