Help Me Prioritize

How would you prioritize the following items? I feel I need them all but like for most of us, cash is an issue. With that, what is most important - least important? Boat is used exclusively in lakes. Depth will go from 60' - 3' in the blink of an eye...LK Barkley, KY.

1. 2 Battery installed
2. Spare Prop
3. VHF Radio
4. Trailer spare tire
5. GPS Chartplotter

Re: Help Me Prioritize

My view is that spare prop and trailer tire are both important.

The other 3 items are "nice", but not essential. You could very well delay buying any of those until after getting some experience. Or never!

simple Kelly

Re: Help Me Prioritize

you just answered your own question....the depth is the one thing you seem most worried about.....

if you get the depth finder you wont need the prop right away....

its the most expencive...


depending on the size of the lake...its just a lake...a cell phone should work...untill you can find a good deal on the radio.

how bad are your tires?

rebuilt batterys are only 40 bucks...wires another 10.


the squeeky wheel gets the grease

cheers
oops

Re: Help Me Prioritize

1- spare prop
2-Spare trailer tire
3-Chartplotting GPS with Sonar(depth sounding and fish finding)
4-2 Batteries
5-VHF--with DSC

On a lake your cell phone should be fine, and I think it is more scary to be stuck in the middle of the lake(because of a damaged or missing prop) than to be stuck on the side of the road with a flat--you can always unhitch the trailer and still get around. The batteries were a toss-up because you didn't specify how big the boat was or how it was powered.

Re: Help Me Prioritize

from the results of you other post, keep the existing battery charged and serviced, 2 battery not a necessity. Barkley is a long narrow lake, cell phone will suffice for a while. do you really need a chart plotter. spare prop good idea. spare tire also good. both could save a day of boating. the tire especially, ever have a flat and can't get it fixed till monday. remote areas that can happen.

Re: Help Me Prioritize

If lake depth changes from deep to shallow in a heartbeat a locator/plotter/sounder will be of little use because when you notice the depth change, you will already be aground. These units cannot see "ahead". They can only tell you what you already passed over. It is certainly helpful when learning a lake so you can learn where the shallow waster starts and ends. They then can be helpful in that you can see the contour and avoid going wrong. My priorities are Spare tire (it doesn't need to be new or even a trailer tire if cash is that tight). At least it gets you off the road and out of a potential accident. Rather than a second battery, buy a jump start box at a garage sale or any of the tool sales that pop up in nearly every city. Spare prop is not essential unless you are on really big water with little other traffic and no means of communication. Again, used are very inexpensive. The rest is simply "bling".

Re: Help Me Prioritize

guess i'm with the others...
1 is the spare tire.... big bummer if ya can't get to the lake or home cause yer sol on the side of the road...

2 is the prop...... for the day that it goes from 60 to 3 feet and ya find that lone stone......

the other three are optional imho too... but i'd do

3 the battery... same notion as for the prop... that one day that ya play the stero to loud, to long......

4 chartplotter.... that uses electricity, would be nice

5 vhf... probably not even nessisary with cell phone tech as good as it is... check yer service and see how it is where ya boat at... look and see if anyone else has vhf too. if no one else is hip. you havin one will be irrelevant.....

of yer 5 that ya list. my used boat came w/o any of them too. so far i have the spare tire, the prop, and the vhf... i camp and boat on the missouri river and radio could be handy there. if i didn't do the river i'd not have bothered with it... don't know if i'll have two batt. ever, i'd have to be pretty inginious to put one anywhere. think i'd go silvertips idea of the jump box first. i'd like a chartplotter too, but i ain't drillin holes in my transom as it's clean now... i'd have to go for a gps only and do w/o the sonar part...