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Boats you've owned


Boomer

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Ok, it's interesting to hear the boats people have owned, and their thoughts on them.

I'll start out.

Bought first boat at age 13, a 60's Glastron semi-V with 55hp 3-cylinder Johnson. Pooled yard-mowing money with step brother.

By today's standards would be a junker, but man we had fun in it! It would do over 40 mph, and we ran around everywhere on the intercoastal canal in it. The ignition didn't work most of the time, so to start it we had to attach jumper cables to the battery, take the motor cover off, and jab the jumper cables on the starter, usually get shocked doing it, lol. We tried to never let it die all day!

2nd boat I owned was a 70-something jet boat, with a Chevy 454, open headers, etc. Kids would run crying when I cranked it on the ramp, was funny. Hey, it's all I could afford back then, lol. First time I put it in the water I left the plug out, what a trip. It was loud and fun, but a lame boat overall really.

I remember a few funny things about it. Once I floored it from a dead stop, and the acceleration was so great, the seat beside me my buddy was sitting in ripped completely out, and he rolled to the back.

Another time when trying to pull my brother on slalom, he told me to give it everything to see if he could hold on. I did, and it pulled up so hard it broke the ski rope instantly, which popped me and two others upside the head.

3rd was a mid 80's Hydrostream Valero YT tunnel hull with a hopped up '94 Yamaha V6. Had a jack plate, low-water pickup, surface-piercing prop, over-hugb exhaust, etc. It was only 17-feet long, and did 105 mph on radar. :) With engine at full bore, trimmed out it threw a rooster tail about 100 yards long. Fun, yes it was, heheh. I still remember feeling like you'd been shot out of a canon driving that thing. Eyes wattering, feeling like you were right ON THE EDGE.

It sucked for all watersports...with the way it was setup for top speed, it would porpoise at any speed under about 35.

4th was my first inboard, a '92 Mastercraft Prostar 205. This is the boat that showed me the light, that inboards were where it's at. I had aged enough to not care for the speed, but we were enlightened how cool it was to have the swim platform on back, prop underneath, etc. Loved the boat, aside from the engine in the middle, and no room because of it. Vowed to never own anything else again.

5th, and my first new boat, was the '04 Supra SSV. Nice boat overall, but hated the soft ballast bags, lack of storage, and low seats/freeboard. This boat however showed me the light of the V-drive, yeah baby.

6th, and current, is my '05 VLX. What can I say about this one, it's awesome, and why I'm here. :)

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1st boat was a 86 Century 20' bow rider I bought from my folks. Had a 260 HP Mercruiser. It was a nice boat, but I really wanted an inboard.

Next was a 99 Wakesetter VLX that was a 50-hour dealer demo when I bought it in the fall of 99.

Next was a new 02 Wakesetter VLX. Sold it this past fall. The new owner just came to pick it up on Monday, so now its really gone for good.

I pick up the new one (05 WS VLX) this Friday night / Saturday morning, depending on the weather.

All have been great boats - and I hope the new one follows well in that tradition.

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1st was a 1995 Four Winns 17.5 Freedom with a 115 hp Johnson on it.

2nd was a 2004 Malibu Wakesetter DD, 320hp LCR

Growing up my father always had boats. It was a great time growing up, lots of great memories. I hope my children feel the same way some day.

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used Dad's old v-hull fishing boat for many years, moved into a 84 Bayliner Capri in '86(loved that boat), boatless a couple of years cause of moving, till I picked up the 92 Sunsetter (AH, my first inboard!), used that till the V-drive bug bit and got a "NEW" 2001 Wakesetter LSV, sold it and bought 02 Wakesetter VLX, sold it to buy 04 Wakesetter VLX, and now I am the proud owner of a new 05 Wakesetter VLX!!!

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All inboards and all Malibu!!

98 Malibu Response LX- Great ski boat, but hard to get a good wake for boarding.

00 Malibu Sunsetter VLX- Awesome boat for wakeboarding. Limited on ballast and other now standard options. I was not thrilled with the older Skylon Tuna towers either.

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1st boat- In 1991 I bought a 1977 Crestliner open bow with a 120 hp Chrysler outboard. Way underpowered for our altitude but got us hooked as a family on the whole boating gig.

In 1992 I bought a 91 Stratos 185 with a 150 Evinrude outboard. Great boat with lots of get up and go. Kept it til 99.

