Re: Buying a boat...need advise
If you or anyone is still reading this about buying a boat in the 2500 range, let me give you some straight up advice. Either save your money to move up in price point or use it as a down payment for a higher price boat. I bought a 17 ft bow rider for $2800. The motor ran great, 4.3 L OMC, started up awesome and ran awesome ( still does to this day). First time out, i noticed she was taking in a little water. So i started to check periodically and ran my bilge pump several times through out the day to be safe. When I took it into the shop, I found out the the transom was rotted around the motor. The motor had to be pulled and the transom rebuilt. My $2800 boat ended up costing me 6500.00. Lesson learned; at the least, ask for a lake test, who sells a car and doesn't allow you to test drive it? if they say no, WALK AWAY. Request a buyers check, take it to a marine shop and from $100-300 dollars, have the marine shop check it out. If the seller says no, WALK AWAY Its worth it, I would have gladly paid $200 or $300 for a buyers check, instead of finding out I had $4000.00 in repairs after I bought it. Like these guys in the thread said, Don't buy based on looks, based on a nice stereo, based on a bunch of life jackets, tubes, skis...all that doesn't matter. If they say its being serviced regularly, ask for the paperwork, call the shop that the boat had previously been to and ask questions.Don't end up getting burned like I did. I learned a hard and valuable lesson.