Selling a boat is not as simple as it seems, most often the boat owner needs to deal with brokers and so forth.Thus you lose a fair amount of the monies you are hoping to make,through paying their commission on top of all the advertising which is also needed for a sale.

Yet if you are smart you will engage the services of ABL.com (American Boat Listing) and most of your problems will be solved. They are the number one place to go when you want to rid yourself of the headache and stress, which usually accompanies this venture.

Twenty years of experience and still going strong, American Boat Listing will take all the worries off yours shoulders and steer you in the right direction. They are the leaders in the used boat market, and know all the correct strategies to use for a successful boat sale.

Having such a large network of both boat sellers and buyers,they will show you how to benefit from the ABL’s value proposal tactics. In actual fact, ABL have been assisting millions of boat sellers and buyers since 1983.That’s quite a few years of experience indeed.

ABL sees you selling your boat directly to a buyer, without needing to fork out astronomical brokerage commissions. Now that’s a plus to start with. They’ve been helping to sell used boats from all areas of the United States, yes from one end to the other as well as world wide. What more could you ask for?

You will learn how to price your boat correctly, as well as be guided through all the nerve-racking legalities this entails. Selling a used boat successfully, comes with knowing how to present advertisements correctly.

You will need photos of your used boat as well as ads,which lure the potential boat buyer. Knowing how to word the ads correctly, can either make or break a boat sale.Talk to a few reputable boat dealers and learn exactly what the average market price for used boats which are similar to yours, go for.

Do some research and know exactly what price you should be asking, and how to get that price. Thus learn about value checks/pricing guidelines, as well as good sales tactics.Do not give any misleading information about your boat.

You can be held accountable for false advertising and charged with fraud. Present your boat in a an honest fashion, and detail any major faults that it has. In actual fact if your boat is a small boat, a broker would no doubt not wish to look at it anyway, as the commission is often too small for them.

Spruce the boat up and make it as appealing as possible. Buff it up as well as you can, a clean used boat always sells better than a neglected one.The best time to sell a boat is at the very beginning of the boating season,buyers are looking then you should be more successful.

Now don’t forget that once the boat is sold you need to cancel any insurance on it. That is now the new owner’s responsibility. There is a medley of things you will need to do to sell your boat, yet ABL will make this seem so easy.Paperwork and so forth.

Yet all this WILL be easy, when you put your boat selling into their trustworthy hands. So many people put their faith in ABL, because they prove themselves to be the number one on-line boat sellers time and time again.

Let then take the headache out of selling your used boat. Let then teach you all there is to know about on-line boat selling. You’ll be glad you did.

Portsmouth harbour is the main naval base in the UK and as such offers a fantastic variation of naval and pleasure craft. There are many ways to explore the harbour including harbour tour boats, ribs and even by Thames sailing barges. The harbour contains some world class sailing boats, the famous spinnaker tower and is home to many British destroyers and aircraft carriers.

The tour boats are a cheap way of getting around the harbour but they have to stick to a set route. They offer fixed prices per person with reduced rates for children. These trips generally take about an hour and cover the main areas of the harbour.

Another option is to charter a RIB (RIB Charter) (rigid inflatable boat) for the day. If you take some friends or family this actually works out great value for money and gives you the freedom to chose which parts of the harbour you visit. The Rib can be at your disposal all day and some are capable of over 50mph so you can be anywhere in the Solent in no time. Portsmouth harbour actually has a speed limit of 10 knots so if you hire a Rib and fancy doing some wave jumping and high speed turns you have to venture out of the harbour.

You can also tour the harbour in style on a Thames sailing barge. Thames sailing barges were initially used for carrying cargo up and down the Thames and from 60 to 100ft. Due to there shape, they have huge deck space and large areas beneath deck. As with the Rib you can chose where you visit and you are not restricted to Portsmouth harbour alone. Despite there large size the lack of a keel means that you are not restricted by shallow water which is handy as Portsmouth harbour is very tidal. Most of the sailing barges also have plenty of berths down below so you can even sleep on the boat and continue sailing the next morning.