In 99 I got a new Reinell 200LS with a Merc 350 Mag I/O. Great boat for the $. Top end was upper 50's even at our altitude and had a great hole shot.

In 02 I got the 1st Bu- a 2001 Sunsetter VLX with 16 hours on it. Took a test drive and went right to the bank to get the money. I'm hooked.

In 04 I got the new WS VLX. What a great ride. Killer wake and turns alot of heads. I'm still debating about getting an 05 or waiting for the 06's. Once you get the bug it's hard to kick it.

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First boat I purchased

93 Kaw. Jetski, standup, still have it.

1995 Malibu Response

2002 Malibu Wakesetter VLX, currently.

When I was growing up we had a Glasstron fishing boat, It is over in my Dad's side of the pasture in pieces, were going to fix it but was not worth the effort or money.

14' Al. Monark fishing boat 25hp motor. We Kneeboarded behind this boat for years. Small wake rev the motor when jumping get a little air, drink alot of beer. Good thing it was a small private lake and we were generaly the only ones on it. Beer.gifBeer.gifBeer.gifBeer.gifBeer.gif

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My first boat was a 1978 CheckMate V-Mate II. 17 ft shallow V, 140hp Evinrude. It would hit 60mph. I just got rid of it when I bought my Sunsetter. I would like to show you a pic, but I can't attach one. I had one on MBO. It was still in brand new condition. I had a lot of fun with it over the years.

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My first boat was an 89 Ski Brendella Shortline Comp. Great boat for waterskiing, crappy for wakeboarding. The fit and finish of the boat was primitive but it had a nice quality gelcoat. Overall it was a good starter boat but nothing when compared to my Malibu. It was like upgrading from a hyundai to a Lexus.

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Our first family boat was a 78 Spectra 20.

Then I didn't own any boats,but I got to drive a bunch of them on the USCG's dime.

During college I bought my first jet ski and was conent with the 30 or so I had gone through until I moved to Havasu. There we bought a 97 Glastron. The cheapest 21` w/ a V-8 I could find. Initially, we bought it as a beater, but it actually turned out to be a descent boat. My wife and I learned to wakeboard behind it and we took a lot of late night trips out on it. It also was great for wakeboarding and exploring Lake Powell, my favorite.

When we moved from Havasu back up to No. Cal we sold the Glastron but kept a couple of PWC's. We found a section of the delta that was alsways butter. After a couple of seasons I talked my CFO into buying a wakeboarding boat. Well, actually I told her I was just looking. But, she knew I was serous whrn I brought it home :)

Enter the 03 Wakesetter LSV. Great boat! We did have a fuel leak, that put it OOC for a while, but other than that, good boat.

A year later the 04 Wakesetter came out, new design better handling and my wife loved the IllusionX tower. Enter the 04 Wakesetter LSV. Except, all was not good in hooterville. The 04 came with the dreaded HH 380. Mucho problemo. Mad.gif

Yada yada yada, the 05 Wakesetter was born. Both of my prior boats were blue. But given the problems I had, I switched to red. And so far so good. BTW, did I say the new HH 383 rocks? Rockon.gif

Boats I got to put mcuho hours on while my boats, especially 04 were out for repairs/engine swaps:

03 23 XTI

05 MC X-2

05 Wakesetter VLX

BTW, I am proud to say that I have been PWC for the past 6 months. Biggrin.gif

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Well I guess I'll tell a little on myself here.

First boat,

1969 Regatta w/50hp Mercury OB

Second boat (this was the one that I grew up behind),

1969 Tahiti w/115hp Mercury OB

I'll upload some pics of this to my gallery. We rebuilt the boat from the ground up & she was a beaut. May bring back a few memories for a few of you out there, I can't tell you how many times we had someone say to us, "I learned to ski behind a boat just like that".

3rd Boat

1999 MB Sports Boss 190 w/GT40 engine (closed bow)

Gawd I loved this boat. Great ski wake (the hull was built on the '94 Prostar molds, a very good ski wake indeed).

4th Boat (current)

2004 Wakesetter w/Hammerhead

Love this boat! It does everything we want it to well, which is good because we do nearly everything there is to do behind a boat.

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This could be a long list but I will sorta break it down to boats my family owned and i used and boats I owned.

