Yep been feeling a bit high strung about it all....main dramas are with the sales staff and their lack of understanding of boats and fishing as well as cultural differences and an inability to communicate my needs from the front office to the non English speaking builders on the workshop floor....if you need to feel like you have a high degree of control over your build then this probably isn't for you but on the other hand I only put 8K down and that was all I was risking till the boat is shipped and I need to pay the remittance...
Plenty of hours of editing and zooming.....cant really fault the workmanship...welds are very tidy and overall build seems to be very good as far as what can be seen through video and photo's.....plenty more photo's will come after fitout before final payment...and yep it was amazing ..they dicked me around for 2 months then magically within a week of starting the public blog my boat was started and now almost finished in 6 weeks..I'm convinced they made extra efforts, quickly fixed any issues and sent many more photo's than what others have received because of the scrutiny.....they would be mad not too...
Expected saving ...apples for apples.....all the pumps and fitout gear are either American made or decent quality ………..price for hull to same level of completion and fitout roughly half or a little more of getting built here ...any 6.5m LOA fixed hardtop built here you wouldn't expect change from 100K after fitout…..my trailer is not fancy and basic fitout but roughly 60K up and running without counting trolling motor and using Furuno and garmin electronics from my old boat...and of course like any boat I will continue throwing money at it forever....that's half the joy of having a new boat..
Here is a zoom of an advertisement posted yesterday on another site of a good old aussie Stacer ocean ranger plate alloy boat (or Yellowfin)...the old Quintrex factory continues to plumb new lows....This was their dealerships feature "Boat of the Week"...…..
Made in Australia sure doesn't mean what it did in the past.....
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