«OFFICIAL» Watercraft / Jet Ski / PWC Thread + Boats

Boat sales are doing awesome in a pandemic:

“We know there are a lot of people hurting right now,” Mr. Kelly said. “But speaking on dollars and cents, we’ve never ever, ever seen boat sales like this.”

Yep, I know two people looking for used boats right now and they said it’s nuts.

Makes sense. Three markets I know of are doing amazing right now.

Local rentals, especially waterfront. People looking for a nice local vacation where they can drive instead of fly.

Boat sales. Again, people looking to blow their vacation money on something the can do locally instead.

Pool sales. My stimulus money splurge was going to be on a heater for our pool (just have a solar cover now). I’ve had the 150k BTU Hayward heater I want on order for over a month now and the back order just keeps getting pushed out (estimated ship of 7/15 now). I even went on Hayward’s site and did the dealer locator out to 200 miles and made a ton of calls figuring I’d just take a day and road trip it to pick one up if I could find one. Every place the same story, “sorry, we’re sold out and have back orders. This is the craziest summer we’ve ever had”. Thankfully it’s been so nice in June my pool has been between 85 and 87 with just the solar cover and hopefully I’ll have the heater in time to extended our swim season when it starts cooling off. Two friends wanted to get pools installed and were told they were looking at September at the earliest (they were calling in May).

Been using our boat a ton and adding the extended swim platform is the best thing I’ve ever done to a boat.

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The sad and scary part, the amount of uneducated boaters that will now be on the waters. Good luck and stay safe! lol

Yeah, I was worried about that too but so far things have been pretty calm. The incredible weather we’ve been having every single day helps a ton because you don’t have everyone jamming the river full that one nice day we get a week.

The big issue this year is the Canadian border lockdown. Usually the Canadians are super cool with you crossing that invisible line on the West River. We pretty much exclusively ski and tube in Canadian waters because it’s calm with way less boat traffic. I’ve heard from multiple people that OPP and Canadian border patrol are stopping people and telling them to stay out of Canadian waters while the border lockdown is in place. I’m in the Grass Island Facebook group and several people have been stopped. They all said the police were cool about it, just giving a warning, but it has still put a real damper on skiing since it’s very hard to find calm water on the US side. It’s also impossible to do a lap of Grand Island in a boat without going into Canadian waters since the border goes so close to GI that you’d have to run through water 2’ deep to stay in the US. It sounds like they’re still honoring “right of passage” though, so as long as you keep moving and take as short a route possible to get back to US waters they’re ok with it. It’s when you stop to swim, tube, ski etc they’ve been warning people. We had the OPP boat slow down and look at us real close as we were probably about 100 yards onto the Canadian side traveling as close to GI as we possibly could but since we were moving along around 30mph they just watched us and continued on their way.

That picture above we’re sitting WAY into Canada on the west side of Navy Island. This was before I had heard they were cracking down this year. I can pretty much guarantee if the OPP boat had come along they would have come over and given us a warning since we were just engine off drifting and hanging out.

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West River from my chart plotter app. Red line is the US/Canada border. We got fucking hosed on the deal when they drew that line.

Border is just as bad between just north of the Peace Bridge and Strawberry Island as well.

No wonder my buddy has talked about the Canadian side and how he has to be careful over on that side of Grand Island, which is where his boat is docked. Never realized it was that close to Grand Island though. In order for him to leave his dock and the channel, he has to go into Canadian water before he can turn. I believe it’s Big Six Marina that he has his boat at.

Yep, Big Six is that little cut of water that goes into GI in the center of the first map I posted.

The Canadians have always been REALLY strict about open containers as well (as in if they find one during a random safety check, even if the driver blows a 0.0, there’s a good chance you’re getting either a big fine or towed to shore and your boat impounded), which is part of the reason cruising over there is so awesome. I don’t allow booze on our boat at all since we’re always popping in an out of Canadian waters and it’s not worth the risk. All the d-bag drunks stick to Grass Island and don’t dare head into the West River.

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Yeah… wish Grass Island wouldn’t get ruined by the drunks and the people trampling on the sections behind the signs. Never understood how that was so hard to follow and why you feel the need to not even pay attention to it, especially since the location is in danger of being taken away.

I have been watching CL boat listings for years. Never found anything cheap enough to jump on.
Something about paying 5-10k for an 80’s boat does not sit well with me. Even though some are in great shape.

My wife trolls the Facebook sale sites too and it looks like i’ll end up with a fixer upper some day.
Maybe a nice 1984 Bayliner… (kidding)

Boats are so cheap on FB…then I think of all the upkeep and gas and storage and dock fees…

So I make friends with boat people instead.

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Haha.

Friends. Overrated.

Ummm… maybe this belongs here?

Not sure if this fits in here. cutting a ship with a chain

That’s incredible. But with all the work they went through and are going through, why not just right the ship?

Seems like the only way to right that would be to either counter ballast all the crushed cars, or remove all the cars.

Now you are poor if you don’t have 4+ v12’s

Damn. Mercury gives no fucks about the electrification tends.

Electric is pretty dumb in boats. People with boats tend to go out all day and their electric boat is going to be dead long before they get home. It’s one thing to drive your little electric car to work and back, or even farther away where there’s a charger at your destination, but there aren’t any chargers out in the river/lake/ocean to top off while you’re hanging out. Nautique has that electric ski boat but that’s an extremely niche market boat.