First time rib buyer.

[doggypaddle]

Hi every one, i am new to this forum and hopefully will soon be a new ribster!
i have been looking at Ribs for sale for a while now and have a few questions to ask other ribsters about ribs in general, firstly is the price of used ribs very seasonal? whats the cheapest time of the year to buy?
secondly are there any makes of rib to avoid or be wary of? i have heared one horror story of a rib being stripped to retube having a transom made of soggy chipboard!
Any recomendations for boats in the 5-6m range? i think for three of us and two dogs plus possibly 3 guests this will be the minimum size! i will have a limited budget and am currently looking at humbers, avon SRs and similar in the 5-6K range. i dont mind a project as long as i have a good boat at the end of it.

thanks

[Hightower]

During the first part of winter is the best time of year to bag a bargain, however your selection of RIBs available will be less as people only tend to sell during season.

Seariders and Humbers for the budget is definatly the way to go, there are many threads that you can search on RIBnet relating to specific manufacturers. If I where you I would stick to the bigger brands, you'll not go too far wrong.

Is that Newent, Glos you live in?

[doggypaddle]

Hi, yes its Newent Gloucester. What about BWM they seem sometimes cheap,
I think i want a medium or deep vee hull too? I have been on a rib that was a fairly shallow vee and it was awful! do you know what ribs ride the best?

[Hightower]

Originally Posted by doggypaddle

Hi, yes its Newent Gloucester. What about BWM they seem sometimes cheap,
I think i want a medium or deep vee hull too? I have been on a rib that was a fairly shallow vee and it was awful! do you know what ribs ride the best?

I cut my teeth in the RIB world with a BWM DeepSea 17, very nice RIB for a beginner, wide beam and a medium to a deep V, however the real rough stuff showed it's limitations and had to back right off in a following Sea, this was in part due to it's concave bow feature and hated following seas with a vengence. That said however I never felt unsafe in her and was quite comfortable taking her out in a F6 as I did a couple of times.

Watch around the transom for cracks particularly around the knees. A 2 stroke 90 is the absolout maximum outboard she'll take without modification and I found that a 90 fourstroke was a little heavy and stressed the transom too much, so much that I had to have a repair done, but it turned out to be only cosmetic though.

[Sarah G]

Hi there

Just to say that as a relative newbie, you've made the first step by finding this fab forum, there are a load of ribbing experts that can all help you, whether about the dimensions of a specific boat, the electrics, you name it they really helped us out.

As we are fresh from buying our first rib, I would suggest a number of things:-

work out a budget

remember that once you bought your boat:-

where are you going to store it long-term, for the summer? Do you really want to trailer it to and from the coast every weekend - it gets really boring driving at 60 m.p.h. trust me.

harbour dues
fuel costs

It is amazing how much more you end up spending up-front so factor that in to the equation.

Don't underestimate the cost of repairs to a trailer - everyone talks about the outboard/inboard being the biggest part of the cost, but the trailer can suddenly cost a load of money that you were not expecting (not that we are talking from experience - oh yeah we are!!! ). It is hard to inspect the bearings or brakes.

Having said all that, it is great to have the boat and we love it. We joined a group from here on a recent trip to Priory Bay and the support we received was really lovely.

Remember that if you are talking about all those people coming on board, you need lifejackets, there was a thread on here talking about cheap lifejackets. It is really worth using the search facility on boats, newbie, RIB Virgin (where we received loads of help!), etc.

Good luck with the search.

[doggypaddle]

Thanks for that, i will look out for that if i look at a BWM, I have been looking at the threads on fuel consumption, engine reliability etc, and it would seem that if
i can find a reasonable 5-5.5 boat with a two stroke 50-75 it will be exactly what i want and wont cost me a grand a week to play! i used to have a microplus 502 (like a shetland 5m) with a yammy 3 pot 40 and that went well enough and was very frugal on fuel, i guess a 5m rib would be lighter and have less wind drag, and would go for hours on 5 gallons.

cheers
Martyn

[doggypaddle]

Hi sarah
thanks for the advice, fortunately i am not new to boat ownership so i am aware of most of the pitfalls, also i am a keen DIYer so trailer repairs, welding brakes, tyre changing, outboard repairs and rebuilds arent at all daunting, I dont have a problem driving at 60mph the landrover is quite bearable at that speed, and i and get between motorway services without refilling! I do live a long way from the coast though, hence the tight budget, i dont want 10+K boat sitting on my driveway depreciating for 50 weeks a year! if its only spend 5k perhaps i wont mind so much,

thanks
Martyn

[Hightower]

Originally Posted by doggypaddle

Thanks for that, i will look out for that if i look at a BWM, I have been looking at the threads on fuel consumption, engine reliability etc, and it would seem that if
i can find a reasonable 5-5.5 boat with a two stroke 50-75 it will be exactly what i want and wont cost me a grand a week to play! i used to have a microplus 502 (like a shetland 5m) with a yammy 3 pot 40 and that went well enough and was very frugal on fuel, i guess a 5m rib would be lighter and have less wind drag, and would go for hours on 5 gallons.

cheers
Martyn

Yammi 80 was about 35l/hour WOT (wide open Throttle)

The Yam at the age and budget would be the best course of action.

[Nos4r2]

Just my opinion but I think with the 4 to 5.5m boats that are out there you need close to the maximum HP that the boat can handle. Most of us with boats in that size range on here are close to or on the max HP.

Ribs tend to have a lot heavier layup than the equivalent size hardboat as they can take a lot more punishment and you'd be surprised at how heavy they can be.My 5.4m Searider weighs about the same as my Microplus 500 did.

[doggypaddle]

My microplus 502 was probably a good bit heavier than it was when new! i put at least 3 gallons of resin and matt in the bottom of it! that probably slowed it down a bit, the yam 40 was good on fuel though, flat open it used to use in the reigon of 3 gallons an hour, but if you backed down to 1/2 throttle it would go for hours and hours on the 30 litre tank, and didnt seem much slower, I think it may have been over-propped though, no tacho but it always sounded like it had an extra 1000RPM to give.