Fritz,
Good morning! I hope you're doing well; I've been watching this feed for a few days and it seems to have blown quite far off topic...suffice to say, I know your frustration
. Anyway, as an 18 year old kid, I don't know TOO much about money, but I am taking economy classes, watching plenty of Dave Ramsey videos and plan to be an attorney; thus, learning to manage my own personal funds has been of interest, and I've learned a lot. It comes down to every little thing you spend money on, which includes (unfortunately) your boat, assuming you've got the money to purchase one in the first place. I can relate to you just as well as anyone, as I've always looked into the cheapest way of making repairs on my projects and personal vessels. I have two personal boats, an AMF Sunfish and Catalina 25 Tall Rig, and three projects, two of which I sold, and one I'm almost finished with: The first is a Bruce Kirby Sonar. I picked her up just outside Houston from an old farmer my dad is friends with who had it on his property and didn't know what the heck to do with it. The trailer needed new wheels, but other than that, it was good to go (minus registration)! The fiberglass on deck was in poor condition, but the hull was perfectly fine, and the cockpit just needed a good cleaning. After spending about three weeks cleaning out the cabin and settees of mice and birds, I finally got to cleaning, and a pressure wash made her look a million times better than she had before! Unfortunately, I had to put the Sonar on halt for a short time while I went and picked up my second project, another Sunfish. It had the hull and rigging for the sails, but no tiller, rudder, or daggerboard. It took me two months to cut, sand, shape and varnish those, all the while working on the sonar here and there.....all in my two car garage
...no, my parents were not happy. The Sonar costed me quite a bit; she ended up being about $5,500 dollars to repair, because she's a racer and I wanted her to be back to her original build, so I had to purchase parts directly from Kirby, but it was definitely worth it! I brought her home for free, flipped her and sold her for $18,000. I finished the Sunfish a few months afterward after only spending about $200, and sold her for $1750. After those two, I picked up an AMF Sunbird from a fellow Sea Scout's property on a good trailer, pressure washed her, redid the running and standing rigging, spreaders, minor fiberglass repairs, polishing the hull and servicing the swing keel, she's almost ready to be sold; all I need to do now is go get some non-skid surface adhesive pads from West Marine and get that stuck on there! The sails were also in decent shape, but had a few tears from the spreaders which I was able to stitch up easily. Now, the running rigging was free because I know people and they're nice enough to give me stuff
but I went to a boatyard and found some standing rigging from a Capri 14.2 and replaced the old rigging with it; worked like a charm!
Hope this helps!
God Bless,
S.S.
