Buying my first Seacraft, how does this one look?

[Yachtie]

[Blue_Heron]

Originally Posted by Yachtie

Well. I walked away from it. It's solid but more of a project then I'm honestly ready for.

It did have a hook on the port side. Every panel. Worse then what you pictured.

Some soft spots around the console.

Fuel tank looked rough.

Transom was solid though. Motor runs.

A friend of mine bought the boat. It is a project, but the hull is in pretty good shape. It has some hook in the bottom, but it looks to be uniform from one side to the other. We only found one small soft spot in the deck under the rear starboard corner of the console. The rest of the deck and the gunwale cap are solid. The transom and all the hatches are solid.

The motor looks to be in good shape if a tad neglected. It's a 2.0 Merc 200 with 130-135 psi compression in all six holes. We attempted a sea trial, but the boat wouldn't go into gear, forward or reverse. The remote control was shot. My friend took a chance and bought it as-is.

We got it home and replaced the remote control with the one that was on my 25 when I bought it. Now it goes into gear. When we took it to the river, it peed like an old man with prostate problems and overheated every time we put a load on it. We pulled the thermostats and they had been gutted. I told my friend, "I believe you need a poppet valve". He said, "What the hell is a poppet valve?".

Long story short, I replaced the thermostats, the poppet valve, and the spark plugs (there were three different types, only two were the right ones). Now it pees like a race horse and should be good to go. The first time we got it on plane, I noticed the anti-ventilation plate was buried, so I also raised the engine two holes.

For the time being, we have to run on a remote fuel tank because the under deck tank has an unknown quantity of 5 year old fuel. The wiring is a mess, and the through hull for the forward fish box leaks like a sieve. It's all manageable stuff, but the boat was far from turn-key.
Dave