Someone's acquired a new boat, transporting baby salmon, and in the "I hear Home Depot has some good deals on pitchforks" department...
I rarely ever look at boats on ebay. Partly because I find Craigslist a much better source for finding used boats and partly because the ebay environment seems to have become overly expensive as well as hostile. But, as it happens, I found myself looking for something and took a glance at sailboats for sale.
Where I found a 2005 Bendytoy 343 with a Buy It Now price of $24,997.00.
The reason it's so cheap is that it's a hurricane boat and being sold off by the insurance company which acquired it when they paid out to the insured party as a total loss.
So, at best, we're actually talking about someone selling a $5-10K boat for $24,997.00.
Let's get back to that phrase TOTAL LOSS for a moment and consider what that actually means.
I'll go on record that buying a storm damaged boat for cheap and rehabbing it is not a bad way to go for someone with some serious frugal boat building and repair experience can result in a great boat. I'll even go so far as say that depending on the boats total loss condition, a cheap enough selling price and availability of a place to move said boat for little rent I might even consider such a boat.
Of course, I'd never ever pay almost $25K for such a project because that would be stupid. Considering I can find the same model for around $70-$85K and I can't see spending less $35K in materials, another $5-10K in expenses, and the cost of three to six months of my full time labor to get it done.
Then again, if you were able to buy the total loss wreck for $5K, had a yard to put it in, a whole lot of free time, and some wizardly boat building skills it might actually be a viable project.
In general though the best advice I can give someone considering this sort of hurricane boat project is to avoid it with prejudice.
On the other hand if someone gets it and does a YouTube channel of the rehab it will be fun to watch in a dark comedy of errors vein.
Listening to a playlist from 1987
So it goes...
