ARTIGIANA BATTELLI ab inflatables

mlynch · 28 October 2008, 16:40

Considering buying a 1996 AB 19ft or 5.77m Oceanus VST. Supprisingly i have not found any good solid info or opinion on this boat and was wondering if the friendly folks here could let me know what they think. Hull design? Year? Price?

I currently have an 89 HBI 15 ft RIB that isnt really suitable for heavyduty use. It sits too low in the water for my taste and has a rough wet ride. The HBI really needs to be retubed and probably repowered so instead of making that kind of investment into a hull i am not happy with for my uses i am looking at just getting a bigger Rib.

The Tubes on the AB appear to be in decent shape i still need to inspect them in person. They were coated with the rubberized RIB paint a year ago and have a couple patches but supposedly dont leak. The outboard is a 1996 evinrude 115... supposedly sound running condition. The boat was used in the florida keys and sat in the water almost all of the time for the past couple years... is there any problems i can expect because of this? The bottom will be repainted before sale.

I have to admit buying a 12 year old boat scares me a bit. I have had nothing but headaches with replacing every little thing on my 89 hbi. If i repower and retube there will be nothing left but the hull that i havent replaced! I dont want to go through that again!

I plan on picking up the boat for roughly 6000 american dollars... Any opinion is greatly appreciated on price, boat design, and age! I could probably get ahold of more pics if that would help.

yorfuoj · 28 October 2008, 17:01

I would not like to buy a rib with a repainted pontoon ... 12 years should not be a good reason for repainting unless very damaged by sun.

But if the pontoon is not porous, why not !

Carefully check for that

mlynch · 28 October 2008, 17:20

They repainted i think mostly for aesthetics... didnt like the dirty gray so they changed it to blue. I think it looks quite good myself.

what do you mean by porous? leaky or rough?

Thanks for the response!

jyasaki · 28 October 2008, 17:48

AB's seem to be pretty well respected by the few people who have them in California.

I haven't really looked at them all that much, but haven't really noticed anything bad about them.

Ask if you can soap the boat down while the tubes are at max pressure. Should give you a pretty good idea if they're leaking or not.

jky

mlynch · 29 October 2008, 13:53

Thanks JKY i will do that... Any other opinions?

PeterM · 29 October 2008, 14:08

My Dad has just bought a new one based in the Carribean & its all they seem to use by way of Ribs round his islands. He seems pretty happy with it -plans to use it as a dive boat for 3/4 poeple max.

mlynch · 30 October 2008, 13:34

Thanks Blackroadie!

Again i am still suprised at how little info there is about these AB ribs that have been around for so long... NO first hand experiences have popped up. I dunno how to take that.