What ever method you chose to explore the harbour you can almost guarantee a great day out with plenty to see and do. Rib and Thames barge charters give you more freedom and add another angle to the days fun but the tour boats offer a very cost effective method of exploring Portsmouth harbour.

Boat Maintenance Tips

There are many opportunities for boating fun available today. This is becoming a popular recreational activity and theres no reason why anyone should not take advantage of the benefits that recreational boating has to offer to any individual. While enjoying this activity, it is very important to maintain the boat that you own in order to maintain its performance and enhance the life of the boat to a certain level. This article shall help you out in recommending tips and tweaks to maintain you boat for optimum performance and overall great experience with you boat.

Winterizing your boat is very important for your boat before the summer season arrives back and your boat is again ready for summer boating fun. Applying anti-corrosion film on the engine is one of the important steps in order to protect the engine from extreme whether of winter. Anti-corrosion film is easily available from any boat accessory shop. Also for the preparation of winterizing your boat, it is also important to drain out the engine block and manifolds and fill the engine with anti-freeze stuff so that it is not damaged with extreme climate condition. You should also drain the gear oil and refill with fresh oil so there is no whether affect on it. Also it is very important to disconnect the battery/batteries of your boat and store somewhere warm so that they are not damaged due to moisture. Last but not least, keep you board covered all the season while it is not used and proper boat covering should be used for this purpose rather than custom covering for maximum protection.

Keep an eye on the engine and notice is performance to be well maintained after each use. Engine is the most critical part of the boat and thus needs to be maintained carefully on regular basis so that it is on its optimal condition performance and lasts long. Ignoring engine condition can lead you to expensive repairs at the end. Always carry spare part in case of short manual repair, which definitely should be knowledge based rather than self experimentation which can lead to greater damage. Keep an eye that engine never overheats and there is proper cooling supplied to it through water cooling. Keep a close eye on the temperature gauge, and shut the engine immediately down if it starts to overheat.

Other than self care, routine inspection should be conducted after specific interval of time for in depth engine care and repair. Make sure that you technician knows your boat model and engines well. Inexperienced hands can do damage then repair. One thing that is often ignored is to wear boat shoes rather than ordinary one while boating. Ordinary shoes can do damage to the boat so better prevent it by using boat shoes. Also try not to overfill your gas tank as it is not recommended by most of the manufacturers. All these considerations can greatly help your hobby to stay active and minimize the hassles of boat problems an unwanted repair costs.

You and your co-captain have read Chasing Sunsets and both are now convinced that ordinary people just like you can go cruising in comfort and safety. Then you read Steering You Straight and got all the real practical information you needed to prepare, but now let’s take a little time to make sure that you have the critical matters well in hand.

Be very careful about choosing a boat name. Names that are cute in the U.S. marinas lose a little luster in the real world of cruising. Think of the effect on Immigration and Customs officials when you tell them that your boat name is No Money or Runnin’ Away.

Cruisers become known by their boat name and then by their first name, seldom, if ever by their surname. For example, we, on Dolphin Spirit became “the Dolphins,” and the couples on Pilgrim and Osprey had the obvious applied. Skating close to the edge were the people on Gigolo.

Boat registration papers and passports are essential for those of us who like to cruise in a legal way. As a condition of entry, almost every country in the world requires a country, not a state, registration. U.S. flagged cruisers must be Federally registered if they are going to cruise beyond Mexico. Every person on board must have a valid passport, with an expiration date more than three months past the date of entry to any country. Check this before you leave, not one hour before landfall.

Be sure to take Medicine At Sea classes, as we did, and learn how to suture wounds, set bones, give injections, take blood pressure and perform heart transplants. Luckily, we never had to use these skills on ourselves, and the offer to use them on others resulted in miraculous recoveries before we even got to see the patient.

Your cruising boat is your home, where all the essentials and hopefully some of the luxuries of everyday living must be stored. The problem with storage on a boat, is that if you don’t have enough, it is very difficult and expensive to add more. If you can’t, that leads to the related problem of a very unhappy co-captain, a shortened cruise and a premature boat sale. Adequate storage that gets wet, or even damp, generally has the same result.

After learning the hard way, we developed a simple rule: load on board all the clothes, provisions and spare parts you think you need, then throw out half the clothes and half the food, and fill the spaces created with more spare parts. Food and clothes can always be purchased.

