Re: how many people are driving rotten boats and dont know it?
I looked at a boat today, advertised as being 'rock solid', needs nothing. What I found was a 20' boat with railroad ties, (YES railroad ties), and 1/2" all thread holding the outboard on. The owner said and probably believed that was how it was supposed to be. He did say it had a pretty good leak, but he had fixed it with two new bilge pumps. The leak was probably where the garboard drain plug plate had fallen off and was hanging loose by one screw. The motor was an older 200HP Johnson, which ran great, the trailer was junk, in such poor shape I wouldn't even try to tow it. Putting my weight on the lower unit moved the entire transom about 5 inches, there was 5200 smeared all over the motor bracket, bolt holes and transom cap. The two bilge pumps were laying loose in the bilge on their sides wired direct to the two batteries which were dead. The sole had two layers of plywood over the original fiberglass, the cabin door was held together with wood glue and rusty L brackets. I really think the owner was clueless, he kept offering to take me out for a test run, but there was no way I'd take that thing to sea. The rollers on the trailer were indenting the hull so much that it was very noticeable, and there was brown strings of wood sticking out of the drain hole and all over the bilge area. It was sitting uncoverd with the trailer tongue sitting on a stump, the scuppers on deck were broken, missing both flaps. He said that the back of the boat fills with water pretty fast if there's too much weight on the stern at one time. I asked him if it was ever covered, he said "No, it's a glass boat, it's made to be wet".
Needless to say it's still sitting there. Not even worth the headache to salvage the motor in my opinion.
So I'm guessing more than a couple of people around here