Family (starting in the 90's)

90, 91, 92 Ski nautique

93 nautique excel

94 mastercraft prostar

95 sport nautique

97 ski nautique

98 ski nautique

98 nautique supersport

99 ski nautique

00 Cobalt 232

02 Cobalt 226

03 Cobalt 220

05 Cobalt 250

I owned:

99 sport/air nautique

00 mastercraft x-star

01 Malibu sunsetter lxi

02 Malibu Wakesetter lxi

02 Mastercraft X-star (tons of problems, worked a deal on the malibu)

03 Malibu vlx

04 Malibu vlx

05 Malibu vlx

05 Malibu Response lxi

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First boat was a fiberglass canoe my dad and I put together from a kit in 1970. We got to play around with a lot of itchy fiberglass. We took that canoe everywhere. My parents still have it rotting in their backyard.

95 Reinell 196 BRXL - got me used to owning a boat and we had a great time with it.

01 Sunsetter VLX - I took care of the Reinell, changing the oil, winterizing etc, but this one I baby. I think it drives my wife nuts sometimes. We are having so much fun with it though.

Not a long history for me.

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My '02 Sunsetter LXi was my first boat. Bought it because it looked cool to me and I love the sound of a V-8. Probably would have had as much fun with a Bayliner I/O, but always wanted a tournament style ski boat. Loads of fun learning to dock/load on a trailer with a inboard ski boat...

Edited by rts
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These are the boats my family has owned since I've been around:

1) 13ft Boston Whaler

2) 17ft Whaler

3) 11ft Whaler

4) 13ft Whaler

5) 17ft Larson (Biggest Piece of Crap in the World-Of course you get what you pay for)

6) 15ft Whaler

7) And finally the Bu

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Family boats while growing up:

1. 1974 Horizon with 150 Merc outboard. Engine caught fire (while in operation, but extinguished quickly) and dad decided to unload it.

2. 1979 Horizon jet with 460 Ford, hi-rise manifold and all the chrome bling you could imagine. Great boat for Colorado River, but sucked for skiing and general water sports.

My boats

1. 1999 Calabria Sport Comp XTS. Sweet boat and no complaints, but wanted a V-drive.

2. 2005 Sunscape 21.5 LSV on order that will arrive in 2 weeks. Yahoo.gif

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This could be a long list but I will sorta break it down to boats my family owned and i used and boats I owned.

Family (starting in the 90's)

90, 91, 92 Ski nautique

93 nautique excel

94 mastercraft prostar

95 sport nautique

97 ski nautique

98 ski nautique

98 nautique supersport

99 ski nautique

00 Cobalt 232

02 Cobalt 226

03 Cobalt 220

05 Cobalt 250

I owned:

99 sport/air nautique

00 mastercraft x-star

01 Malibu sunsetter lxi

02 Malibu Wakesetter lxi

02 Mastercraft X-star (tons of problems, worked a deal on the malibu)

03 Malibu vlx

04 Malibu vlx

05 Malibu vlx

05 Malibu Response lxi

Dang!

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84 barefoot nautique: great boat except for slalom, ran like a champ, one winter we finally had a compression check and one of the valves was completely GONE, and we NEVER knew it! I wish they still offerred a 454.

99 response lx, great boat, just too small for us at the time

00 wakesetter VLX, good boat, but I blew out 2 knees behind it so I wanted to get out of wakeboarding

04 sunsetter vlx (21 lsv): awesome all around boat, have no complaints at all except that there were a lot of problems from the factory

then my fiance got a 05 Rlxi that is just SWEET. Great wakes (obviously) for everything we do now (slalom barefoot and...tube (but only after noon and when our friends want to)) Vomit.gif

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Yea, I go through boats pretty quickly. So much so that I am working on a deal to purchase my local marina. I use my boats heavily though giving lessons and as a demo for the marina through a deal I have worked out.

I did forget my thoughts though so I will give a quick rundown.

Build wise and comfort wise not one boat comes close to the Cobalts my parents have. Their gel is like a mirror and they are so well thought out and nice, if only they had a wake. Second to that I have really become a Malibu man. I enjoyed my nautiques and they were very solid and well built, but I hated the v-drive wake and they always had dumb things wrong, like decals that would fall off and seams in the seat that would go right around 500 hours everytime. As for the mastercrafts, they had some nice wakes and worked well, but I had so many problems with them. I know they are supposedly built well, but my last x-star was a p o s in all aspects and drove me away from them as a whole. I would give them a look in the future, but am very weary. As for my bu's I have had some probelms such as vinyl tears and had a fuel pump and perfect pass cable go, but overall they have proven much more reliable and durable than my other boats and my 04 was my favorite boat ever, although this 05 vlx may top that.

