Every claim checked. Every silence priced.
When you think you've found the one, the homework begins. Flying Out Friday does the deep reading first — the specs, the photos, the walkthrough video, this model's known trouble-spots, the 79-point Audit — so your own due diligence goes straight to what actually matters on this boat.
Why the name? You find her online midweek and start pricing flights. The Audit is the homework done before you book — so Friday is a viewing, not a gamble.
Dump the listing
The link, the photos, the walkthrough video, the broker's inventory PDF — however you've got it, our AI sorts it.
We read it like a surveyor
Every spec, every line of the description, every item on the inventory — plus every photo, read the way a rigorous surveyor reads them: a crack spidering out from a chainplate, a water-stained cabinet, a patch of worn antifouling. And every walkthrough video is mapped: where the camera went, in the seller's own order — and which of the areas a buyer needs to see it never entered. What a tour doesn't show tells you as much as what it does.
It cross-checks the model's intelligence
This exact model's known trouble-spots and real-world remediation costs, against decades of owner-forum history and hard-won field knowledge — what breaks on this boat, how it breaks, and what it costs to put right.
You get the leverage
The year-one remediation budget, the 5-year cost of ownership, an honest verdict — Buy, Negotiate, Caution or Walk, and the exact questions that separate a good buy from a money pit.
Breadth
A frontier AI that has read more owner-forum threads, survey write-ups and hard-won sea stories than any single surveyor could get through in a lifetime.
Discipline
A hand-built, human-vetted library of model-by-model intelligence, known trouble-spots, real-world costs, and how to read a photograph the way a surveyor does.
Conscience
It would rather refuse than guess. If we can't truly see the boat because what you give us isn't enough to build something genuinely useful, we will not sell you the Audit.
Owner & Sailor Networks
Cruisers Forum threads, model-specific owner associations, bluewater sailing groups and ocean passage-maker communities — the lived reality from people who have actually owned, lived aboard and sailed these exact hulls in all conditions, not a brochure's version of them.
Marine Survey Intelligence
A surveyor's method, codified into a model-specific risk map: the standard survey references (Casey, Pascoe) and SAMS/NAMS defect standards, cross-referenced against documented failure patterns and public casualty data, indexed by production-year variant. Where a fault is common on this exact hull, we know where to look.
Offshore & Delivery Intelligence
The published record of people who sail these boats hard — delivery skippers, offshore cruisers and circumnavigators. It tells us where a design excels, where it strains under load, and the handling limits owners learn the hard way.
Listing Intelligence
Structured extraction of every disclosed equipment item, service date and specification — then a systematic comparison against what a sailboat of this age and class should carry. What's missing matters as much as what's listed: silence in a listing is itself a signal.
Manufacturer & Class Records
Known production defects and design revisions between model years, drawn from builder documentation, class-association technical archives, and the fault patterns owners and refit yards report — so a weakness baked into a particular production run doesn't slip quietly past.
Insurance & Safety Standards
Marine underwriter requirements, offshore insurance and certification standards (World Sailing / ISAF special regulations), and the rules for the vessel's likely cruising grounds — the age cutoffs, rig-survey mandates and equipment thresholds that decide whether a boat is insurable offshore at all.
Specialist Trade Knowledge
What actually breaks on these systems, what a listing glosses over, and what the fixes really involve — drawn from the systems references (Nigel Calder), component-longevity data, and the trade threads where owners and the yards that service these boats compare notes.
Cost & Leverage Analysis
Every finding priced as parts, at professional supply prices you can check against your own yard — no invented labour rates, no book values. Every finding is ranked by how easily the seller can settle it, each with the document that would close it.
The 5-year cost of ownership
The asking price is just the down payment on the real cost. Mooring, insurance, sails and rigging on their true replacement clock, the engine's hours, the haul-outs — projected five years out, so you compare boats on what they'll actually cost to own, not just what they cost to buy. Almost no buyer works this out. The Audit does it for you.
Silence is a finding, not a gap
Sellers mention the good stuff — nobody forgets to list new rigging or a recent engine. So we check everything that should be disclosed on a boat of this age, type and construction against what the listing actually says, and rates the gaps. Chainplates unmentioned on a 35-year-old sloop is not an oversight; it's a question with critical stakes. What a listing chooses not to say is often the loudest thing in it — and this is the only Report that reads it.
All before you spend a dollar on a survey.
The Audit pays for itself whichever way it breaks — move on a genuinely good boat before the next buyer does, open with a sharper offer, or walk away clean, all before you fly out, haul out, or write the cheque. On a good boat you're not priced out — you're timed out.
Run the Audit →