Survey dossier · Trieste · Since 2013

Pre-purchase yacht surveys for the Adriatic and the Mediterranean

We haul the boat, read the hull, sample the oil and take her to sea before you sign. GRP osmosis mapping, ultrasonic steel and aluminium thickness, engine oil spectrography and commercial charter compliance, from Trieste to the Ionian.

Request a survey Work a passage first ↓

Senior surveyor: Capt. Matteo Ferraro, IIMS
Home berth: Riva Nazario Sauro 12, Trieste
Survey grounds: Friuli, Veneto, Istria, Kvarner, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Ionian
Hull types: GRP solid & cored, steel, aluminium, wood-epoxy
Typical size: 9 to 40 m, motor and sail
Report language: English or Italian, same week

Folio C · Passage worksheet

Hull speed, D/L ratio & Mediterranean passage fuel

Put in the waterline, weight and engine figures from the listing or the builder’s spec sheet. The worksheet gives you theoretical hull speed, displacement-length ratio, Brewer comfort ratio, and the diesel you need for the leg with a 20% Bora reserve on top. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Theoretical hull speed: –
Displacement-length D/L: –
Brewer comfort ratio: –
Passage time: –
Burn on passage: –
Fuel to carry incl. 20% Bora reserve: –

D/L band: –

Watch-by-watch fuel log (4-hour watches)
Watch	Run NM	Burned L	Left in tanks L
Enter your figures above.

Hull speed uses 1.34 × √LWL. D/L is displacement in long tons divided by (0.01 × LWL)³. Comfort ratio is Ted Brewer’s formula. Diesel density is taken as 0.84 kg/L. Distances are rough coastal routings, not a passage plan. Plot your own track and check the forecast before you go.

Folio A · Hull form

Reading the lines before we read the hull

Every dossier opens with a drawing of the boat, even a rough one. It tells us where the load waterline sits, where the hull bears weight on the cradle, and where we will take thickness and moisture readings.

Lines plan as we annotate it on the dossier. The magenta line is the load waterline that drives hull speed. Brass circles are our default ultrasonic sounding stations on a steel or aluminium hull. On GRP the same stations become moisture and percussion points.

Folio B · Moisture

The osmosis grid

We chalk a grid on the bottom, read every cell with a capacitance meter, then go back to the high cells with a hammer, a scraper and, if the owner agrees, a small core sample. A meter on its own never condemns a hull.

A real grid has more cells than this, and every number is written on the hull in chalk as well as in the dossier. The pattern matters more than any single figure. Wet cells clustered aft of the keel stub on an older hull usually mean water has worked in around a past repair or the keel join, not that the whole laminate is failing.

Folio D · Method

What a EuroNautica condition survey covers

01
Paperwork first
Registration, builder’s plate, CE category and HIN/CIN checked against the hull itself. VAT status and any lien or mortgage records asked for before we travel.
02
Haul-out & dry time
Lift, pressure wash, then at least 48 hours ashore before moisture readings on GRP. A hull read straight out of the sling tells you about the wash, not the laminate.
03
Bottom & topsides
Capacitance moisture grid, percussion sounding for core delamination, blister sampling, gelcoat crazing at hard points and the hull-to-deck joint.
04
Steel & aluminium plate
Multi-echo ultrasonic thickness at fixed stations, read through the coating. Pitting at the boot top, around anodes and under the engine room bilge.
05
Running gear
Keel bolts and floors, rudder stock and bearing clearances, P-bracket and stern-tube wear, propeller pitch damage, sea-cocks worked open and shut.
06
Machinery & oil
Cold start, hours check, oil and coolant samples drawn warm for spectrographic analysis. Exhaust elbows, mounts, alignment and the smell of the bilge.
07
Sea trial
Full-load run, temperatures logged every five minutes, steering lock to lock, crash stop, and a vibration check at the revs the owner says the boat likes.
08
Charter readiness
If the boat will earn money: fire, life-saving and stability papers for commercial use, crew accommodation, and the flag or coding standard it must meet.

Sample sounding schedule · 21 m steel motor yacht, built 2004, surveyed Monfalcone
Station	Nominal mm	Measured mm	Diminution	Remark
Keel plate, frame 12	10.0	9.6	4%	Sound
Bottom, stbd, frame 18	6.0	5.7	5%	Sound
Engine room bilge, port	6.0	4.9	18%	Pitting under tray; recoat
Boot top, stbd, frame 30	5.0	4.6	8%	Anode shadow
Shell at sea chest	8.0	6.7	16%	Watch; re-sound in 24 months
Transom, centreline	5.0	4.8	4%	Sound

Folio E · From the surveyor

Notes by Capt. Matteo Ferraro

Most of the boats I survey are good boats. People hire a surveyor because they are afraid of the one bad boat, and that is fair. But the more useful work is telling a buyer what a good boat will cost to keep good, and which three jobs need doing before the first summer.

Hull speed is the first number I check against a listing. A 38 foot waterline gives a displacement hull about 8.3 knots. When an advert promises 12 knots of quiet cruising from the same hull, either the boat is semi-planing and burning far more fuel than the seller says, or the number came from a brochure. The calculator above exists because I got tired of doing that sum on the back of envelopes.

The Bora reserve is not a figure of speech. Our wind can go from nothing to 50 knots off the Karst in under an hour, and a boat punching back to Trieste or sheltering behind Cres can burn half again what the plan said. Twenty percent is my floor, not my ceiling.

On the oil: one sample tells you little. A sample that shows silicon and aluminium rising together, on an engine the seller says was rebuilt last year, tells you to ask for the invoice. I would rather you hear that from me in the yard than from a mechanic in August.

Folio F · Library

From the chartroom library

Longer pieces on the working life around boats: careers, money, pictures and the ferries that may yet empty the coast road.