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Boats my family has owned over the years since I've been around:

1980 Mark Twain Tri-hull: Baby blue, 16 footer, learned to ski behind this bad boy with a big 115 hp Merc.

1976 Glastron Carlson CVX-16. Another baby blue little rocket. My dad had always wanted one of these so he finally found one and bought it. One of the best outboard ski boats I have been behind. The bigger brother, the CVX-20 has a 'Ski Machine' edition that could easily compete with the Powerstars back in the day.

1992 Malibu Skier. We put over 1200 hours on this boat. My dad had also always wanted an inboard. He bought this thing new as a left over in 1993. We had not really even heard of Malibu, but it was a easier entry into the market than the MC or Nautique at the time. Turned out we got in on Malibu right as it was starting to catch fire growth wise. Ended up keeping this boat for 10 years. My brother and I kind of started our competitive skiing careers with this boat.

2002 Centurion Eclipse LaPoint. I was President of the Ski Team at Kansas State and got a call from Robert Thayer wondering if our team would be interested in promoing one of their boats in Kansas. We had already had a pretty good network of boats worked out, but I talked my dad into looking into this company. We thought it might be the next Malibu. We sold the Skier to a family in Minnesota and took possession of a red Eclipse the next week. At first it was great having all the new gadgets. Slowly the gadgets became a huge problem on this boat. Probably the worst electrically challenged boat I have ever seen. It would just decided not to start at random times, would blow fuses to PP, etc. all the time. Ended up having Centurion trade the boat on the '03 we currently have.

2003 Centurion Eclipse LaPoint. This boat turned out to be a pretty decent towboat. It has about 245 hours on it now, and hardly any problems. A couple minor Mecruiser issues on both boat (more major on the '02) have convinced me that I will never buy a boat with a Mercruiser powerplant.

These were all my parents boats, though with the last 2, I have kind of felt part ownership as I did most of the work to get them ready for tournaments, etc. It's actually in my garage right now after a K-State tournament 2 weeks ago.

Now I'm just trying to get through the first rough year of work and see if I can scrape together enough money to buy 'my' first boat. I'm shooting for either the Spring of '06 or '07 depending on how many work obligations I have at that time. Right now, even if I could possibly afford it, I don't feel like another $500+ a month payment going to something I could maybe use once or twice a week (I grew up skiing 5-7 days a week.) I'm assuming that I'll probably be in an RLXi or PS197 when the time comes.

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Yea, I go through boats pretty quickly.  So much so that I am working on a deal to purchase my local marina.  I use my boats heavily though giving lessons and as a demo for the marina through a deal I have worked out.

I did forget my thoughts though so I will give a quick rundown.

Build wise and comfort wise not one boat comes close to the Cobalts my parents have.  Their gel is like a mirror and they are so well thought out and nice, if only they had a wake.  Second to that I have really become a Malibu man.  I enjoyed my nautiques and they were very solid and well built, but I hated the v-drive wake and they always had dumb things wrong, like decals that would fall off and seams in the seat that would go right around 500 hours everytime.  As for the mastercrafts, they had some nice wakes and worked well, but I had so many problems with them.  I know they are supposedly built well, but my last x-star was a p o s in all aspects and drove me away from them as a whole.  I would give them a look in the future, but am very weary.  As for my bu's I have had some probelms such as vinyl tears and had a fuel pump and perfect pass cable go, but overall they have proven much more reliable and durable than my other boats and my 04 was my favorite boat ever, although this 05 vlx may top that.

Great input. I do agree on the Cobalts, they are the "cadillac" of the runabouts.

Edited by stewart
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We keep our boats for a long time. #1 '67 Correct Craft Barracuda, #2 '80 Century Resorter 18, #3 '88 Malibu Skier, #4 '03 Malibu Sportster. Three of these boats are still in the family. I'd buy #1 back if I found it.

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Don't know the year or the make, but my brother-in-law bought a boat for us to work on about 30 years ago. Flat-bottomed 12' or so little two seater with a 40 hp Merc. The boat was "mine" and boy would she scream!

1962 StarCraft w/'87 Merc - very flat wake, but could be yanked around

1995 BlueWater Mirage - I'd put that up against ANY IO for skiing

2003 Response LX - Nirvana, baby

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