The Purchase Decision: When to Walk Away
How commitment traps form, how to price uncertainty, and which signals justify walking away even when you want the boat.
Read →Twice-monthly briefing
Signal-grade maritime intelligence, for real decisions.
A criticality-driven publication built from real ownership events: decisions, transitions, and failures with lasting consequences.
Start here
The three high-criticality reads
We are starting with three high-criticality articles designed to be bookmarked: clear frameworks, practical signals, and real-world consequences.
Ownership Setup & Compliance: The First 30 Days
Insurance, registration, documentation, and safety baseline. The quiet setup mistakes that later become catastrophic.
Read →Navigation Zone Change & Strategic Reassessment
Changing zones reshapes rules, costs, and risk exposure. This is not a logistical move. It’s a strategic decision.
Read →How we prioritize coverage
Boat Intelligence covers the full ownership lifecycle, ordered by criticality. We start with the moments where mistakes create immediate and lasting consequences. Lower-criticality phases are covered progressively, because they still matter over We prioritize sailing boats, while keeping the framework open to other vessel types. time.
High criticality
- Purchase Decision
When commitment locks in future risk: mispriced uncertainty, negotiation traps, and irreversible choices.
- Ownership Setup & Compliance
Insurance, registration, safety baseline, and paperwork failures that only “appear” after the incident, when it’s too late.
- Navigation Zone Change & Strategic Reassessment
A strategic rupture: different rules, different services, different exposure. Costs and risks shift faster than people expect.
- Major Technical Arbitrations
Big failures, expert disputes, immobilisation, and long uncertainty windows where bad decisions get very expensive.
- Fatigue, Transition, Sale & Transmission
The vigilance drop: handovers, fatigue, and transitions where weak points surface and failures cascade.
Medium criticality - covered next
- Incident, accident, or near-miss
- First year of ownership
Lower criticality - covered after
- Pre-purchase exploration
- Routine operations & maintenance
- Extended lay-up, storage & inactivity
Criticality does not mean important versus unimportant. It reflects how quickly a wrong decision can turn into real damage.