Re: Funny "TLC needed" boat ads on Craigslist.
I bought my first boat on Craigslist a couple of years back. It's an 89 Wellcraft 170 Classic and it has been a great boat. It was a two owner boat and both previous owners took really good care of it.
It took me a just over a year to find this gem though. I probably looked at 20-30 boats in my search, getting a bit wiser and asking a few more questions to each seller before venturing out. A few of the more memorable ones I looked at were: (Keep in mind, all the original owners described these boats as being in "good condition" and just needing "a little TLC")
86 SeaRay, with enough dirty, black oil in the bilge that had the bilge pump been turned on, oil would have shot out the side of the boat. The puzzeling part of this one was that the engine was full of dirty black oil too. The cut-up bath towels wrapped around and stapeled to the seat bases to hide the shredded vinyl completed the "well-maintained" look of this "good condition" boat.
Another 86 SeaRay that the owner described the interior as "in good condition" and the floor as "solid" There wasn't a piece of vinyl in the boat that wasn't faded, rotted and cracking. There were 1/4" ACX plywood pieces layed on top of the original floor and original carpeting. On top of the "new" plywood (which was warping) was some cheap astro-turf. Rusting drywall screws completed this quality repair job. There wasn't a spot in the boat where it didn't feel like I was walking on a trampoline.
I looked at another boat that I found out the guy didn't have a pink-slip for the boat or the trailer. He said he "lost" them. Additionally, the trailer did not have a license plate and I couldn't find any type of ID number on the trailer. The boat was last registered in a different state too! The guy told me that he'd give me a bill of sale, and I just needed to take that to the DMV and they would give me a pink slip for the boat and the trailer. Sure, buddy. I asked why he hadn't done it, and he said he just didn't have the time. (He lived about two miles from a local DMV office)
The last one I'll share is of a boat the owner said had never been in salt water. When I got there, the trailer was so rusty and corroded that if you removed the rust, you'd have nothing left. This went WAY beyond surface rust. I don't even think the trailer would have had that much corrosion had he left the trailer attached to the boat while the boat was moored to the dock of a freshwater lake during the summer. A repainted outdrive and horribly pitted chrome and aluminum fittings on the boat told a tale very different from that of the owner.
