Free boat--what am I missing?

Trying to add up the costs of a free boat that has been offered to my wife to see if we can afford it. It is a 21-23 foot Rinker bow rider, 4.3 V6 Mercruiser, overall in good condition. Maybe 15-20 years old.

So far, I have the following, most have real world numbers attached to them:
- New cover that it will need
- Storage (winter and summer)
- Dockage and/or trailering/launching fees/frustration
- New anchors that we'll need (current one is insufficient)
- Winterization
- General maintenance (oil changes, lower-unit maintenance, flairs, eventual floor replacement, etc.)
- Trailer maintenance

What else am I missing? Anything? I've had quite a bit of experience with boats, including this one... but its never been my wallet paying for the things.

Oh, and before anyone else says it: Break out another thousand, two happiest days of a boaters life, nothing more expensive than a cheap por--i meant boat, etc.

USCG required safety gear: flares, horn, life vests, etc. New docking lines and fenders? Does it need a bottom job or have soft spots or need new upholstery? How about new seals around the outdrive? Replace the bilge pump if ancient as good protection.

Sonic wrote: USCG required safety gear: flares, horn, life vests, etc. New docking lines and fenders? Does it need a bottom job or have soft spots or need new upholstery? How about new seals around the outdrive? Replace the bilge pump if ancient as good protection.

We'd need flares. Has a [working] horn, we have life jackets (although I'd probably get a pack of 4 for $50), no soft spots, upholstery is good. Bilge works well; my FIL almost sunk it one year by forgetting the plug. The seals... that is a good question, but I haven't noticed it taking on water.

I've been shopping this 15yr old 19-21' pleasure boat market for a month now and almost all have the 4.3 either Penta/Volvo or Mercruiser and either Penta or Alpha final. They mostly seem to run well and for a lot of hours but the hull and all the "other" stuff was clearly not priced to compete with the Cobalts / Chapparel / Sea Rays of the world.

Get into the engine bay and stick a camera back toward the bow under the floor. Two of the best looking boats I've seen in the Rinker/Stingray/Bayliner/etc have had rotted wood supports up under there, making floor replacement only the tip of the iceberg. They also had the hull caps on with just screws straight thru the glass with no relief so anywhere it bumped a dock it had cracked and had no fastener holding it. They needed a whole lot of screws and glues to fix.

Spares I have identified as easy to probably need:

• Sea water impeller inards
• belts
• bung/plug
• fuel filter

• fuses

• FIRE EXTINGUISHER (seriously this one... the last boat I sea trialed had a bad blower and all it would have taken was a spark for us to have to swim for it)

Play in the steering is probably the gimbals from sitting in waves or bouncing down the highway flopping around and not "an adjustment of the linkage".

Every boat I've looked at pre-2000 and under 10k was junk so far. The ones that weren't were amazing. And way out of my price range.

Taxes, registration fees

In reply to Huckleberry:

Having been in a few Bayliners and Sea Rays, I'd rank the Rinker about 1 step below the SR and about 17 steps above the Bayliner.

In reply to Huckleberry:

Fixing steering slop is possible. The gimbal ring can be tightened to the steering shaft if you are careful. There is a chance of cracking the gimbal ring which would be Bad. If you take the chance and break one, I've got a spare I'll never use. Along with a couple of Alpha drives and other assorted parts.

As for a free boat, if the hull is sound, I'd take it. The mechanics are pretty easy to sort. The hulls, not so much. If you do and need something mechanical, give me a shout.

It's looking like this will cost us about $1500 a year. Not sure we're gonna jump for it or not.

Hull is sound, and it's always been mechanic maintained and low hours. It'd be a good one to have, it's just a pain to store boats.

You need to buy a house in a non HOA neighborhood.

Go to industrial park at night, unstrap boat, drive in reverse and slam brakes, drive away with your free trailer?

Patrick wrote: Go to industrial park at night, unstrap boat, drive in reverse and slam brakes, drive away with your free trailer?

One of the rare occasions where the boat may actually be worth more than the trailer. Seriously.

Toyman01 wrote: You need to buy a house in a non HOA neighborhood.

Space is the constraint. We are already be storing one (small sail/row) boat on our (my wife and I) property, and will be storing my FIL's other boat. My dads vacation property, where we would use the boat in question, has 2 of his boats, one of mine (15 foot sailboat on trailer), an E30, and a kayak--and simply no room for this one.

My in-laws have been storing this boat and the one we will be storing soon at their family vacation home that is being sold.

In reply to mtn:

So what you are say is, you don't have a storage problem, you have a boat ADHD problem.

I can resemble that remark.

most marina's are not too bad on storage fees. Some Self Storage Places also have places for boats and RVs

I'd say take a real honest look at how often you would use the boat...for me, unless I lived on a lake I wouldn't own one. Having to haul it back and forth to a landing somewhere (or have to rent a slip at a marina) would be too much effort and would take all the fun out of it for me.

stuart in mn wrote: I'd say take a real honest look at how often you would use the boat...for me, unless I lived on a lake I wouldn't own one. Having to haul it back and forth to a landing somewhere (or have to rent a slip at a marina) would be too much effort and would take all the fun out of it for me.

Every other weekend or so, plus 2 weeks. Possibly would be able to anchor it out front depending on the draft and how far it is to get deep enough to anchor it (dad has a vacation home on Lake Michigan).

Looking at a slip.

The water cooled exhaust manifolds are kind of a wear item since they see raw water and are not cheap. ~$800 for a Mercruiser 4.3 (I'm working on one right now and was looking).

mtn wrote: We will be storing my FIL's other boat.

Sounds like you'll already have a boat to use available. Will they really use it much once the vacation home is sold? Why take on the expense and headaches of owning another one when you've got the FIL's sitting in your yard?

...sell all the boats and use the money to make the E30 faster? :)

Trim up the outdrive the whole way. Look at the drive bellows and the shift cable bellows. If there is a single hairline crack in either one, replace them. Don't worry about the exhaust bellows. It just makes things quieter.

While you have the outdrive off for bellows, replace the gimbal bearing. Kinda like replacing the water pump while you're doing a timing belt. Best to do it while you're in there.

I've heard some horror stories about the outdrive linkages exploding if they haven't been serviced on a regular basis. The stories sometimes include sudden massive holes in the hull where the drive was formerly attached. It makes me want to stick to outboards.

Part out the running gear, buy a rolled Dakota from CoPart, be a hero:

This time of year the free boats start popping up a lot. I usually go get the ones with trailers and go straight to the dump and rid myself of whatever is on the trailer, make a flatbed trailer and sell it on craigslist.

Once I pull the body off the truck I am going to try and sell the roller but if it does not go for what I want and I can store it cheaply, it will be getting a boat put on it.

Just FYI to everyone--this is a free boat only to my wife and I. Anyone else it will probably be around $8,000. It has seen low use and high maintenance.

Probably going to pass unless I can find cheaper storage though.