Hi-

I'm trolling for some net.wisdom. Here's the situation: my family is
in the process of acquiring a property on Puget Sound, in the Seattle
area. The property will come with a dock in a very nice cove. The
hitch is the dock is totally out of the water at low tide. AFAIK,
extending the dock would be a legal impossibility due to environmental
regs. So it is what it is. I've owned a 16 foot canoe that our family
has used for many years for short paddle trips on the sound and in
lakes in the area. But this place cries out for a small power boat.
Something just large enough to take the kids salmon fishing and
crabbing, and maybe tow the kids around on an inflatable toy on a
really hot day (Puget Sound water varies between cold and colder).

The current owner has put a 1000 lb capacity davit crane with electric
motor on the end of the dock, and he uses that to raise his small
skiff onto the dock. I know next to nothing about power/fishing
boats, but from talking to a few neighbors with boats their general
recommendations seem to be:
1. Buy a boat small/light enough to use the davit crane.
2. Aluminum hull is way superior to fiberglass for this application,
since the beach is rocky and full of oyster shells. The feedback I've
gotten is that a good aluminum hull will tolerate being beached when
the tide is out and we can't use the dock.
3. An outboard in the 15-20 hp range on a boat with a 300-400 pound
dry weight should be sufficient to pull teen-agers around on a tube,
but still work for trolling.
4. Four stroke is better than 2. Yamaha is better than Honda which is
better than the others..
5. Welded hulls are better than riveted.

Based upon this advice, I've looked at web sites for Alumaweld, Lund,
Smokercraft. Not sure if there are other brands I should look at.
Welded hulls look way expensive. We don't have a definite price range,
but my initial thinking was to keep the initial investment to $5k
(we are new to all this, after all).

I've also had one guy recommend we look at inflatables (e.g. Zodiac)
but I wonder how those tubes will tolerate being dragged up on oyster
shells.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your $.02,

-dm