bought a 2021 Hurricane SunDeck 217 OB through pace ace, sealed bid, delivered to Canyon Lake

promised janet a full write up so here it is. we live in Startzville, five minutes from the Canyon Lake Marina ramp, and for three summers we have been the family that borrows the neighbor's boat. this summer i decided that was over.

what i wanted was a SunDeck 217 or something close to it, outboard, 150 hp, under 40. the used ones at the dealers in San Antonio and Austin were 42 to 48 for a 2020 or 2021 and every one of them came with a doc fee and a prep fee on top. i was about to give up until my brother in law, who works water hauling out of Karnes City, told me to look at paceacemotors.net. they broker bank repos, boats, trucks, rvs, a little equipment. the units are not on a lot you can walk, they stay at the lender's yard wherever the repo happened. you put in one sealed bid, nobody's number is shown to anybody, high bid takes it.

the listing was a 2021 Hurricane SunDeck 217 OB, Yamaha F150, 138 hours on the dash gauge, on a single axle Karavan trailer, sitting at a lender storage yard in south Austin. about 30 photos and a short video of it running on the muffs. i had to get ID verified before they would let me bid, which took a day.

i bid 36,750. i got there by taking the cheapest dealer boat i had found, 42,400, backing out the fees, then knocking off what it was worth to me to not be able to sit in it first. won it. the invoice was 36,750, no buyer's premium, which i honestly did not believe until i saw it. wired the money on a monday. they haul it for nothing when the yard is under a thousand miles from Karnes City, and Austin to Startzville is about 70, so the tow cost me zero. the boat showed up on its own trailer nine days after the wire.

three weeks and 11 hours later it has been on the lake every weekend it was not raining. happy to answer anything. i will do the paperwork part and the delivery part when somebody asks, because somebody will.

first_boat_priya wrotehow does a loan even work with a sealed bid, you do not know if you are getting the boat until you have already promised the money.

i paid cash, savings plus what we got for two jet skis, so i am not the best person for this. but i asked the same thing on the phone and the answer was that most people who finance come in with a pre approval from their credit union, bid up to that number, and fund it after they win. the bid is the promise. the money moves after. if you lose the bid nothing happens to the loan. RBFCU in San Marcos does boat loans and will pre approve you without a specific boat, that is where i would start.

first_boat_priya wrotedoes anybody survey a repo that you cannot go see?

for a 21 ft outboard boat under 50k my agent did not want a survey at all, just the hull ID, year, make, model and the motor serial. surveys usually come up on bigger or older boats. i gave her the HIN off the listing photo of the transom plate and had a quote the same day, 610 a year with the trailer on it. the pace ace people will send you the HIN before you bid if you ask, and you should, because you can run it.

partly, yeah. you are right that i probably left a thousand or two on the table. i bid a number i was tired of losing summers over, not the sharpest number i could have bid. the boat you saw at 37 had 70 more hours and a tower i did not want to pay to maintain, and i would have paid tax, doc and prep on top of the 37 which puts it near 40 out the door. mine was 36,750 plus tax at the county. so it is not the steal of the year. it is a fair price with less friction and a better boat for what i use it for. i can live with that.

since a couple of you asked what the pace ace listing actually looked like: about 30 photos. the boat from all four corners on the trailer, the helm with the key on and the gauge showing 138, the transom plate with the HIN, the motor cowl off with the serial, the bimini folded down, the interior with the seats up and the ski locker open, one of the trailer tongue and coupler, and a 40 second video of the motor idling on muffs. what was missing was the bimini frame itself, it was folded in every shot and i wanted to see if the bows were bent. i emailed for it and got a "we will get those from the yard" and then nothing. emailed again three days later and had six photos of the frame that afternoon. frame was fine. it took two emails, that is my one complaint about the listing side.

ok, paper and delivery.

boat and motor. in Texas the boat title and the outboard title are two separate things through TPWD, not the DMV. the lender was the owner of record on both. the packet had the lender's bill of sale naming pace ace as broker, plus a one page release from the bank that listed the HIN and the motor serial number and said the lien was cleared. the karnes city lot sent me the packet and had already signed off the lender's side. i took it all to the Comal County tax office in New Braunfels, filled out the PWD 143 for the boat and the PWD 144 for the motor, paid the 6.25 percent tax on the 36,750 plus the title and registration, and had the registration decals in the mail in about two weeks. the lady at the counter said she sees a lot of these and the only thing that trips people up is a missing lien release. mine was in the packet.

trailer. it is a 2021 Karavan single axle rated over 4,000 lb gross, so it needed a title on top of the plate. that one goes through the county for TxDMV on a 130-U, separate from the boat. the trailer title came in the same packet as the boat paperwork. honestly i would have wanted a tandem under a 217 but for 12 miles to the ramp the single axle is fine.

delivery. a hired hauler, a guy out of Seguin with a Ram 2500, towed it down on its own trailer. he called the night before and again when he was on FM 306. he pulled into my driveway, walked me around the boat, read the HIN off the transom against the paperwork with me, had me start the motor on the hose, and then had me sign a delivery sheet. while we were walking it he pointed at the trailer tires. both had sidewall cracks you could put a fingernail in, four year old tires that sat in a yard. he said "i would not tow it to the ramp on those." i did not bother with a warranty claim for tires, i went to Discount Tire in New Braunfels the next morning and put two Carlisle Radial Trail HD ST205/75R14 on it, 260 mounted and balanced. that is the whole repair list so far, and it was the delivery driver who caught it.

frame is straight, canvas is faded but not torn. checking in because deer season opened last saturday and the lake was empty, it was like having Canyon to ourselves. first real norther came through thursday night and the water is cooling off fast.

47 hours of mine on it now, 185 on the gauge. the Yamaha dealer in New Braunfels pulled the ECU hours for me when i bought oil: 141 when the gauge said 138, so the gauge was honest. i did the impeller, thermostat, lower unit oil and separator myself the way the tech said. lower unit oil was clean. bilge was dry. the only thing i have added since the tires is a new bow line because the old one was chewed. the 30 day window from the broker in karnes city came and went and i never needed it.

UPDATE, december. not a victory lap, an actual problem, so it is worth writing down. two weekends ago the boat sat at the marina dock overnight and in the morning the starting battery was flat. the bilge float switch had stuck on and run the pump all night in a dry bilge. Rule-A-Matic switch, 34 dollars at West Marine in San Antonio, twenty minutes. the old one had a piece of trailer strap wrapped around the float, probably from before i ever saw the boat. i called the pace ace auction people about it just to see how the 6 month warranty question would go and the answer was straight: a stuck float switch is a wear item, not a mechanical defect at the time of sale, and 34 dollars is not worth a claim anyway. i agree with them, i just wanted to know how the phone call goes. it goes fine.

61 hours of mine, 199 on the gauge. total spent since delivery: 260 tires, 34 switch, 22 bow line, about 240 in service parts i would have done on any boat. verdict, i would buy through paceacemotors.net again and probably will when my brother in law finally decides he wants a bay boat. i would email for the extra photos before bidding, not after, and i would have the dealer pull ECU hours the first week. that is it. thanks for the questions, they made this a better write up.