97 Mariner 350 - Pleae help decide

[mobinakhtar]

Takeback - Genset still not hooked up. Owners don't want to counter to my offer. Sadly I have to walk away at this point and look elsewhere. My heart is still set on Carvers, specially the 97-02 Mariner.

[Cooler]

Hang tough. Don't be surprised if they have a change of heart. If they do not want to respond to an interested buyer, then that in itself is cause for concern. Might be the broker playing a little game. Just wait. The fact that the boat started is just step 1. Power under load is totally something else. Lots of systems that have to perform satisfactorily. Your Ferrari probably taught you something about buying certain things. Last thought....there is always another boat, car, house, _______, just around the corner. Keep us informed. er

[tomschauer]

The owner of our 355 originally did not want to entertain our offer. They came back about two and a half month later with a counter that we turned down. The broker said they owe more that that, I said, not my problem. Another four weeks they took our offer. It took another 2 months to settle. Turned out the previous owners owed about 30k more on the boat than we were paying. They had to get a home equity loan to pay it off. Your owners may be in the same type of position.

[mobinakhtar]

Hey Cooler - You know what they say : Boat Deal of a lifetime comes every weekend here. I am sure Good Lord has something good for me!

[RGrew176]

Stay the course. There is a boat out there with your name on it. Good luck.

[mobinakhtar]

Wow, how the events turned around. While talking to folks at Marina, I found a PRISTINE 2003 Carver 396 Aft Cabin with only 104 Hrs on engines and 130 on genset, that has been decently maintained with service records available. It's being sold as-is, where-is due to owners finances and after meeting them, they appear to be very honest about everything good and bad.

Hired a surveyor today to do in-boat inspection. Engines/Gen worked, all electronics updated in 2017 and work. He made a comprehensive list of work needed (Full engine services on all engines, bottom paint redo which is 3 years old, wax, buff, a solenoid on genny, two bad cabin AC units) - Main 16K btu is fine) and all new batteries, etc.

His list approximates $12K - but the boat is over 70K below NADA book and is very clean inside. We have a 3 years old survey done by the same yard so surveyor was pretty confident on the boat. Its just been used as a condo.

I have put it under contract and proceeding to legal paperwork (Hired a broker and a marine documentation agency to properly do the deal. Guys I'm going for it. Wish me luck!

[RGrew176]

Good luck. Hope everything falls into place.

[Viper]

Good luck. Keep us posted.

[bud37]

Wow.....that seems to be quite the deal near as I can tell.....Word of mouth at the docks can be productive....just find out why the main engines have less hours than the genny for a dock queen, very low hours?....good luck with this one ....

[mobinakhtar]

I’m sure original owners used it as intended, parked somewhere and enjoyed. Boat originally came out of Great Lakes MI.