I bought this one, a 1982 4 Winns 18′ bowrider with a 120hp merc I/O, on ebay last year from a dealer in Jamestown NY. Got it for $600 with the trailer. Overall it’s in great shape! No floor rot, hull is solid, even the engine looks clean !  It’s been sitting in storage at this marina for 5 years and was winterized when it went in so I think I got pretty lucky with this one.   Oh ya…the engine is the ONLY thing that looks clean on this boat….I have a full day of scrubbing and buffing ahead of me !

One thing though….I have NO idea if it runs or not !!  I didn’t want to try to start it last fall just to have to re-winterize it again. But I checked for compression and all cylinders look good so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

The only other major problem that I noticed was that someone took the tilt/trim motor apart so now it’s all rusted inside. I found another complete unit…pump, motor, etc…on ebay for $80 so I spent yesterday afternoon swapping  that out.  So later today I’m going to try to start it up and hopefully get it in the water this weekend !!!

Happy boating all !

So we dragged it to beautiful Golden Lake where we were kinda hoping to put it in the water and try it out. But that’s a little hard to do with all that ICE in the way !!  And to top it off it actually snowed some more for us. Oh well…shudda known better than to push the season.

Well now we have GREAT weather this week but I still can’t get my boat out because my refrigerator has crapped out….again….so I have to thaw the ICE out of it and fix it.

Seeeeeeee…….ICE in April is screwing up everything !!   But no fear…it’ll be unwrapped later this week so I can get it in the water by the beginning of the month.  Uh….if it starts 

I will be writing a bit of an article on buying used boats in the U.S. and bringing them to Canada. Not a big deal as long as you do a bit of preparation first. If you take a few steps and make a few phone calls before leaving to pick up your boat, you will save yourself a LOT of hassles at the boarder…and later when you go to register your boat and licence the trailer (if you get it with the boat).

Please fell free to add your experiences as well.

Later….Bob

I started this website after buying my second boat on ebay. Like a lot of families we have had our “challenges”, but 2 years ago I bought a “cheap” boat on ebay, fixed it up and had a GREAT time on the water for the next 2 summers. It was the BEST time that we had as a family for quite a while.

Well the truth is that I really bought the boat to fix up and “flip” and make a few bucks. So when I sold it at the end of the 2006 boating season, I really felt a sense of loss of “family togetherness” so I went right out and bought another “fixer-upper”. We can hardly wait for it to warm up and get this one out on the water too. Now I know I’ll end up selling this one too but I also know that I will be getting another boat right away. Actually our dream is to similar to the “2-foot disease”, we want a boat about 26′ so that we can spend weekends on it.

So thus the website. There are LOTS of great deals out there that families can take advantage of to get outside and do things together. It doesn’t have to be boating…we like camping too. We went to Disney World a few years ago and it ran up about $5000.00. Now although it was a pretty good trip overall, we have nothing left to show for our money other than the pictures. Now that’s not to say I wouldn’t go back there, or some place like it, but I’d probably take an RV of some kind and make a bigger trip out of it…and save the $1000.00 on hotels to stay at more places along the way.

So please feel free to post your family activities, suggestions, trips, tricks, deals, etc. etc.

NOTE: this is the birth of a new blog so please excuse any growing pains along the way.

Thanks…..Bob