I have a dilemma on my hands.
My boat hangs in an open boat lift (overhead motors and cables) with a sundeck above. We had some tornadoes come thru in January; front cable broke and the bow went into the water. Long story short...Progressive wants to total the boat. My boat shop put together a work order to fix everything if I choose to go that route versus a total loss. Neither Progressive nor my shop found any evidence of structural damage so I'm not really sweating that right now. So the choices regarding my boat are take the total check for $39,000 or fix it for $27,000 and continue life.
If I were to take the $39k and buy another boat, it would cost me about $20k to get into what I want. This would include a little deeper/taller sides and a little more power. I like my little bay boat but it is slightly underpowered when I take it in the Gulf, and the gunnels are a little low. The current boat also rides a touch rough in chop as the bottom is flatter, so it slaps some. I could be happy in a new rig, and I could be happy in my current one. The only wrong answer is to fix, then sell.
I doubt I would ever be able to get $39k for my current boat, which means the only way that the out-of-pocket number to get a new boat shrinks is if boat prices fall equally with trade-in value. I feel like boat prices aren't coming down, trade-in values aren't going up. And any purchase will be cash, not financed. The bottom line is I just finished building a new office building, took a month to go to Australia/New Zealand with my kid, and am trying to finish restoring a Mustang so my hesitation is not in not having the $20k, but not wanting to spend it at the moment.
What would your move be, fellow boating enthusiasts?