How much you wish to spend is an important question. I cannot give much budget advice except to say that prices tend to be negotiable. Once you know exactly what type of boat you are looking for, comparison-shopping will be much easier, especially when looking at price. The prospective buyer should remember that the advertised price is the basic price, not including options.

As you stroll through the boat show, you may find two similar looking boats for considerably different prices. This is usually because the more expensive boat is built using higher quality materials, such as leather instead of fabric for the seating and exotic woods for the interior. The need for extra quality is usually a personal choice; you can be reasonably confident that most production boats from the major builders are built to decent standards of reliability.

Of course, a higher price may also reflect a much higher standard on certain specifications, so you need to be careful to compare these specifications on all the boats you are looking at. Be sure to review the list of standard features against the list of options when comparing similar boats.

Then there is the discussion of where you are most likely to use the boat. If you are new to boating and without experience, I would suggest that you start off in sheltered waters. This way, you can build up your experience in boat handling without having to think about coping with waves. Handling bigger waves can come later. In sheltered waters, the hull design of the boat is not so critical and there can be a greater emphasis on the comfort aspects rather than the sea-going aspects.

For use at sea, you want a hull with a deep vee (the vee that is formed in the bottom of the hull that will cushion the ride in waves). The deeper this vee is, the more comfortable the ride will be in waves. The angle created by this vee is called the deadrise and for a good, sea-going boat it will be anything between 12° and 20°. If you are considering a purchase of a boat for being at sea, be sure to read magazine reports about its handling characteristics.

Check back in September 2008 for the second and final part of this article