Hi Bradford-
I do plan to hang around. As I said this is a great website with good people. Much of the information here can be applied to boats in general, not just those beautiful V's. Usually, I am the recipient of information/ideas, but one day I'm sure someone will have a problem that I can help them with.
So, we (my brother and I) have lived in NE Ohio within minutes of Lake Erie our whole lives. We hunt waterfowl and fish for walleye, yellow perch and smallmouth bass an the "Big Pond." For much of this time we hunted and fished out of my 18' Lund Alaskan. This is plenty of boat if one stays close and is careful about when you go out. But, definitely limited, once the walleye moved offshore it was "game over."
Two years ago I found a V20 for sale and we bought it. The idea was to fish out of it and see if we used it enough to justify the expense of a bigger boat. Well, we did use it and we felt that we wanted a bigger boat to facilitate a few more people on board and to make those days when the lake is rough a bit more comfortable.
I came across a 1999 Sportcraft 251 in January that was in really nice shape with low hours and stored on a trailer in a barn. This boat was hardly used! Price was right, so after a bit of "horse-trading" it now belongs to us. We need to do a bit of fiberglass work (we can't stand holes in a boat), install an autopilot unit, a fishfinder/chartplotter and a windlass, clean her up, put a shine on it and then into the slip. We just got it back from a guy in Delaware who installed a hard-top, he did a real nice job. The rest is ours to do. We are going to miss the V, but we are looking forward to a bunch of fun with family and friends on the new boat. Yes, it is bittersweet!
A few photos of the hardtop install and right after completion.
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