Hi everyone! So I purchased my first SIB today.. paying a lofty $400 for an Avon 13' on a trailer (ooh ahh) So here's how the story goes. I decided I wanted an inflatable boat for exploring, I'm cheap.. I don't want anything too expensive.. nor did I want a pile of junk.. I find an older (listed as a 2000 more on that in a minute) Avon that looks pretty good in the pictures in the classified ad. after a conversation with the seller I decided that yes this boat will make a good first (inflatable) boat. So I load up my trusty Toyota and make a 2 hour drive. I get there, the boat looks great! one patch, wood floor looks nice, overall not beat up at all. cover is older, but this thing looks like its been cared for. So the seller is down to $500 for the boat as it sits. I say yes, go down the street to pull out the money.. upon my return to the rather swanky yacht club, to my dismay, I see one side going flat of my not even mine yet boat. I now know somethings up, I grab the sellers attention, he seems genuinely upset that the boat is now going flat.. we start looking for the cause of my boat's (and my enthusiasm) deflation. turns out in the sellers haste to maneuver the boat for ease of hooking up and going, ran the tailcone into a rather janky rusty taillight bracket attached to an adjacent trailer. being I'm new to this.. I pause our transaction to search on my phone to see how hard and expensive a tailcone rip is. while I'm searching, the seller offers to sell the whole package for $400, at which point, I decided that a $400 trailer is okay if we just ruined things and I make the deal. in all of this I never checked the hin, nor did I verify the year.. turns out when I got home to pay the sales tax, that it is nowhere near a 2000, and in fact they didn't even make this model in 2000. Its an cool vintage 1988. I always check vins / hins, but since this does not require a title, I had nothing to verify against, and totally missed the hin ends in a 88. Oh well! back to the cheap.. it really is in nice shape. for a cheap throw away boat, I think I did okay. and of course now have to repair the rip.. have I started an uphill battle I can't win? or am I going to be okay? I was aware of seams / transoms separating, but I see no evidence whatsoever of any problems with the exception of the 5cm rip on the tailcone. so did I just make every newb mistake in the book? or am I still worthy of boat ownership?
