Someone much smarter than me once said that owning a boat is sort of like owning a giant money hole. with that said, I would much rather dump time and money into making a boat do what it was designed to do even better and longer than dumping money into making it do something it was never meant to do instead. I have a 99 bowrider and the amount of time and money I spend into keeping it running well and keeping it in good shape isn't for the faint of heart and I do most of the work myself. With a 20 year old boat, you are going to be spending a lot of time and money on just keeping it running and looking good. At the end of the day it's going to come down to one question, is the time and money you put into it worth losing when you finally decide to part with it? When most people buy cars or boats, it always comes down to what year it is and then what kind of condition it's in. I've dumped at least 3 or 4 times the amount of money into my boat than I originally bought it for (parts only). If I ever decide to sell it, am I going to get the majority of that money back? probably not. And if you do a major modification, it's not even going to be worth what a boat that year in good condition is worth, it'll most likely lose value since the person buying it will have to worry about whether or not the custom work was done right. Just an honest opinion
