ultralite

Are you selling to someone in state or out of state?

From your current situation, assuming you are selling to someone in Louisiana, to make the transaction, you need:

Notarized bill of sale listing the boat and trailer, separately
Notarized/signed boat title
Notarized/signed trailer title
Hand them your WLF Registration card and trailer registration if you have it.

From there you are done.

The buyer will take all of that, fill out a boat registration transfer form and submit to WLF, then also get a new registration for the trailer at the DMV.

Outboard titles in Louisiana are only continued if they were optionally titled or if they came from another state and had a title as part of the sale when coming in state.

Compression check doesn’t hurt, there’s plenty of YouTube videos of how to do that. Most importantly, 1. Don’t cross thread the gauge into the spark plug hole, 2. Pull the kill cord to ensure the engine doesn’t actually start when you’re turning it over.

Inspect all of your spark plugs when you pull them. If some any are rusted it’s likely you’ve got a water jacket corroded through into the cylinder wall. Not sure about the 115s in particular but early 2000s Yamahas had some questionable alloy/castings. Symptoms will be exactly the same.

As others said, really sounds like a fuel delivery problem. Try running on an external tank with new bulb and fuel hose to start.

That will separate out whether you have an engine problem or a fuel tank/line/external filter problem.

Absolutely, another good practice is to get a zip-up style life jacket and keep it hooked up to the kill cord. Quick and easy to throw it on, zip up and go. That way you aren’t messing with the clip all day.

Once it’s a habit you may even feel awkward without it on.

I’ve also noticed that game wardens/sheriff have a much better first impression if you’ve already got a life jacket on and cord attached.

Anyone who has been thrown out of the boat will agree, there’s nothing you could have done to hang on, and you’re processing it as you are going underwater.

Mercury has the shift and throttle cables running into the tiller handle. Sounds like the start-in-gear protection detent is not doing its job and the cables are seized at WOT.

I would say check those linkages first.

ETA: what year? 2 stroke? 4 stroke? Fuel injected?

You have to add shavings. It mimics the shavings leftover from woodpeckers chipping their way into a tree.

The easiest is to get cedar chips from just about any pet section of Walmart and it’ll work fine. Dump and replace each year, as old sites will have old egg shell and crap in there.

Best way to check the boxes is to put an iPhone on “video” in landscape mode, then hit the arrow and put flash to “on”. You’ll then have a way to inspect the box without opening it up. Saves a bunch of time and potential run-ins with snakes, wasps, squirrels, and hen wood ducks.

Open up flounder to recreational fishermen year-round. Keep it closed during fall migration for commercial fishermen.

Or at least set a reduced recreational limit during October-November.

According to his post, total costs were around $170k.

$170k/1000 days = $170/night

That’s with 67k miles, so presumably 150-180 days of 8-hour drives.

Over twelve years, that is a lot. Roughly 2.75 of those 12 years living out of the camper (averaged).

I would think many are lucky to get 30 days/year out of an RV (besides a hunting camp), so, best case with cash purchase of $95k and selling it for the full $30k, and $15k in gasoline, that’s $222/night.

Now do the current price of $195k and the above, assuming you can sell it for $60k in 12 years. That’s $415/night!

Yes, looks like galvanic corrosion from dissimilar metals.

Remove, clean up, and have someone weld in an NPT collar, use an aluminum plug.

If that will take too long, remove and put a stainless steel version of the same type of plug.

Do you have bottom paint on this boat?

Usually good deals come in one of two ways: 1. You know the person and they have a great boat that they’re willing to give you or sell to you for cheap. 2. You have a lot of experience with boats and can quickly inspect every inch of the boat and make a decision that day.

Good deals move fast, especially on FB marketplace.

Simple tiller handle flat boats have less to inspect, less to break, and less to maintain.

If you have no experience and nobody to look at the boat with you, your best bet is to go as simple as possible. Aluminum, welded, no wood, no carpet, no fiberglass, minimal electronics if any. If there’s a subfloor, try to inspect the foam for water logged foam.

If on a trailer, inspect for corrosion where the boat makes contact with the trailer bunks. Look for cracks in every weld/corner. Make sure the trailer is galvanized.

On the outboard, look for corrosion, take off the cowling and look for signs of work on the engine. Loose wiring, stripped off bolts, corrosion around the engine block, dry rotted hoses.

Insist on running the engine. If you can put it in the water, even better. Sometimes an engine may run fine on earmuffs and not push the boat under load.

It also has a push button safety in front of the hammer :casty:

So much for a true re-release.