chaloux

Dang that's gorgeous. Congrats. How did you option it?

I'm looking at a 196, I'm not sure the exact location yet but in/around Montreal. I will share info about it when I have it, probably on Monday. It's a 6 hour drive for me so if someone could just check it over quickly for me first it'd save me a lot of driving! Happy to compensate for your time. You just have to promise you won't buy it out from under me, haha. Merci! 

16 minutes ago, Hucklefin said:

F1TV is like $80 for the year.

And you can share your account, at least so far. I split with my bro in law and dad. There's also the high seas 

PM sent. 

I don't want to get political here, and I don't really think I am, but it seems that we're concluding that boat costs are accurate and can't reasonably be lowered. If that's the case, the only other piece of this puzzle is very large wage increases are in order

Not to mention even finding a used 14+ PS for 45k USD.... that's the part that's killing me. 10+ year old boat used shouldn't be the same price it was new. 

Saw that one too! There are a few boats I might need to drive out and see. There's a pretty nice '99 196 as well. So do I spend 20g or 70? Lol

These are so good. Especially because when you watch a tournament you can "see" how things are going to play out sometimes but you're not exactly sure why unless you slow it down and really look at things, and the drone shots REALLY allow you to see what happened where vs head on from the boat. Thank you

1 hour ago, Kelvin said:

@chaloux I'm curious.  What's your hangup with the 2018 200?  I completely get it on the 2019 200 built in TENN.  Not sure what your concerns would be with a 2018.

I thought 18-19 were the Bryant built boats? Is it 19-20? My mistake

I'll try to convince Vince to sell me his boat 😂

Hahaha, thanks for all the suggestions fellas. I'm in Ontario. I've been in touch with Ross and Vince about their boats. Vince is about 10 minutes from me and I'll be checking his boat out once it's in the water. He said he's not sure he even wants to sell it 🫠 The BC boat I haven't reached out, that's a 6 day drive lol

Those two boats are a prime example of the crap I have to deal with internally - high hour 200 for cheaper than an excellent condition 196 with ZO? Or do I just say screw it and get a cheap older 196 for now and enjoy the wake upgrade but not get ZO? There are so many pros and cons to everything, then when you add price variation in it's just a clusterF

Or for another small jump in price, check out this PS that just popped up on SIA! 

https://www.ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Boat_3Event&postid=69840

@SethroIt does seem that way, but when you start getting into specifics it really changes. I have a few choices laid out and there are all sorts of reasons why I am unable or choose not to buy. I'm looking for any 196, any 200 except 18-19, and Prostars. It's easy to look at SIA and see a ton of boats and point the finger at me for not having purchased something yet. But let's pick any of the following dealbreakers:

- location: right boat in the wrong place, especially over the southern border (Canadian here) can add significant cost or difficulty in properly assessing a boat

- price: depends on boat, year, hours. Prices are still high but they're starting to come down. Can get reasonable prices for high hours. 

- hours, year, model, options, etc. Add a heater or heated seats to your must have options and the list shrinks again

- nuance: my funds available at any given time, life situation, work schedule, other extracurricular expenses, having to sell my current boat in a buyer's market, etc. 

Now to be fair, if I had 100k set aside these problems pretty much don't exist and I'd be able to buy the boat I want easily. That is not my current situation so I'm stuck searching for the boat that I simply can't pass on price and condition wise, and that simply hasn't come up yet. Perceived value is still high even with nothing selling - try talking a dealer down on any used boat, they're not budging. 

@Sethro sorry, I guess I never actually answered your question lol. My budget would be 20-70k CDN depending on the boat. 

The price is 65k CAD, in the 47-48 USD range. I feel the price would be reasonable for a 14 Prostar with 390h without the spider cracks... But my gut tells me to pass on this. If I happen to be in the area (6hr away) I would check it out but I don't think I'd make a trip to go look. 

