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Barney Sandeman: A yacht broker’s view of yacht sales

Five grand and a tender: The yacht broker Barney Sandeman discusses his love of classics, and the way of yacht sales.

About barney.

If you didn’t know who Barney was, you’d mistake him for a surfer, with his long blonde hair, blue eyes, tan and laid-back apparel. If you’ve been around classics long enough, you’ll have come across him somewhere, either in Britain or at the big regattas, as he’s trodden the waterfronts of many a far-flung location, like the Antigua classic   or the French ‘voiles’. Despite the surfer looks, he’s a pretty big name in boat brokerage, and has sold hundreds of classics over the years, including some of the most famous yachts in the world, like Fife’s schooner Altair. His brokerage, Sandeman Yacht Company, is based in the pretty old part of Poole in Dorset, just a few hundred yards from the sea, and from the front, it looks like a nice, well-kept old shop. It’s home to Barney (literally – he lives above), and, in working hours, to his partner in crime, Iain McAllister, a yacht-obsessed Scotsman whose great grandfather raced in the America’s Cup in 1887 aboard Thistle .

Barney grew up in Dorset, racing Cadets, Lasers and more in Poole Harbour. Although not “tactically astute enough” (he smiles here) to race in the Olympics, he was in the squad once, and has won national and European championships. After A Levels in the early 80s, he “ran away to sea” as a deckhand on a large Swan and was in St Martin when Bob Dylan’s schooner Water Pearl sailed in. This was an era just before the classics scene had got going, and seeing “something natural” like that sail in made a real impression. And before that, his mother was friends with the then-owners of the Fred Parker motor yacht Caramba (recently restored and featured in this magazine), and to this day, Barney refuses to sneer at a motorboat – “if it’s a lovely boat, then you’re out on a lovely boat” is his take. After a spell working in his father’s advertising company, Barney decided that if he was going to sell something, it had better be something he loved, and this brought him back to sailing, and after five or six years as a yacht broker, he set up Sandeman Yacht Company in 2004, specifically to sell classic yachts .

Buying and selling yachts

By this point, the present day had arrived, and sailing had changed: the marinas, once forests of masts bustling with activity as families would load up their yachts on a Friday night for a long weekend of sailing, had become quiet lowlands of large, white motorboats. But on a brighter note, the classics scene was well underway. In most ways, not much has changed since then. It’s still “heart over mind.” In terms of buyers, Barney doesn’t see many time-wasters, apart from the occasional late-night, wine-fuelled email of enquiry. “You can’t talk someone into buying a classic. You’ve got to want one already – it’s almost like it’s in your genes. There are so many things that can stop someone buying. Circumstances, weather, the ability to afford it… buying a yacht is the ultimate luxury… so it takes a real momentum to get over the line. It takes a pretty special person.” The good news is that this moment of lunacy is seldom regretted. Even the man who, after a quick Day Skipper course and without any ownership experience, bought a 60ft, twin-engined Silver motor yacht from the 1950s and motored it from Livorno to Cyprus with his son – albeit helped by having boatbuilder Will Stirling on board.

Barney is equally moved by those selling what is, for them, a family member. Someone might have owned a yacht for half a century, and when that happens, it’s not the boat they’re selling; it’s the memories. Aside from the history and beauty of the boats and the great zeal of those buying them, there is a standard process to observe, which starts with a first visit to the boat by Barney and the potential buyer. Sandeman Yacht Company is signed up to the Association of Brokers and Yacht Agents ( ABYA ), the standard bearer, whose rules stipulate – among other things – that offers are made subject to survey and sea trial. This was a source of some irritation to the famous Italian character Mario Pirri, who from the 1970s owned the fabulous 70ft, 1930s Fife yawl Latifa. “If you’re sat in a bar and you see a beautiful woman, you don’t ask for a structural survey before you sleep with her,” he appealed. The survey, which took three of four days, was nevertheless completed and the boat was sold. 

It’s not all easy sailing. “Honestly,” Barney sighs with a smile. “If I ever write a book, which no one will read, I’m calling it Five Grand and a Dinghy because every yacht sale seems to come down to the last £5,000 – and the tender!” Is it because the tender is a keepsake of a lost love, you might wonder? “No! It’s usually simpler than that. It’s like the light fittings in a house sale. I’ve had people spending more than £100k on a boat asking whether the outboard is included with the tender! There was one occasion where the owner spirited the tender away to the south of France after the sale. I had it brought back to the rightful owner – the new buyer – in a lorry!” 

If there’s one thing that upsets Barney, it’s the go-faster mania that has infected some classic fleets, particularly those racing under IRC, which frequently sport rules-friendly tall, high-aspect rigs, modern deck gear and sails of dubious colour. “We have a lot to learn from the car world,” he says. “If you turned up to Goodwood Revival in a Healey with a spoiler, you’d be laughed out of town. The irony is that on many of these suped-up yachts, you’ll see an old Beken photo below decks, showing what she looked like when launched. These modernised classics are in danger of losing the magic and just being slow, old boats. Keep them original, or as authentic as possible as they do in the Med under CIM rules, and they will be happier boats. They will sing, and people will be inspired, and stop to gaze when they see them.”

Visit the Sandeman Yacht Company website.

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