Boat owners....good/bad/ugly....

A boat is a hole in the water to toss all of your money into. Ugh. There are a lot of unknown expenditures for first time boat owners, for sure. We have a 33 foot Chaparal speed boat with a cabin underneath. We just sold our old boat that needed a new motor within two months of owning it. Thank goodness it sold. The new (to us ) boat has a 72 gallon tank and the cost per gallon is $4.50. It stays on the lake for an additional $$250 per month for six months and then there is storage for the other six months. They need to be taken in to winterize. That isn't cheap. Hubby ends up taking friends/family out a lot and we pay $$$ for gas, lunches and travel to the lake. You would think that other people would offer to pay for gas.

On the other hand, I have 18 / 20 year old sons who love boating and wake boarding and tubing. Some of my favorite summertime memories (in the last four years) have been on the lake with them. My boys and hubby just spent the last three days down at the lake with their cousin and had a blast.

You have to weigh if the money is something you want to spend. Repairs are not uncommon. Buy a good boat that won't drain your wallet. Money up front for a better boat is a good idea. I think we put 30K into the old boat that we had for three summers. It sold for 12k. Not a great investment, for sure.

You know the old saying -

the two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day they buy it, and the day they sell it!!

We have a boat and enjoy it but we live on a small lake, so we don't have the issues of pulling it/putting it in. It can be a great thing for bringing your family together - or it can be something ugly that takes up space in your garage.

We had a boat. HAD. Seemed like a great idea at the time, loved the water, loved to fish, close to a bunch of lakes. But it was such a pain to pull it to the lake during the good months (summer, spring)- then having to keep it stored properly during the winter. Such a pain -- we only got use out of it several weekends each year definitely not enough for the cost if the boat and insurance, I can imagine living on the lake would be much more idea!

Our bank wouldn't loan us money for a boat older then a 2005. With a boat it's about the year and the motor hours. Also look at the cylinders - we have a 4 cylinder and couldn't go any larger on boat size. We can spend 1/2 a day on the lake and not burn thru a half of tank of gas. A 6 or 8 cylinder will burn more fuel so that was a big deciding factor in the boat we bought.

Mercury and Volvo motors are the best. They were the only two DH was willing to purchase. 

We've had four boats since we've been married. We've had a Monterey, a Bryan, a Sea Ray and we currently have a Crownline. We bought them all used w/ low hours and have had very few problems with any of them.

We've always kept our boat at a marina in a slip w/ a lift. Neither my husband nor I have a lot of experience putting boats in the water or taking them out, so it's much easier for us to keep it at a marina. We always winterize our boat, but we haven't had to do a lot of other maintenance on our boat.

We have a lake house now w/ a day dock where we keep our boat while we are at the lake. We didn't have a lake house when we first started boating, but enjoyed going to the lake just as much. The biggest plus of owning a boat is that it is something that the entire family enjoys.

What kind of a boat are you looking at? If it will fit in your garage, it might be much more reasonable in price. My neighbor's boat cracked his driveway so hubby won't even try to put it there.

For your boat only? Our insurance is only $191 for the year. We went with Geico - they have our vehicle insurance and we have two wrecks within the last year. 

Like someone else said, what do you want to use your boat for?
Tubing and water skiing? fishing? Pleasure boating? A mixture?
Figure that out first and start asking questions about which ones would be best for you.

We started with a fiberglass skiing boat and moved over to an aluminum fishing boat. Why? Because our demands changed. We get more out of a fishing boat than anything, but we also have the capability to tow a skier or a tuber and we have.

Boats can be a gas sucker and therefore expensive, especially if you are tubing or skiing. Just keep that in mind. A day of pulling can easily be a $200 day.


Expect that once you buy the boat, that you will spend at least another $2000 in accessories.

I'd also be storing that boat in the garage for the winter and don't slack on the winterizing. You don't do that and you can end up with a more expensive problem. And oh yeah, make sure you can drive it into your garage! If you get a boat with a wake tower, you may find you'll have an issue getting it in the garage if your door isn't taller than standard height!

Be uber aware of being careful when you are in shallow water or places that water depth fluctuate and you aren't familiar with. Even being careful, it isn't hard to at the very least wreck a prop. Expect you'll do that at least once, no matter how experienced you are.

If you have a more expensive or fiberglass boat, you are going to get picky where you launch it. You can't just drop it anywhere and there are places where dropping it in a good launch can cost mucho dinero. Our last town we lived in had a boat launch in town that cost $40 per launch and no trailer parking.

Do you have a vehicle big enough to pull your boat? Look at the weight of the boat you are buying and the towing capacity of the vehicle. You may think, "well, duh!" But a lot of people don't think about that and then what?

I'm totally not trying to be a pessimist, but those are things that you don't always consider or realize until you have a boat.

