Josh Reynolds
Active Member
Here’s the story,
I worked hard and saved every penny to be able to purchase my first boat so my family could experience all the fun memory making activities I enjoyed growing up. After a year of searching for what I wanted for our first boat I found this gem on Craigslist in a neighboring town. 1997 Nitro 185sf. I’ve spent the last 2 years tweaking it here and there more to my liking. Had the boat detailed including oxidation removal the first week I had it. Then over that first winter I changed the water pump, updated the trolling motor to a used powerdrive (added I-pilot to that), put 2 humminbird’s on, new batteries, added a 3 bay onboard charger and had the seats re-upholstered. Last summer the trolling motor decided to auto-deploy at 40mph and you’ll see in the pictures how that turned out. Thankfully it never made contact with the bow. So once again I updated the trolling motor to a new terrova. It’s great for fishing but it tends to have some drag in its ass so to speak when it comes to skiing tubing etc. It also has a chip in the fiberglass where previous owner must’ve hit a rock. No structural damage but cosmetically I would like to get it fixed. So the question is, do I put thousands more into this boat that I could potentially see keeping for a very long time with some more tweaking to suit my needs/wants or do I sell the boat and use the money to put towards something newer/outfitted with my needs/wants?
Pictures of all the work over the last 2 years
I worked hard and saved every penny to be able to purchase my first boat so my family could experience all the fun memory making activities I enjoyed growing up. After a year of searching for what I wanted for our first boat I found this gem on Craigslist in a neighboring town. 1997 Nitro 185sf. I’ve spent the last 2 years tweaking it here and there more to my liking. Had the boat detailed including oxidation removal the first week I had it. Then over that first winter I changed the water pump, updated the trolling motor to a used powerdrive (added I-pilot to that), put 2 humminbird’s on, new batteries, added a 3 bay onboard charger and had the seats re-upholstered. Last summer the trolling motor decided to auto-deploy at 40mph and you’ll see in the pictures how that turned out. Thankfully it never made contact with the bow. So once again I updated the trolling motor to a new terrova. It’s great for fishing but it tends to have some drag in its ass so to speak when it comes to skiing tubing etc. It also has a chip in the fiberglass where previous owner must’ve hit a rock. No structural damage but cosmetically I would like to get it fixed. So the question is, do I put thousands more into this boat that I could potentially see keeping for a very long time with some more tweaking to suit my needs/wants or do I sell the boat and use the money to put towards something newer/outfitted with my needs/wants?
Pictures of all the work over the last 2 years
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