Hello,

About 2 years ago I posted here for some advice on Fish & Ski boats
and got some helpful advice. I've recently gotten the bug again and
I've found what I think is a fairly nice boat. Although I've been
reading somewhat mixed information on the brand. What I'm looking at
is a 2001 VIP 200 Convertible Fish and Ski boat. From what I've read
is that Bayliner and VIP are supposedly on a similar tier as far as
quality and are somewhat of entry-level boats.

What type of issues am I likely to see with the VIP boat? I
looked the boat over and everything seemed to be put together firmly
(although maybe not as "Polished" as the brand new Trition SF-211 I
looked at to get a feel for "new" pricing). I didnt see anything that
looked like stress cracks in the hull or anything of the like. The
dealer (was a car dealer not a boat dealer) was kind enough to let me
take it out on Lake Murray for a test drive and it seemed to drive well
(topped out at around 65ish mph assuming the speedometer was correct).
The boat was equipped with a 225hp Yamaha VMAX with EFI and fired
right up. I'm just concerned as most of the feedback (which only seems
to be maybe a dozen posts or so over 10 years) seemed to be negative on
VIP, but a few people did seem happy with their boats.

I've made an offer contingent on getting the thumbs up from a local
boat shop on the condition of the engine of roughly the NADA trade-in
price per my credit union. Somewhat having to go on his word on the
hours as the shop that I found that could do the mechanical inspection
in less than 3 weeks didnt have the computer to read the Yamaha Engine.
He told me that he had it checked and it had less than 100 hours (said
he'd had 2 checked that week and one was 49 hours and one was 79 hours
and couldnt remember which of the two this one was). Just want to make
sure that I havent made a major mistake here. (after all the papers
arent signed _yet_).

Thanks,
Clif Godfrey