Remember that whatever spare parts you carry will always not include one very important item, and the only way to sure you have enough is to tow a clone of your boat along with you. I had finished rebuilding one of the toilets and was tightening the last of the hold-down bolts, when the toilet bowl cracked, right up the middle. Who carries a spare toilet bowl?

The world is littered with alcohol deserts. Because they exist, and because yachts have only limited storage areas, some of which have to be allocated to food and spares, it is as important to know where these are, as it is to know the hurricane and cyclone prone areas.

According to most of the cruising books and articles we read before sailing, self-steering mechanisms and pressure cookers were the most important pieces of equipment on board a boat. What a load of crap, but a great segue to what is truly the critical item in every cruising boat toilet paper.

More hours of anchorage cocktail time are spent discussing toilet paper than almost any other subject, apart from the clear leader, “Crazy cruisers we have met who are not in the cockpit this evening.” Everyone has their own theory about how many rolls should be carried, and the obvious pre-requisite of how many sheets per flush is acceptable.

There is nothing more desperate than the cruiser who has run out of reading material, approaching every new boat in an anchorage with the melancholy cry of, “Got any books to swap?” He is the one who quotes interesting paragraphs from the Furuno Radar Users Manual at cocktail time, and can be seen openly reading his wife’s Danielle Steele novels. The one thing we added to Dolphin Spirit that paid for itself over and over, was bookshelves, approximately 30 feet of bookshelves, and we filled them to overflowing.

Medicine, booze, spare parts, toilet paper, books, boat papers, boat names who said all you needed to go cruising was to know which direction is it towards the sunset?

The best way to generate new business is by referrals. It doesn’t matter whether your business is a hair salon, mortgage broker, boat sales, or anything inbetween. The most loyal customers you will ever receive will be the ones that were referred to you by another satisfied customer!

Not only are they more loyal (read: “repeat business”), but they are more likely to spend more initially than a customer that just walked in off the street, responded to a newspaper ad, cold call, or a trade magazine article.

Why are referrals so important to your business?

1. Referrals are believable from the very start. It’s not you selling your business, it’s a satisfied customer selling your business for you! When a close friend tells you about a certain business, your trust is immediately transferred to this company whether you have heard of them or not. In fact, many times, even if a person has had a negative experience with a company, then at a later date a friend recommends them to that same business, they will overlook their negative experience and give them a second try!

2. As mentioned previously, referrals to a business are found to spend more money. This has been proven time and time again. Why? People tend to refer other highly qualified individuals and not just people who are price shoppers or tire kickers.

3. The bottom line is that referrals are the most cost-effective way of advertising your business or product! In most cases it will cost very little. And in some cases the cost to you may be nothing! Either way, the cost will only be a fraction of the money you would normally spend on advertising.

In ALL businesses, your products or services WILL be chosen instead of the competition, merely because a friend recommended them.

If you are not getting the majority of your business through referrals then you may want to reconsider the ways you are treating your current customers. You see, your current customers should be treated like gold! They are the ones that ultimately pay your bills, and put food on your plate! DON’T TAKE THEM FOR GRANTED!!! Your customers should feel like they are the most respected and important people on the planet when dealing with you. The number one most important person in your business is your customers! Let me repeat that so there is absolutely no misunderstanding.

THE NUMBER ONE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN YOUR BUSINESS IS YOUR CUSTOMERS!

It is not the CEO, the board of directors, or the person who signs your paycheck. For without the customer, none of these people would exist.

Imagine if you can, that every one of your customers were so ecstatic and committed to your product or service, that they told all there friends. And then imagine that when their friends gave you their business, they told their friends. And so on, and so on… Your business would grow beyond your wildest hopes and dreams, and you would have more business than you knew what to do with. Isn’t that a problem everyone wished they had?!

This is what we refer to as referral marketing! It cost next to nothing, yet the rewards you reap will exceed any expectations you could ever conceive. A true WIN WIN situation. So remember how valuable your customer is today, tomorrow, and the next day. And treat them BETTER than even you expect to be treated.

Are you ready to take the next step…?