I bought my first boat.

[paulspaddle]

Re: I bought my first boat.

Hey, sounds great, but you might want to start a new thread as you'll get a better and more spacific response to your question.

Thanks and good luck!

 

[Rudi2]

Re: I bought my first boat.

I bought a boat on Ebay a couple months ago, when I got there it wouldn't start. It looked like a "shade tree" had really been tinkering with it - wiring spliced and taped up, fuels line secured with twisted wire instead of clamps- and leaking, the engine had that "dirty grungy" look of greasy hands all over it. After driving a 150 miles I just turned around and left, the guy knew he wasn't going to get it started so we just cancelled the sale.
I wont give deposits on big items. I try to get there within a couple of days to look it over. If all is good, pay in full and go. If it's junk I just leave it, I'm not going to argue or fight about. I'd rather have a negative feedback than a couple thousand dollars of junk in my driveway.

But hey, good luck on your new boat! I saw that listing on Ebay - looks like a nice boat.

 

[paulspaddle]

Re: I bought my first boat.

Ok, so putting this out there is like telling people "your pregnant". (for the record I've never been pregnant, but my wife has)

Gives people licence to tell you all about bad experiences and how horrible labour was. One terrible story after another....then, "oh, but its well worth it."

Why are a the people with great experiences so quiet?

...anyway...we'll see...

 

[sfy]

Re: I bought my first boat.

we bought a 2003 Sun Tracker off E-Bay. party barge 240, with a tracker 40 outboard. the boat was in Ft. Wayne,Ind. and we are in utah.
after some e-mails with drivers from Uship, we had it brought out here,as it was cheaper to do it that way than to do the 3,000+ mile roundtrip

the seller was a dealer, he ran it as a no-reserve auction which allowed us to get it for considerably less than retail. i have the boat sitting in the driveway right now, and am very happy with the way it all worked out. since getting it, we have yanked the 40 and dropped a 2002 2 stroke Merc 115 on it, and we have a 2008 Merc 15 that we also got off E-Bay coming for use as a troller/emergency back up. we won the boat with 21 seconds left, and the 15 by 3 seconds.

over all, we have been very satisfied with E-Bay,of course doing some research into the seller is a VERY good idea and will save time,money, and headaches.

now we just need to sell the 2003 Tracker 40...maybe we will use E-Bay

 

[paulspaddle]

Re: I bought my first boat.

Hey SFY.....thank you!

Glad to hear you had a good experience, appreciate the input.

Good Luck selling your boat!

Ebay...are you sure?

 

[Willyclay]

Re: I bought my first boat.

There is a gadget that I read about, but I have no idea what it's called, in fact I'm not exactly sure what it does completely. You tap into the fuel line and it gives a readout on fuel usage..anyone know what I'm talking about?

Fuel Flow Sensor: The link below is to one right here at the iboats.com store. There are others. Good luck with your purchase!

http://www.iboats.com/GFS_153_10_Fu...5562748--**********.802821981--view_id.370860

 

[scoutabout]

Re: I bought my first boat.

Welcome to iboats and congrats on the purchase. Here's another link that shows the head units for fuel flow meters. Very helpful to know what your most efficient running rpms are under a variety of conditions. The units range from dead-simple instant readouts of how much fuel you're burning to those that network with other systems such a gps, chartplotters, engine telemetry, etc.

http://www.iboats.com/Northstar_Mar...4915005--**********.243527366--view_id.359418

 

[Subliminal]

Re: I bought my first boat.

There are still honest people out there.

You bought a $3k boat...I don't think that's the same risk as buying a $25k boat, sight unseen.

Pictures, please!

 

[paulspaddle]

Re: I bought my first boat.

You are BANG ON with the 3K boat....I think I touched that earlier.

For myself the risk/reward is within reason.



I have another thread on the floscan product. I really like the concept. Apparently the area where my cabin is located is just being mapped for GPS now so I may wait a bit and get a 'system' of depth gauge/ gps and flowscan.

 

[vegasphotoman]

Re: I bought my first boat.

DId you pick that bad boy up yet?

post pics!!!!!!!!!!