I went to look at a boat today not far from where I live in Cape
Coral, FL. Given my background of sailboats and relatively
conservative powerboats, this was a boat so radical as to make your
hair stand on end, and cause your former sailing friends to avert
their eyes in horror. My wife thought I was totally daft.

As some of you know I'm looking into the future for a replacement of
my aging 24 ft I/O cuddy cabin. The requirements are decent speed, at
least a halfway usable cuddy cabin, soft ride in a chop (wife has
several herniated disks and doesn't take well to being bounced
around), quiet, 26 ft maximum, and trailerable.

To make a long story short I've been poking around on internet sites
for boats in that size range, and did a lot of tire kicking at the Ft
Lauderdale boat show last weekend. One of the boats that keeps
popping up on internet searches are the various Bajas in the 25 and 26
foot range. These are marketed as speed boats of course and typically
come with high performance engines, fancy graphics, bolster seats and
a few other options not usually found on your typical family cuddy.
The thing that really caught my eye however was that these boats
appear to be made with radical deep-V bottoms (lots of dead rise), and
are usually offered with the so called "silent choice" option which
exhausts underwater for the sake of your neighbors. It makes sense
that if you are rocketing around at 50 to 60 knots that the boat
should be able to get through some chop without incapacitating the
driver. When I happened to see one for sale a few miles from my
house, I decided that I should go take a look.

This particular boat was 5 years old and was equipped with a
Mercruiser 502 MPI engine which is rated for about 425 hp. The engine
had 450 hours on it. The boat was in clean condition visually, had a
decent cuddy cabin, and seemed well cared for. The owner volunteered
to start it up and then offered to take the broker and I for a quick
ride. Who could say no? The engine started easily and ran smoothly.

There was a 6 to 12 inch chop running on the Caloosahatchie River and
we accelerated effortlessly on to plane, running about 30 knots at
3000 RPM. The engine sounded like it was loafing and just hummed
along with no muss or fuss. We turned "Silent Choice" off and on a
couple of times to see the difference. The engine instantly gained
about 200 RPM running straight pipes, but not enough difference to
justify the exhaust noise in my opinion.

There was a 30 something SeaRay headed up river throwing a pretty good
wake and I asked the owner if we could cut through it safely at that
speed. He said sure and asked me if I wanted to take the wheel. That
was a no brainer. We took the 2 foot wake fairly well for a 25 footer
traveling at 30 kts, lots of vertical motion but no hint of pounding
or slamming. Very nice ride in my experience, exactly what I'm
looking for.

Now the bad news. The temperature guage was pushing 175 to 180 on a
salt water cooled engine, that at 3000 RPM was not even breathing
hard. Owner said that was normal temperature and had always been like
that. He didn't know what thermostat was installed. Conventional
wisdom says that salt starts to precipitate out of solution at about
160 to 170 degrees, and then deposits itself inside the engine block.

More bad news. The oil pressure guage was barely reading 20 psi at
3000 RPM and dropped to around 10 at idle. I would have been a lot
happier with 35 to 40 at cruising speed and maybe 25 or so at idle.
Owner said oil pressure was normal and had always been like that.

The only other bad news was the windshield. For the sake of sleek
appearance and low drag, the windshield is only about 3 inches high
and not really adequate for blocking the breeze. It looks like it
would unscrew easily enough but it's not clear how difficult it would
be to get a larger one made.

So here's the list of questions:

1. How good are the Baja boats? Do they have any known structural
issues? How have they stood up over time, and how are they regarded
in the marketplace?

2. How serious are the temperature and oil pressure issues? Is the
engine likely to be toast and need replacement in the near future?

3. How easy would it be to get a larger windshield?

4. Any other issues other than replacing my sailing friends?