Where Can You Buy Boats For Cheap?

I think the best way in order to find a cheap boat to restore is going to be either one driving around looking for one

So just drive around in a place that it, you know, has a lot of boats like it's close to the water or close to a lake

And you can usually find a house or a yard or a shop or something

And you can see a bunch of boats sitting around or maybe you find someone that's got a boat that has clearly been sitting in their yard for a really long time

and you can kind of just go knock on the door. Obviously, you know, be careful walking up on people's properties

but knock on the door and say, hey, you know, you want to get rid of that boat or something like that

and then just shoot them an offer, you know, and see what the deal is. When it comes to doing this

I think a couple of things that you want to make sure of are, first of all, title issues

So you want to make sure that there's a clean title to the boat. Otherwise, you're going to be putting in a lot of work

in a lot of time, a lot of money into something, that you can't even title when it's done

That's something that you don't want to deal with. Also, if it comes with the trailer

then you're going to want to make sure that you've got a title for the trailer

or that you can register that trailer. Because if you can't register the trailer

then you can't really use the boat. You can't sell the boat. You can't really do anything outside of buying another trailer

I mean, one of the issues that I had with my little boat was that exact thing is it was an older trailer

I mean, the boat's in 1979. So who knows when or where the

trailer came from. Obviously, I had to put a bunch of stuff into the boat, into the trailer. I mean

I had to do, you know, the tongue jack. I had to do the winch, had to do lights, all that kind of

stuff. But there wasn't a tag to the trailer. So there wasn't a, you know, a VIN for the trailer

so I couldn't go down to the DMV and register it. Therefore, I've got this boat on a trailer that I

can't even take on the road. And so I took all the receipts, told them everything I did

showed them pictures of the trailer and then I had to get the boat off of the trailer and take the

trailer down to a way station and get it weighed. Then I took that back to the DMV and was able to

get a title for it and then get the trailer registered. That's one of the things you want to make sure of

is that you have a title or a way to register the trailer if the boat comes with the trailer

Now how much of a restoration do you want to do That probably a better question than where to find the boat because like I said you can go and look around at marinas and stuff and say hey do you have a boat here that hasn

been in the water in five, six, seven, ten years? And a lot of marinas are going to say, yeah

that boat over there. And then you can ask them, you know, who owns it? Do you think they'd sell it

And they, the marina can contact them or, you know, maybe someone there at the marina owns the boat

And you can kind of ask them if they're interested in getting rid of it. And that would be a way to

acquire the boat, but how much of a restoration do you want to do? That's going to be the main

question. Before I even consider the boat, I want to make sure that it's a boat that has value

You don't want to restore a boat that doesn't have any value once you get done restoring it

You know, name brand boats, good boats, older Makos, CVs, some of the yellow fins

Boston Whalers, parkers. These boats have a, good name because they have a really, really good haul that once it's restored, it has

value because it's a really nice boat. You don't want to restore something that doesn't have that

much value because it was a massive production line boat where, let's say there's 100,000

of these boats out there that people can get a dime a dozen and you don't want to go and spend

five, six, ten grand putting all this effort and time and products into the boat to bring it up

to snuff and then, you know, now the boat's worth five grand after you put 10 grand in it

But I would look at five main things being, number one, the engine

You know, if you've got a boat that doesn't have a working engine, then that is a massive

expense that you're going to have to deal with later on down the road. You've got to get rigging

If the rigging's not in the boat, you've got to get all the stuff that goes to the engine

So that could end up costing you five, 10, 15, 20, 30 grand trying to repower the boat

if the engine on the boat doesn't work and make sure that either you've got a viable engine

or you've got a way to get an engine to put on the boat because that's one of your biggest

expenses. The next thing I'm going to be looking at transoms is the transom rotten because if the

transom is rotten, that's another big expense. Second thing, you're going to want to look at the

stringers in the boat to make sure that those aren't rotten, an integral part of the boat

and that would be a massive expense to fix Then I would look at the fuel tank because a fuel tank is going to be a massive expense And then I would make sure that the floor is all good You know there no soft spots

There's not an issue with the deck that you're going to have to cut it out and redo it because

those are going to be the five things that are going to cost you the most money when you're doing

a restore. As long as the transom's not going to fall off and you got a decent engine, you can, you know

use a boat that's got a soft floor. That's not that big. of a deal

Cosmetic stuff, that's something else that you probably don't even need to worry about as much

because that stuff's all little things. You know, if the teetop canvas is cut or you got to do some restringing of it

maybe there's a couple nicks on the gel coat, stuff like that, that cosmetic stuff is not

going to stop you from using the boat. So you can get a cheaper boat that's in rougher shape, but does that play into what

you're really looking to get? something else that I think is probably, you know, a feature is going to be all the stuff that's in the boat

If it's got broken switches, if it's got, you know, older electronics, if it doesn't have a radio, all that kind of stuff, that stuff isn't really a factor in the cost of the boat

You can get a boat that has none of that stuff in there and either you can put it in there or you don't have to put it in there

It's all about what you want. But that is going to be one of your bigger expenses are the electronics and, you know

that stuff that goes in the boat or if you don't want to put that stuff in there then it's not

going to be an expense at all hurricane boats are something that people are starting to talk about

I mean we just had a bunch of hurricanes come through there was idalia there was Lee there was

a couple other ones that just went through recently so looking at a hurricane boat is another

option. I've done a couple hurricane boats. Some of them can be a lot of work depending on what you want

the boat to look like when you're done with it or if you're just looking to have the boat just to use

So back to the cosmetic thing. If you're just looking to have a boat to use as long as the engine's good

then yeah, you can pick up a hurricane boat depending on what happened to the boat. So if the boat was

fully submerged, now that's something that I probably would stay away from

You're going to have to deal with the engine being a big problem. You going to have to deal with all of the wiring in the boat that going to be a problem You going to have to deal with pretty much everything I mean now is the haul water logged You got water in the fuel tank

A fully submerged boat is going to be a big project. Now, if a boat just got washed away and let's say it was on a trailer and it got washed into some mangroves

let's say it got pushed up against a wall or something like that and it just got all scratched up

That's cosmetic stuff. That's not the engine being underwater. and the boat being underwater

where all the wiring, the electronics, everything on the boat that is electrical

is going to give you a problem down the road. Yeah, you can save the engines

I mean, we've gotten engines to work after they went underwater. The problem with that is

is now everything electrical on the engine is compromised. And depending on how you use the boat

will depend on the reliability of that engine. So once an engine goes underwater

these days, I mean, it's not like we're talking about engines that are carbureted anymore

where you just clean out the carburetor and, you know, you've got some ignition coils

state, or stuff like that. Minimal thing, minimal electronics. Now you've got electronic throttle bodies, electronic shift actuators

you've got sensors all over the engine, super expensive computers that operate all the sensors

and the shifting and the throttling of the engine. And once that stuff goes underwater, it's all compromises

You can clean it all off. You can oil the engine and get it to run

I guess what I'm trying to say is that once you clean it off and get it to run, a year from now

all those electrical components that went underwater are going to start failing

I mean, your computer, the throttle body, the shift actuators, all that stuff is going to start to fail

depending on how long and how deep the engine was underwater. How much are you really willing to spend on the engine in order to replace

all those electrical components. You don't want to be 30 miles offshore

and have the throttle body fail or the computer fail and be a drift out there

because you had this electrical component that was underwater. So that's definitely a factor that I would be considering

is was the engine fully submerged? I mean, if you're on a lake and you're not going offshore

then, okay, that's a different story. Now, if you enjoyed this clip

you can watch the full episode over here or you can watch another one over here