Power Boats

Open deck, cuddy cabin or a cabin you can sleep in:

that question sorts power boats faster than length does. Bowriders and dual consoles from Robalo or Sea Ray are day boats, with seats up front, a windscreen and room to swim off the stern. A centre console trades that comfort for a walkway right round the deck, so a fish can be fought from any side. A cuddy adds a small cabin for shade, an express cruiser such as the Sea Ray Sundancer puts a galley and a berth under the foredeck, and flybridge sportfishers stack a helm on top for spotting birds and baits from higher up. At the small end, an inflatable or RIB works as a tender or a beach boat that rides in the back of a pickup. If you would rather the wind did the work, look at sailboats, and for solo rides with no cabin at all a jet ski costs far less to keep.

Outboards on the transom or diesels under the cockpit:

most small and mid-size power boats now run on outboards, from a single Yamaha on a bowrider to a bank of Mercurys on an offshore console. They tilt clear of the water, can be replaced one at a time and get serviced almost anywhere on the coast. Diesel inboards belong to express cruisers and flybridge boats: heavier and slower onto the plane, but thriftier on a long run offshore and longer-lived when looked after. Nearly every hull is fibreglass, but the sportfishers Maverick builds in Costa Rica are cold-molded from laminated layers of laurel wood. That makes a stiff, quiet hull, and one that wants a surveyor who knows wood.

Hull year against engine year:

on a used power boat the engines carry more of the price than the hull. A dual or centre console in the mid-twenties of feet, ten or so years old and repowered with a new four-stroke, changes hands for around $90,000 to $120,000, and an older offshore boat past thirty feet with recent twin engines sits nearer $150,000 to $180,000. The same hulls on tired original engines go for a good deal less, since the buyer is pricing in a repower. Flybridge sportfishers, built here or in US yards, start around half a million dollars.

Soft decks, wet cores and foamed-in fuel tanks:

walk the deck barefoot and feel for give around the console, the T-top legs and anywhere a rod holder was screwed through. Older decks and transoms were often cored with wood or foam, and water seeping past a badly bedded fitting rots the core from inside long before anything shows. Spider cracks in the gelcoat are the clue; a surveyor’s moisture meter confirms it. If the boat lives in the water, ask to see the bottom out of it and look for blisters. Open every hatch. Many US-built boats carry an aluminium fuel tank foamed in under the deck, and salt water trapped against it eats through the metal, so replacing it means lifting the deck. Run every bilge pump and look behind the console: a nest of added cables and taped splices means years of electronics fitted by different hands.

A lancha with its papers, its hours and its mooring:

give the hull year and the engine year separately, with the hours on each engine, because a repower moves the price more than anything else you can write. Say where the boat lies, on a mooring in Bahía Potrero, in a marina dry stack or on a trailer at home, and whether it is registered in Costa Rica with the documentation to prove it. Photograph the helm with the screens lit, the engines and the bottom if it was hauled recently, and list the electronics that stay aboard. Most of these boats are passed on by owners trading up or foreigners leaving the country, and a buyer driving down from Escazú will want to know whether yours can be lifted out for a look at the bottom before anyone talks money.