The 1983 to 1987 Hunter 34 is a lot of boat for the money, but it is now a forty-year-old production cruiser with a handful of very specific weak points, several of them hidden. Use this list to decide whether a given boat is worth paying a surveyor to inspect.
Hunter buried a mild-steel angle-iron anchor in the hull with a stainless tie rod threaded into it, and water down the rod rusts that steel from the inside until the welded nut pulls through and drops the mast, so borescope the rod aperture or cut a 4-inch inspection port aft of each anchor.
Water from the mast-base wiring chase rots or crushes the wood in the overhead beam the post bears on, so lay a straightedge along the underside of the beam and look for any dimple, plus spider cracks radiating from the deck mast step.
The side decks are plywood-cored and the chainplate, stanchion, hatch, and portlight penetrations all leak into that core if not rebedded, so percussion-sound and meter around every fitting and walk the decks heel-to-toe feeling for give.
The iron keel shipped without adequate rust protection and opens a keel-to-hull seam (the smile) that drives salt water into the joint, so sight the joint hauled and inspect the five studs and backing plates in the bilge, worst at the forward pair under the shower pan.
On a forty-year-old boat assume the original wire is well past life, and because this B&R rig has no forward lower shrouds or inner forestay the headstay is the one non-redundant stay, so a furler failure can take the whole rig down.
The early rudders were too small and too weak and cracked, so confirm whether the boat has the original or the 1984-and-later high-performance blade, then shake the blade athwartships for play in the worn plastic lower bearing and sound it for water.
Early boats got aluminum tanks that corrode and weep diesel from the bottom where you cannot see, and the tank cannot come out through the lazarette (you must open the aft-cabin bulkhead), so factor that access labor into any replacement.
For salt-water use a raw-water-cooled Yanmar 3GMF is a corrosion liability, so verify heat-exchanger cooling and check the mixing elbow, raw-water pump, and stern gland on the sea trial.
Factory quality was uneven (one owner found hull-deck bolts never torqued) and the molded liner can trap stuffing-box or deck leaks between liner and hull so they never reach the bilge, meaning a dry bilge is not proof of a dry boat.
Practical Sailor flagged leaking ports and hatches plus molded locker lids and anchor-well covers that are too light and tend to crack, and every weeping port is another feeder into the side-deck core below it.
The full Hunter 34 volume walks every point in depth, with the fix costs, the service data, and the parts sources. Leave your email for the printable checklist and word the moment the doors open.