I don’t think Mike @ Wildfire would knowingly pass along a boat with known issues. That said, we are talking about boats that are decades old, and then putting brackets on them which those aging hulls were never designed for (pushing the center of gravity back and putting added torque on various parts of the hull, creating any number of additional woes). I never thought that a 20' with a bracket was an ideal setup.
I can contest that Wildfire did an excellent job on the transom enclose and Potter Bracket install on my 23'. The boat is enjoying a 2nd owner now after I owned it for 30+ years. I have seen cracks such as the pics above, caused by improper trailer alignment as well as misuse in uncomfortable sea conditions.
I also saw a 23' SeaCraft at Wildfire that the previous owner had hollowed out the foam within the box stringers and made an Island run after filling them with cocaine!
I received this from another CSC member via PM. I wish to share it with you.
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It would not at all surprise me if there were significant cracks in many of these hulls and when you hang a 500# outboard, on a bracket, some of those sins are going to come to light when you head out the inlet on a day that has rough seas. 90% of CSC posters are obsessed with discussing WOT speeds and you can’t expect to put thousands of pounds of torque on an old boat and have it hold together like a brand new boat that was designed from the ground up to have a heavy engine 18-20” behind the transom. That crack might have been hiding for years and then put a fresh engine and bracket on it and “bang”, that crack comes to life again, three owners later.
However, if I was going to buy a boat tomorrow morning, it would certainly not be a 40 year old hull with who-know’s-what in its past. There seems to be this magical assumption that 30 year old cars are tired and beat but 30 year old boats are as good as the day they popped out of the mold. I’m not buying it.
I trust Mike and Debbie at Wildfire implicitly, but expecting these boats to roll out of that shop devoid of all past issues is unreasonable until we start X-raying the entire hull and I don’t know any economical way of doing that.
I knew good and well that the upper deck around the forward bow cleat on mine was less than 100%, 35 years sitting in the Florida sun is going to do that, and no amount of PPG paint is going to magically erase those years of wear/tear. I made a point of never stepping off a dock onto that area but someone might do that to my old boat next week and then blame me, Mike, or Bill Potter for scamming them into buying a substandard boat. No, it wasn’t substandard, it was just old.
The guy that posted the compromised boat in that thread has a hull I wouldn’t want. I bet there are actually a number of ticking time bombs on the CSC site and none of them are the result of having sat at Wildfire Marine, I doubt Mike has actually been on a running boat, in saltwater, in the last 20 years. Somebody beat that boat up, but I don’t think Mike was onboard when it happened and I don’t think he’s willing to flush his reputation down the drain for just one boat job
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