A story of the dangers of buying a used boat
Why we needed a new boat
In the winter of 2022, there was a vicious freeze that swept through the south right around Christmas time. Our previous boat, of which we are still unclear of the make, a simple v-hull bow rider with an inboard/outboard, the Mercuruiser 4.3 and Bravo drive. It was a great boat, very comfortable, handled the choppy busy days well at the lake and at the time was more than 30 years old.
I was very new to boats and mostly relied on my wife to let me know what to do or not to do. She had the boat when we met, I never thought much of it. Winters here in GA rarely get too bad, but this particular winter was, and it eventually froze the water left in the block, destroying the manifold, and later we would find, the block.
At first I thought it was just the outside, we were able to get it welded up, put a new head gasket on and get it fired up but it was all for nothing as the crack was for sure internal and water was in the oil. We tossed around a lot of idea on how to proceed, and My wife for sure wanted a direct drive boat to do some wake surfing. We sold our broken boat (fully disclosing all the issues) to a nice couple that was going to drop a 350 in it (awesome).
Our boat search started, getting a loan was interesting, I thought it’d be more intense, but it’s pretty simple, the big thing to take into account is the age of the boat, 20 years is the cut-off for a higher or lower interest rate. From what I could tell, there was no consideration for hours or type of boat.
Factoring all the information in, we went boat shopping. We were pretty deadset on private sale because lower prices and no taxes seemed like a no brainer. Facebook, Craigslist, boat trader all options, but no bones about it, Facebook was the best. We started looking at V-Drive boats only to learn that the prices were all extremely high, and the loans wouldn’t cover enough of the boat to make it worth our while. It may have been a wake surfing boom and everyone wanted a V-Drive, but the are super popular now. We did end up looking at a few Direct drives, but a lot of traditional direct drives are not really situated to be great as a family boat.
Lots of searching and we came across a relatively local couple selling a 2003 Malibu 21 XTi, and after looking at a few boats, that just didn’t seem to fit the bill, this one ticked a lot of boxes. Good seating, good engine with EFI, storage, bow seating, and the price was right. It was just out of the 20 year mark, but the price was such that we could work with it.
The test drive went great, it had some flaws that would be pretty typical of a 20 year old anything, some seat and carpet wear. but the engine was fantastic despite having 1000 hours. all the issues I found were things that would be “easily” fixed. We were pumped, we found a boat that rode great, drove nice, good price, and very comfortable.
We put paid some money down to get the boat locked in with a simple contract. We applied for the loan and all was fine, sent the money over and then scheduled some time to go pick it up. WE met in the parking lot of Summit racing (also awesome). It was a long drive in Atlanta traffic, but we finally made it to the lake and plopped the boat in the water took it for a quick drive and parked it in our slip.
The next day we returned to go out on a boat ride, and we found the bilge pump on pretty consistently, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it kept getting worse and worse. This was not something we had expected, and after pulling it out of the water to fix the built in ballast system (where i thought it was leaking from being the forward bilge was filling with water) we filled the boat with water and waited to see where it came out. It didn’t come out anywhere. Eventually, after lots of playing and research we identified the “HDS Box” as the culprit. At the time I did not understand what this really was or how big the problem was. We searched and found a good fiberglass shop, only to have it sit for more than a month prior to it even being looked at. My wife gave me an ultimatum, be on the water before July 4th. We brought the boat to My in-laws where we had access to private ski lake (lucky us) to test.
We ordered fiberglass, resin, and all sorts of tools. I will make this story short, but the way the HDS box leaks, it is not on top, it is from the inside and leaks under the floor and shows up in the bilge up in-front of the engine. I learned this after fiberglassing outside the box, then I had to clean out the goo from inside the box and then fiberglass all the bottom edges.
As you can see in the diagram that corner where the layers come together is where it leaks, all the way around. Ours specifically was giant crack in the back, we found it after lots of searching, but you have to fill the front of the boat with water, then raise the front so it all flows to the back, this will fill the HDS box and you can see with the lid off exactly where the water is coming from. we fiberglassed the edges, the outside, then tested in the lake – no leaks. We had a boat, it’s 7pm on July 3rd, we are off to the lake to plop it down at our slip.
We did take time to work on a lot of aspects of the boat, 24 hour cure time of the fiberglass resin allows for all sorts of time to do extra things.
