The boat that moves first is rarely the newest one on the dock. It is the one a buyer can verify. Ninety days is enough time to assemble that proof — the service file, the deferred-maintenance punch list, the title paperwork, and photographs of a finished boat — and the order you do it in matters more than anything else.
This is sequence, not spend. What each item runs depends on your boat, your yard and the season — which is why we price it against your actual vessel.
Days 90 to 60: build the file before you touch the boat
Start with paper, because paper takes the longest and needs nothing but your time. Pull every service invoice you have. Engine and generator hours with the printouts to back them. Oil analysis results. Haul-out and bottom-paint dates. Warranty work and what remains transferable. Electronics installs, with the model numbers. The survey from when you bought her, and any insurance survey since. Owner's manuals for every system aboard.
Sort it chronologically, scan it, and note the gaps honestly. A gap you can explain is a footnote. A gap discovered by a buyer's surveyor in week six is a negotiation.
The thing most sellers get wrong: they assemble this file after an offer, under a deadline, when every missing record has become a lever in somebody else's hand.
The mechanical list a surveyor will find anyway
A survey is not a mystery. Seacocks that no longer turn, weeping stuffing boxes, corroded hose clamps, chafed exhaust hose, tired batteries, expired safety gear, moisture at deck-hardware penetrations — these are the findings that come back on nearly every report, and every one of them is fixable on your schedule, at your yard, in the next two months.
Do them now and they are maintenance. Do them after survey and they are a discount request with a stranger's number attached.
Work by system, not by what is visible. The boat a buyer trusts has a dry bilge, a bright engine room, and nothing glowing amber on the panel.
One caution: do not open a project you cannot close. A half-finished re-wire reads worse than an honest, untouched original. If a job cannot be finished, tested and cleaned up before the photographer arrives, either commit to it or leave it alone and disclose it in writing.
Detailing versus refit — where the line actually sits
Detailing is presentation. Compound and wax, polished stainless, bilges cleaned to bare gelcoat, canvas washed, cushions square, and an interior that smells of nothing at all. It changes how the boat shows, and it belongs before the photographs.
Refit is a bet. A new electronics suite, a re-power, fresh canvas, new upholstery — these change the spec sheet, and whether they earn their keep depends on the model, its age, and what buyers in that class are actually cross-shopping. That conversation belongs before you commit, not after.
Buyers judge different boats on different things. A center console like the Boston Whaler 330 Outrage gets judged on engine hours, transom hardware and how the T-top has held up. A flybridge such as the Azimut Fly 53 gets judged on generator hours, air conditioning and the state of the teak. A power catamaran like the Aquila 46 Yacht gets judged on two of everything, which is twice the maintenance record to produce.
Photography and sea-trial readiness
The boat must be finished before the camera shows up. Strip personal gear, clear the decks, stow lines and fenders out of frame, align the hatches, light the engine room, and shoot on a clean-water day. Buyers open the engine room photo second, right after the profile shot.
Sea trial is its own preparation. Batteries strong, generator starting cold, air conditioning running at anchor, thrusters and tabs and autopilot all live, every screen booting without a fault code. The single most common mistake is making the season's first cold start on the morning of the buyer's sea trial.
Second caution: a system that fails during a sea trial reprices the boat in the buyer's mind far beyond what the repair is worth. Run a full shakedown — every system, under load, offshore — at least two weeks before you list, and fix what it surfaces.
Title and documentation: the part with a clock on it
For a federally documented vessel, a Certificate of Documentation becomes invalid immediately when ownership changes in whole or in part (46 CFR 67.167), so the exchange is the buyer's application to make. Your job is that everything the certificate rests on is already true. If the vessel name, hailing port or ownership structure has changed, 46 CFR 67.319 requires the owner to notify the Coast Guard within 30 days of the change — square that away before a buyer's lender reads the file.
If the boat ever carried a preferred mortgage, confirm the satisfaction was recorded. Under 46 CFR 67.265, the release must be signed by the mortgagee and recite the mortgagor and mortgagee names, the amount, and the book and page where the mortgage was recorded. Tracking down a lender who has since merged is a job measured in weeks.
Pull your own Abstract of Title early: 46 CFR 67.301 lets any person request one (form CG-1332) from the National Vessel Documentation Center. Whatever it shows, the buyer's lender will see the same thing.
State-titled boats have their own clock. Florida requires that no state-titled vessel be sold, assigned or transferred without providing the purchaser a valid certificate of title, and the transfer application filed within 30 days; a replacement title is mailed within five working days of the application. A footnote at day 90; a problem at closing.
What a listing looks like when this was skipped
You already know the profile: four photos on a gray afternoon with fenders hanging, hours listed as approximate, a name that does not match the certificate, and records promised on request. None of that means the boat is bad. It means the boat is unknown — and buyers discount the unknown far harder than they discount age.
Where we come in
We sit on the buyer's side of these deals every week, so we know which missing document stalls one and which finding gets used as leverage. Bring us the boat at day 90 rather than day 5: send the model, year, hours and your rough timing to TS@MintedYachts.com or call +1 (404) 805-9819, and we will tell you what to fix, what to leave, and what your specific hull is worth going in.