4bus I appreciate it. And thanks to all the members for listening to my complaining. Im hanging in there and hope to enjoy the boat when it is completed. This was supposed to be just a transition boat to get to know the Cincinnati are and reacquaint my self with handling a boat around the docks and suck before we purchased a larger performance boat. I'm mostly concerned with my better halls reaction to all this. She is getting frustrated as we just keep throwing money into something we can't use. I need to get her on the water to enjoy this thing fast or she is going to loose interest. Her first choice was an m3 convertable as a summer toy and I talked her into going out on a friends boat and she was hooked, now I'm just trying to keep her happy until I can get her on the water again. She is stubborn and would have been happy with the previous owner and the other marina saying sorry rather than blaming us for trying to pull a fast one on them! Hope to see some of you guys on the water soon. Thanks for listening, I knew we should have purchased on of the newer boats we looked at first, I was just a little nervous to jump into a 30 footer with twins as a starter boat! We are hanging in there and hoping to make it on the river before the buffet concert. Wish us luck

I feel your pain... Bought my 302 from a 'friend'. Water test went great. Didn't even know what a survey was at the time. :/ I've probably spent almost as much as the purchase price again on repairs over the last 4 years. 2 drives, transom, exhaust manifolds, couplers, bellows, trim tabs, etc. etc. etc. And I haven't even gotten into the engines yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm the guy that generally sees things breaking as an 'opportunity' to upgrade so some of that is spent on making the equipment better than stock. But DAMN I wish I'd have gotten a survey. Would have saved me a lot of headache... I don't have a prayer of ever getting what I have in this boat back out. I'd be lucky to see half. But hey, it's only money right?

Even if you don't get a full survey, you should take a used boat considered for purchase to a dealer you trust and have it looked over and at a minimum have a leak down test. They may not uncover every pending problem but they will likely find any major mechanical issues.

Dave

I haven't been out yet this year. At least it wasn't the boat's fault. My truck has been a three month nightmare!!!!! I SHOULD be on the river before this weekend.

Can't wait to get out and post some pictures of the great work XT did for me this year!

Hope you are able to make it out! We are a long shot for the weekend, hoping the manifolds make it in time to get installed and water ready.

Dave,

A lesson learned for sure. I was foolish to trust a marina I know nothing about. An expensive lesson learned

Larry

Best of luck to you. Hope to see you out there.

I know how you feel. I used mine new boat one season and next season had to replace the gimbel bearing and belows and then all hell broke loose. This season I had use the boat 2 hours so far and hope to get it back to use it all of august. I blew a head gasket. Found out when someone put the out drive back on, the egine was sitting a tad lower and it it make them have to take out the whole engine to line it up again and it casues my coiupler to wear and rust , so a domino effect. I know how you feel and i feel your pain too

I would say a survey is worth it for anything over $10K. If you are paying less than that for something then you probably know what you are looking at or are willing to gamble.

I know if I could go back in time I would have gladly forked out the $500 for a survey to not have had to spend six or seven thousand dollars (probably ALOT more) on my total rebuild.

Just got word from the repair shop and they will not be finished with the boat as promised. This is getting really frustrating as we prepared all week for our rookie boating session on the river. Really frustrated since the boat has been there since the beginning of june! This deal has all been bad news and bad promises from the beginning ! Sucks big time

After the heavy rains over the last several days the river might be getting some drift in it,so you might not be missing out on much. That can be a real problem from time to time. Usually when the river is rising it gets messy, and once it gets over 30-32 feet it is best to not boat.