soon to be 275 combo owner

john615 · 02-28-2013, 06:14 PM

Hey all...new member here. Have been shopping for a new vessel, sold my last boat 3 years ago, can't stand it anymore. After 3 months of shopping and missing a couple nice caravelles, i was online late last night going through all of the surrounding craigslist ads and what did i find? a 2001 one owner freshwater only 275 combo in lake of the ozarks at heartland marine(8 hours from Nashville, yuk). after finding this site and doing alot of research, i talked to the salesman, he was really glowing about the boat. only 220 original hours on the 7.4l merc b3. he said the interior is spotless as well. said it had to have been stored inside its whole life just based on the condition. so i put down a deposit and will go to sea trial when the weather clears. My question...being new to the Mariah brand, are there things in particular i should be looking for?, he said it has all the original manuals and will come with a prestige tandem trailer. Really excited to see it in person, hope it is as good as described. Also, when i asked about a bimini, it doesn't have one, but they can add an aluminum one for 400 or s/s for 700, sound reasonable? thanks for the site and any advice/responses

***ShabahZ280*** · 02-28-2013, 11:18 PM

Congrats, sounds like a nice boat, I hope it's everything they say it is!

If you search around the board here, you'll find all sorts of info, and I would pride myself in saying our members are the best around, and really know their stuff. We're all a pretty close-knit bunch that aim to help out other Mariah boat owners as much as possible. Take a look around the board, read some of the history of Mariah, the reviews, and just brose in general. It'll give you a great appreciation for the original Mariah Boats Inc. brand.

One of the bigger challenges Original Mariah owners face is replacing certain parts. Mariah built many of their parts in-house to reduce the issues with relying on an outside supplier. It certainly made sense while they were in business, however when they closed the doors in 2001, the tooling and machinery used to build these custom parts were sold at an auction, and we have no idea where any of the molds, tools, machinery, etc. went. SO, items like the dashboards, gauge clusters, trim items, and stainless parts have become incredibly hard to replace in the event something goes wrong. So just check and make sure there's no damage to those items, because they can be incredibly expensive/almost impossible to repair or replace. But don't let it discourage you, just about every Mariah owner has literally babied their boats, so you probably won't have any issues like that at all! Feel free to post pics or ask us any questions, we're all here to help!

Motoxxx43 · 03-01-2013, 12:32 AM

That is very exciting! Hope it all goes as planned. You may want to make some phone calls an do research on buying out of state. I am still dealing with stuff on an out of state boat regarding registration.