I have very similar childhood memories   - and once the darn thing was finally sea worthy, I got seasick every single time we went out.

And I still remember my dad breaking his elbow winching the boat back onto the trailer - my uncle was 'helping' and I'm not sure what happened by dad got hit by the winch

we have a canoe now and that's as much boat as I want.  I like canoeing but the only time we've actually used the canoe was when Tropical Storm Debbie stalled over us and flooded our city - we canoed on the driveway and easement.  DH has yet to figure out how to transport it to the river, sigh.

My family loves to spend the day on the lake. We bought our first boat, a 1996 Bayliner brand new. We call that type boat a run-about. It held 8 people. We used it until just last year. It was great for running around on the water, tubing, skiing and beginning wakeboard ing. Over those years, we had some summers where we didn't use it much but it was paid for so we didn't sell it. My husband really took excellent care of the boat and it was easy to sell last year as it was in fantastic shape.

My kids and dh have really gotten in to wakeboard ing over the past few years and wanted to try wake-surfing too which couldn't be done on the bay liner. So we bought a 2001 Malibu Wakesetter last summer. We are really spending a lot of time at the lake now. I don't love it as much as the rest of the family but it is great family time! Wakeboard ing and skiing boats are really expensive so we definitely had to get an older one to be comfortable with what we were going to spend. And of course there have been many more accessories purchased since getting the boat! If buying used, take your time and look for what you want. Find an owner that takes pride in his boat and look for something that has been stored inside. Also, find somebody willing to take you on the water to show you how it runs.

We pay to store ours at the lake in an inside building. Our last boat was also stored at the lake in an outdoor but covered slip. We never leave the boat in the water for more than the weekend and we wipe down the hull and interior after every trip. It's great that the kids help with this. It really keeps the boat looking new. We take out everything that is wet - life jackets, ropes, towels, etc and leave open whatever compartments we can to prevent mildew.

We also pay for insurance. Dh does the winterization himself but certainly you have to expect a few repairs here and there so ask around locally about who to trust.

Have fun looking around! I scoured boat trader and only inboards for months before finding what we wanted! Craig's list too.

We bought a new pontoon this summer. We live in a lake community and have a slip for it. The marina is less than a mile from the house. Our lake is no wake, but we go out and cruise around, have a romantic dinner and watch the sunset. Sometimes we take the grandkids out to swim. We bought new and negotiated a lot of the accessories for free (life jackets, bumpers, tie ropes, etc). The place we bought from will pick the boat up all do the winterizing and maintenance as necessary.

 Our first boat was a used boat that we bought from someone we knew.  They wanted to purchase a house with land and needed to be out of the boat payment to qualify so we took up the payments.  It was a pontoon and it was a great boat all of the years we had it although it is not what we would have chosen if we had bought new.  The price was right.  One problem with that boat is the one time we did have to get it worked on (we had it for about 10 years and only had one issue), we found that the type of motor it had was not a common motor and we had a heck of a time finding someone to work on it.  Unfortunately, I don't remember now what brand it was but you should be able to google boat repairs in your area and see what brand motors you see over and over and stick to one of those.  Also, I would probably only buy used if the person stored the boat in a boat stall or kept it covered in a slip.  The weather can be very hard on the seats.  Our current boat is 11 years old and still looks practically brand new because it stays dry docked in a boat stall when it is not in use.  We store it in a stall where our lake house is located so we can get the boat out and have it in the water in a just a few minutes.  

When you choose your boat, someone else already mentioned that you need to think about the size lake you plan on putting it on to help determine what boat to get.  We are on a large lake.  When the wind picks up, it can get fairly rough.  We would not want a boat that is too small or sits to low to the water.  Pontoons are very popular on our lake.  Actually, a lot of people we know are selling their ski boats and trading for pontoons.  They are getting them with large enough motors to pull skiers, wakeboarders, tubing, etc. Be careful if you start pricing boats, especially if you decide on a pontoon.  They tend to list the price with the smallest motor and sometimes with no trailer.  You obviously need a trailer since you will be pulling to the lake.  

Speaking of trailer. This is the one area where we didn't get more specific when we bought new.  The boat came with a closed channel trailer.  BIG MISTAKE!!  Water will get into the channels and rust it from the inside out.  You will want to get a galvanized or aluminum trailer but if you can't get one of those, you want an open channel.  This is the one expense we have had that was big with our boat.  We just picked up our new trailer that we had to have built on Friday, so learn from our mistake.  The only way we would buy a boat today with a closed channel trailer is if we bought used, that is what came with it and we were getting a really good price.  Trailers are expensive and they are very hard to find used.  All the used trailers have boats sitting on them.  LOL  We found someone who runs a small business at his home building boat trailers but before we found this guy, we thought we were going to end up having to pay about $3k more than what we did to have one built and shipped.