Used Boat Sales Contracts Comparative Study

Vessel purchase is a very important activity in the shipping industry in which second-hand ship purchase acts as an indispensable role. The shipping industry in our country has become very large after years of developing. Under this background, China's second-hand ship purchase has been more active. The western second-hand ship purchase market has experienced a long time developing and has developed an advanced system in terms of contract model, participant, customs and regulations. Comparing with them, our market is still immature.Presently, most second-hand ship sales are contracted basing on the model contract which is drafted by Norwegian Shipbrokers' Association; moreover, the governing law is always Britain law which is quite different from Chinese law in many aspects. Second-hand ship sales involved a large amount of capital, and there exist many potential disputes in the whole process. NSF has been applies for decades and experienced several amendments with the changing market. Our negotiators often put themselves at a disadvantage because they don't have a deep enough comprehension with those extensive used contract models.Although there are not too many clauses to be handled, every piece of them is worthy of studying. However, the study of NSF is still not deep enough in our country. Regarding this problem, the author read a lot of materials from domestic and overseas, and study many cases in the history of second-hand ship sales. This article adopted comparing research method. The author compared different versions of NSF and also analyzed the Nippon 93 which is widely used in Asia perceiving the future development of shipping industry.With the comparing and analyzing, this article includes three main parts which are the initial negotiating clauses, the vessel inspecting clauses and the closing clauses. Three major issues have been discussed. The first issue is what is the different between these two versions of contracts. The second issue is what caused those amendments. The last issue is what effect is brought by those amendments. This article deeply studied the nature of deposit, the function of restrictive clauses. It recommended that we shall use clauses of different version in different situation. The author not only compared the initial and final version of NSF, but also found out the difference between Britain law and Chinese law in order to accord with the globalization trend of shipping industry.Through this article, the author hopes to give the readers a more comprehensive insight of NSF.