Boats For Sale

Fishing pangas, sport boats and inflatables:

the working boat and the weekend boat share an outboard and little else. A Pacific fishing panga is a narrow, heavy fibreglass hull with a tiller-steered motor, a fish hold and hardly a seat. It shrugs off knocks and is slow to plane, which suits a fishing crew. A bowrider or centre console built for leisure has a wheel, a windshield, upholstery and often a US maker’s name on the hull, and rides drier and faster with more things to wear out. Riveted aluminium skiffs sit between the two: light, easy to tow and happy on a lake, less so in a Pacific swell. For a tender or something that fits in a pickup, look at dinghies, part of the wider power boats range. Sailboats and jet skis sit apart, and a hull that comes without wheels will need one of the boat trailers.

A used skiff is mostly its outboard:

a fibreglass or aluminium skiff of 16 to 18 feet, with its motor and often a trailer, tends to change hands for around Q30,000 to Q50,000, and a new outboard strong enough to make that hull plane costs as much or more on its own. The hull is the cheap part: fibreglass lasts decades if nobody drives it onto rocks. A skiff whose motor needs rebuilding is really a hull plus a workshop bill, and one with a recent four-stroke can fairly ask more than its age suggests. Match the motor to the hull as well. A heavy fishing panga with a small motor will never plane with a load aboard, and a light hull carrying far more power than it was built for turns dangerous in a chop.

Gelcoat, keel and capacity plate on a second-hand hull:

look at the boat out of the water and in daylight. Spider-web cracks in the gelcoat near the bow or the motor mount show where the hull has flexed or been hit, and blisters below the waterline mean water has got into the laminate. Run a hand along the keel: a boat dragged up beaches and ramps for years wears it thin, and fresh paint or a patch in a different shade of white usually hides a repair worth asking about. Boats built in the United States carry a capacity plate near the helm or transom with the maximum power and load the hull was designed for, so compare it with the motor hanging off the back. Locally built pangas rarely have one, so ask who built it. Ask for a compression reading on the outboard: cylinders that read close to one another mean an engine with life left, and one low cylinder is a rebuild on its way. On an inflatable, check the tube fabric, because Hypalon stands up to tropical sun far better than PVC, which turns tacky and opens at the seams. On a jet ski, check the impeller for nicks from sand sucked up in the shallows.

Listing a boat that someone will have to tow away:

describe it by the type buyers search for, fishing panga, bowrider, centre console or aluminium skiff, then give the length, the hull material and who built it. Say plainly whether the motor and the trailer are in the price, because plenty of owners sell a tired hull and its outboard separately, and a buyer needs to know which they are driving out to see. Photograph the bottom of the hull, the motor with the cowling off and the helm, and list the tanks, life jackets and anchor that go with it. Then say exactly where the boat sits, at a house in the capital, in a marina or on the sand at the coast, because the buyer has to turn up with a vehicle and hitch that can pull it out and up the road to the highlands, and a boat sitting on a beach needs a different plan from one already waiting on its trailer by a ramp.