Page updated: 3 October 2016
General Information
The conventional advice, found in books and magazines, on buying second hand boats will not repeated here. Instead this section of the site concentrates on information specific to the SeaHawk and the waters on which you may sail one.
Boat
Location
If you read the Forum you'll see that in 2011, a boat in the Scottish Highlands was sold to Latvia, a Suffolk boat went to Argyll, an East Devon boat to Kent and a Gloucestershire boat to Teesside. So, unless you are willing to wait a season or two, and with a possible exception for those who live in Norfolk, where most SeaHawks were built and many are still found, if you want a SeaHawk, you should be prepared to travel to buy one.
Before Arranging a Viewing
Apart from the standard questions that all boating magazines and books advise you to ask when arranging a viewing of a boat, and those you will have in mind after reading this site, add a couple more to your list.
Experienced buyers will know this but, as so often the SeaHawk is a "first boat", it's worth saying: Be prepared to be disappointed! Regardless of impressive, or apparently realistic, photographs, do ask when they were taken and the nature of the finish of the boat.
The trouble is that many owners don't take the decision to sell their boat until they have been left unused and even unvisited for a season and sometimes more. A boat needs constant attention to keep it looking good. The result is that photographs in adverts have often been taken a few years earlier, when a boat was in its prime. It may not be in that state any more.
Even when taken immediately before sale, you should bear in mind that cameras tend to over expose the white parts of a picture, making any hull or superstructure look unblemished, when, in reality, it is heavily marked. Anything largely white is notoriously difficult to photograph to show the "warts and all" situation. (Wedding cakes are the classic photographer's example of a difficult item to photograph for much the same reason. Typically, the detail of the intricate icing is lost in an over exposed image.) If the boat is not marked then you may also encounter the opposite situation, a boat hurriedly given a coat of paint at the wrong end of the season and without proper preparation. It will look good in a photograph but show brush marks and over-painting of the fittings when you visit, and worse, the paint may be ready to peel in weeks.
Boats for Sale
On This Site
See the For Sale section of the forum.On Other Sites
If you are looking for a boat locally then I am sure you will know your local yards and brokers.
If you can't find one locally then you'll want to look on the web. My recommendation to sellers is to try any or all of national, and international, sites listed here. All of these appear to have SeaHawks placed on them with reasonable regularity and the well presented boats typically being sold within a month or two depending on the time of year.
The links here should take to the various sites' search results for "seahawk". As there are other boats using the name, do expect to get a number of irrelevant results.