Turned down low price fish purchases

mixmkr

Well-Known Member
I looked at three fishes today that came with 2 trailers for $750 for all. I was initially excited but after seeing them...2 should be dumpster bound and the best was pretty rough. All had old style rudder but ALL blades would need serious work and probably new sails too. Trailers were junk....one homemade with pipe and 3 rollers only. Tillers all bad as well and only one extension out of the bunch. Basically the purchase would be for rough hulls and spars....the rest needing serious attention. At least close by to look at...but I got excited before I saw them . Oh well....
Was going to buy to fix and re sell....but too much $$ would have to be put in them beyond the repairs and cosmetics. Dang..
 
Sounds like you saved $750 and some serious headache, LOL. This from a hand familiar with such work... every boat I ever owned was a fixer from the start, but I didn't mind, they looked beautiful after the work (and the cryin') was all done. Funny thing, my Minifish only cost $200 off C/L, and I dumped less than that into her to make her look good again... she was worth every penny just for pulling the Salton Expeditions, let alone all the good times had on voyages in San Diego Bay and off the beach in Coronado. However, you're absolutely right, there's a point where buying a cr@ppy old boat is more trouble than it's worth... too much money and effort required to bring 'er back from the nautical boneyard. :eek:

P.S. Nice avatar, doggo looks ready to bring grief to the rest of the fleet, LOL. ;)
 
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thx Ghost... my 69 fish was free, minus my wanted upgrades...sail, carbon fiber tiller and extension and perty running rigging. Hard to scoff at that.
 

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Nice looking boat. Not to be picky, but isn’t that twin tube tiller aluminum, not carbon? It looks like the aluminum tillers Laser Performance sold for a few years.
 
Sweeeeeet!!! And that name is hilarious... that the dog's name as well? I saw from your profile that ya live in "The Bluegrass" (as truck drivers call it), is that Lake Barkley or Kentucky Lake in the first pic? I used to drive through Kentucky on a regular basis when trucking, much of it is pretty country... oddly enough, one of my ancestors married an elder sister of Daniel Boone, so we're related to the Boone Family by marriage and blood. No Internet bull$h!t either, me dear departed mum was Registrar of our local chapter of the D.A.R. for over a decade, and she drew our family tree after much research. I've been in a melancholy mood today, thinking of me mum... she was a strong yet charitable woman, loved and missed to this day. :(
 
Just a different type of purchase. Offer $100 for the whole rig then strip the hardware and
throw the hardware in the corner of the shed for some future project. Spars/Mast/Bailer Cap
is worth that much. I have seen nice hulls for sale with no hardware, it's just one of those
'somewhere down the road' kind of things. You can probably get $25 scrap price for the
trailer.
 
Sounds to me like you made the right choice. Just hauling all that home sounds overwhelming. Upgrading rudders, sails, trailers, repairing hulls... With the time and money you’d put in to restoring them all you wouldn’t see any return on your investment. But if you really can’t stop thinking about it and you’re up for the projects offer a lot less- maybe $400 cash for all- and see what he says!
 
Nice looking boat. Not to be picky, but isn’t that twin tube tiller aluminum, not carbon? It looks like the aluminum tillers Laser Performance sold for a few years.
Correct...my error in wording above...anodized aluminum with a carbon fiber extension....I believe from Holt Allen...that went put of business
 
The seller I'm pretty sure thinks they're worth the $750....after talking for a bit. Said he turned down 1/2 that for the good one. But the others are really really rough. ...and I don' want to invest in rudder replacement hardware for starters
 
Well give the seller your number and wait for a better
offer when they don't sell. You should be able to get
a no problem/no fix Sunfish and Trailer for $600. I get
small used trailers off craigslist for $150 - $200 range.
Spring is not a good time for boat buying anyway, fall is much
better and winter is too late because people don't want to
dig the boat out of the snow.
 
Ha. Dig out of snow??...
Two would be dug out of 3 ft weeds.
The old rudders and nasty sails turned me off first. Then the horredous daggerbaords and trailers that were basically scrap. I was figuring about $3-400 in parts each before even dealing with cosmetics. That's about my top dollar for that vintage all ready to splash and enjoy.
 
There's "just no-telling..." :cool:

For $75 each, I sold two trailers recently: both were badly saltwater-eaten. I don't think either would have been accepted as "scrap"! :(

One buyer needed to move his 19' bass boat across the street, and the other buyer wanted my Sunfish-sized trailer to transport his kayak. You just never know...:rolleyes:
 
A Sunfish in the weeds is music to my ears, it's
called a 'free' boat. That's how I got my last 3 Sunfish.
Tell the owner that it will take you $50 of you time and
gas to haul away a boat that can't be used. You'll do him
a solid and haul it away for free just this time. As boat people
we all know the saying, "Wow, a free boat, what could possibly
go wrong!".

I'd fix anything on a trailer except for a bad frame, that's
called putting a potentially lethal object in motion and
waiting for something really bad to happen.
 
HaHa, Webfoot1, you funneh... but good advice on the trailer, some minor damage can be welded but I wouldn't trust a badly-cracked or rusted-out frame, and I say that as a former OTR truck driver who has seen all KINDS of objects (including boats & boat trailers) in the ditch, if not in some gnarly fatality wreck. :eek:
 

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