I'm the type of guy who's better at researching a product than I am at
actually making a decision. I was last here years ago, laughing at the
various debates between Harry and Skipper, since I pretty much believe
in the David Pascoe dogma that a high quality boat is the only kind of
boat you should buy.

But then, like many, I ran into reality. First I thought I'd get a
used boat cheap. But I quickly discovered that the under $5k used boat
market was pretty much a swamp of derelicts uncared for by their
owners, especially here in Pittsburgh, PA, which is not what I would
call a world centre for boating.

If you go up a bit further in price, you find the Ski Nautique brand.
I love the design and construction quality, but they are so specialized
towards skiing that they wouldn't make much of a comfortable, family
oriented runabout I could use to blast around on the river, take
pictures and have guests without the lamentable inhospitality of the
true fishing boat. I asked the Wakeboard crowd about this, and they
suggested Cobalt.

So I visited http://www.cobaltboats.com/ and wow, what a cool company.
But alas, if you go to their cheapest boat, the 200, you get prices
like these:

http://www.cobaltboats.com/model_lin...uipment200.php

So I wound up checking out a new boat dealer that sold Bayliner. I was
prepared to hate Bayliner. I am even on record somewhere deep in
USENET history as agreeing with Harry that Bayliner is not the world's
greatest boat. But at the same time, I am on the river, not an ocean.
On the other hand, I plan to migrate down to Florida at some point and
then maybe I will be on an ocean. So I'd like to have a boat that
could go on the ocean that wouldn't empty my wallet every month.

So I checked out Bayliner's entry level boat and it certainly looked
far better than the old models. The saleslady, a really cool person,
said they were, in fact, better than the old models. It's a pity she
used the argument "They're the most popular boat on the planet! If
they weren't good, people wouldn't buy them?" Try to talk that way to
an Apple computer user who KNOWS everyone buys Windows, and you're not
getting very far :-).

But still, I want to be fair. And lo and behold, even here, I see even
ol' Harry softening his opinion on them. Oh, he growls about the cleat
size, but he seems to have lost a lot of his vim and vigour on the
subject.

I kept on looking, though. There's something notably unappealing about
Bayliner. They don't talk much about quality. The rival dealer sold
Larson, "Better-built boats". So I went to this site:

http://www.everythingboats.com/ryob/...h.pl?type=list

and I'll be darned if half the reviews of Larson were unfavorable and
most of the reviews about Bayliner were raves! Reviews like this are
bound to put you off on a boat:

http://www.everythingboats.com/ryob/...ew&boat_id=326
http://www.everythingboats.com/ryob/...ew&boat_id=282

Well, in the end, I did find the perfect runabout. A little big and a
bit greedy on fuel, and I'm not sure if you can even buy diesel on the
Monongahela River, which might make refueling a bit interesting. But
still, who could resist this one?

http://powerandmotoryacht.com/boatte...02hinckleyT29/
for great pictures, see
http://www.boats.com/sites/hinckley/...hinckley&pic=0

Well, the perfect boat if I had $335,000-odd to spend on a runabout.
And it's sold already! I do admire the Hinckley service organization,
though. Looks like they sell you the boat, if anything goes wrong,
they fix it, they do the annual varnishing and polishing so your boat
will never look old, and then if you get tired of it and want a bigger
boat, they are there to sell it for you. The next owner will get a
service history down to individidual light bulb replacements (stuff
like Replace PAR 16 12v light bulb .... $28.95). I may not be able to
afford that sort of thing, but I admire it enormously.

Okay, back to reality.

If I have aroud $20k to spend on a nice circa 18-20' runabout, what
really are the best quality choices?

What is the difference, in reality, between a $20,000-odd 20' Bayliner
and a $45,000-odd 20' Cobalt?

Thanks for your thoughts!


D