Awesome! Building the platform is the hardest part. As long as it's clean, simple, and straightforward to post media and comments/criticism I don't see how it can fail. The hardest part will be finding a balance between cost/fees/payouts for coaches. 

9 minutes ago, 6Ball_Dan said:

A lot of great points. I appreciate the input! I ended up spending a bit more money for a very clean 2014 with only 400 hours on it. 

Nice! Was it on SIA or somewhere else? Pics required!!!

2 minutes ago, Andre said:

That's a lot of missing gelcoat but easily fix.Hope the rest has been well maintained! How many hrs ? You've  seen Ottawa ski club 200 for sale ?  

Yeah I've been talking with Rob, he seems great.  I was almost to the point of making it happen at the end of the season but timing wasn't right for me.  This Prostar has 390 hours and is reasonably priced but still a stretch for me at the moment (just finishing up garage build).  

I am looking at a 2014 Prostar and asked for more photos as the photos on the ad are terribly low-res.  The owner sends me all these, which show imperfections, which were not mentioned in the ad at all.  Seems like a lot of cracks to me - my 94 Sport has 0 cracks, and this Prostar is cracked left right and center it seems.  Is this normal?  Does it indicate something has happened?  I asked and they replied "no impacts just a 10 year old boat" Hmmm...  Some of these photos are of small gelcoat damage which doesn't bother me, I have a good fiberglass connection from fixing the Sport.  I've just never seen this many cracks and they seem to be kind of everywhere.  Thoughts?

Hmm BoS seems to have downsized the photos a bit, here's a google drive link. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JTkmVFNAB0E5jS4vJNoGh9mge07FcVOb

Edit: just finished. Superb analysis. The synced drone shot is invaluable. Well done.

I'd love to see an Ali Nicholson analysis. She seems flawless up until super short line. Straight as a board through turns compared to someone like Freddy who I feel is compressing and moving like a spring. But I also don't know what I'm talking about so if MB could step in that'd be great lol. 

Well it appears the TXi is alive and well. 

1 hour ago, jpwhit said:

Another thing to keep in mind. The 2014 ProStars with the 5.7L engine were pretty slow out of the hole. They changed the transmission ratio to address that in 2015 and onwards. 

Personally, with the market being so soft, Id probably make some offers on boats with less hours before I actually bought this boat. Don't let asking prices drive your decision making, there can be big differences between asking prices and selling prices. Especially in a really soft market like it is now. 

Could this be addressed with a prop?  I didn't realize this. 

I was looking at that boat as well. It truly does seem like very little out there is selling, and prices are starting to come back to reality again. An 07 196 near me that I posted about previously dropped from 29k CAD to 19k over the last 8 months (also high hours and no trailer, so might sit for a while yet). There are a few others that are dropping as well after sitting. Conversely there's a beautiful 09 196 that has been listed for nearly a year, started at 48cad, and they bumped it up to 56k recently 🤣 I'm not sure about that strategy

That PS ad does say it has a leak at a muffler connection - I wonder about the specifics of that and whether it requires a whole muffler or manifold or just a connector as I'm not familiar with how they connect. I'm not scared of higher hours myself, but I would definitely keep some cash lying around for the repairs @Mastercrafter mentioned above. The long block I wouldn't be concerned about if well maintained, but there are so many associated wear items. For reference, my 5.3l 2018 Silverado had over 4000hr operating time and 200k km. Essentially 0 issues with it. But peripherals were starting to show wear signs of upcoming replacement. 

So if you were to put aside 10-15k for maintenance coming up, is there anything you could find with half the hours for 45-50k to be comparable? There are a few out there, a 50k 2018 I think on SIA and there's a 2014 for 65 CAD up here. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I don't know what to do either, lol

I'll have to watch the interview in multiple sessions but the first quarter of it is pretty awesome. I'm not a fan of chiro but all the back/core/pelvis physiology is super interesting to me as a tall, lean guy. Does anyone here do the original 12 minute daily? 

Ugh

Yeah it looked like they were talking but no audio.