Do not buy a Bayliner as was said before. Crap Crap Crap
Stick to brands like Four Winns, Sea Ray, Stingray, etc. I currently own a 19’ Stingray open bow and am pretty satisified with it. As others have said, the type of boating you want to do should dictate the boat you buy. The advantage to a smaller, lighter boat is that if the lake or river is too rough, you can trailer it to a nearby smaller lake and enjoy it. I am trailering mine this year because generally late July to end of season, Lake Ontario is too rough to use it. This year we are planning trailering it down to the finger lakes and what not.
Do not kid yourself into thinking boating is not a lot of work. It is. The one thing I would definitely recommend paying for is bottom cleaning at the end of the season (if you plan on storing in the water). It’ll be the best $100- 150 you’ll ever spend.
Another thing to consider is power vs fuel efficiency. If you’re planning on doing a lot of skiing and what not, I’d recommend not going with a 135hp 4Cyl. It’ll be more efficient when cruising but lacks the ability to really pop a skier out of the water. A V6 190hp engine works well. Avoid OMC drives as parts will be generally difficult to come by (company went under). If you go with an Outboard, I believe you want to avoid Evinrude and Johnson brands as I believe for a while there they were part of OMC as well (This will be dependent on the year of the engine which I don’t know off the top of my head).
Edit:
This one looks decent. I forgot to mention, you generally will get more power with an outboard than an I/O. So if you see 125hp outboard, it’s more like 160hp I/O
I’m shocked at all the mercuiser raves here. Volvo-Penta’s SX is a far superior drive to Mercruiser Alpha One, and pretty much any boat in the 17-21 foot starter boat range is going to be equipped with an Alpha drive, not Mercruiser’s much better Bravo drive.
Cone clutch > dog clutch.
2 year warranty > 1 year warranty.
Build quality of a tank > build quality of a Chevy Cobalt.
Hell, when I bought my Chaparral VP was practically giving away their 2+4 warranty (6 years of coverage). I managed to get it included for free. The fact that they can do that says something about how well they build the drive.
The only thing that would keep me from buying another VP powered boat was if I was moving to some remote area that didn’t have VP service. In WNY that really isn’t an issue.
All boats that my family have owned were mercruiser alpha one drives and they never ever had issues. Every year they would get removed from the boat during winter, and put back on in the spring when the boat went in the water. Never had a failure. Also, when buying a used boat, the warantee is gone out the door from the get go.
I have never owned a VP powered boat, but I can certainly say that my family has put many ocean runs and 7+ hour trips on an underpowered twin engine sea ray, and even pushing them hard on a 7 hour ride was nothing to them. They also got us out of some pretty hairy 15+ foot swells one time(we seriously almost died on the boat).
The Alpha One drives seem to hold up fine as long as they are in the stock applications that they were suited for. Just don’t try to do anything out of the ordinary with them…
If you want something for high performance use, your gonna want the Bravo. But, as stated above, the bravo one’s do not come in many “base” applications.
I also agree with JayS that the volvo is a good drive