Thursday, February 19, 2009
Buy a new boat or spiff up the old one?
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Near the end of last fishing season, our boat engine began to start with difficulty and idle roughly.
“You know what’s the matter?” asked one of the repair shop owners we consulted.
“Your outfit is old,” he said.
“Old?”
Our 18-foot Parker center console with a 130-hpYamaha is a 2000 model. Nine years may be old in engine years, considering that boaters are forced to use ethanol-blended gasoline, which advances the aging process by gumming up carburetors and eating up gas tanks.
One path to avoiding problems is to trade often. But we tend to view equipment as a long-term investment. We have a pickup truck that is more than 20 years old.
With the new fishing/boating season upon us, we face the same decision as many boaters: Buy a new outfit or hold onto the old one a while longer?
Right now just may be the best time in boating history to buy, considering the high quality of equipment and the deals being offered as dealers and manufacturers try to move inventory. (See Cochran’s Field Reports on the Southwest Virginia Boat Show). Of course, if you don’t have the money or the job security, super deals don’t mean much.
Our plans are to hang onto our outfit and spiff it up a bit.
We purchased it primarily to trailer from our home in the Roanoke Valley to the lower Chesapeake Bay and the sheltered water along the seaside of the Eastern Shore where we do most of our fishing. We chose a craft of modest size for the long hauls, yet big enough to handle the fishing conditions we encounter. With a boat this size, we have to pick our days and our places, but we can get into tight, shallow spots that reject bigger boats.
There is no one-size-fits-all application when it comes to buying a boat. If you put more emphasis on one feature, you lose on another. You have to compromise.
After several years of towing, we secured a place to keep the boat on the coast. With the long hauls behind us, we had the option of buying a bigger, more seaworthy, craft, but we stuck with what we had. We were glad we did when last season fuel prices soared and it could take nearly $250 to fill a 60-gallon tank.
We have added some aftermarket items. Three seasons ago, we installed trim tabs and later purchased a KeepAlive bait tank. The hydraulic trim tabs improve the quality of the ride by reducing pounding and eliminating the porpoising. Tabs also can increase speed and reduce fuel consumption. We are sold on them, and the same can be said of the bait tank, which is easy to remove when we don’t need it.
We are replacing our electronics this season, with an updated Lowrance sonar/GPS unit. Electronics are the quickest boat feature to become antiquated. Fact is, the unit we purchased just a couple months ago already is outdated with Lowrance’s introduction of high-definition systems.
The next thing we’d like to do is replace the 130-hp two-stroke outboard with a four-stroke. We’d probably opt for a 115, which would give us all the power we need, along with quieter operation and better fuel economy.
Considering the outrageous prices of outboards -- a 115 can set you back $15,000 or so -- we’d give a careful look at an even smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient unit until, say, one of the new generation 90-hp four-strokes out this season. It should cost about $5,000 less than the 115.
I don’t like the thought of downsizing, but it could be the future of boating, just as it now prevails in the automobile business.
While fuel economy is important, remember that you can buy a lot of gas for the price of a new engine. Our motivation for re-powering would be the peace-of-mind gained from the confidence that the engine is going to fire out there on some remote fishing spot.
Right now, we are going to give our old engine a chance to prove its worth.
