16' Stardraft motor capacity?

I looked at a 16' aluminum Starcraft today in hopes of maybe upgrading from a 14' to a 16' hull for some more space.

https://southjersey.craigslist.org/boa/4644275071.html

To my surprise, the 16' hull is way lighter although much deeper than my 14' hull. I'd guess the 16' hull to be under 225 lbs or so. My 14' hull feels far heavier but my 14' hull is older with wood bench seats vs. the all aluminum seats in the 16' hull.

The question is, will my 9.9hp still move the 16' hull along ok or am I better off sticking with the smaller hull?
When I look up the 16 footer's specs, I get a max of 35hp, and my 14' boat is only rated at 20hp. (The 9.9hp Four Stroke motor is all the weight I'd want to put on that transom).
I'm thinking that although the 16' is a larger hull, I'll end up with less of the hull below the water line and I'd gain some more weight capacity since two big guys in the 14' are pushing the weight limit a bit.

I would go with the 16' especially if it is lighter. Depending on how you load it you might have the same amount in he water when you are running, it might be faster.

I went and looked at the ad and the StarCraft is a nice boat, but I would want to buy it for a lot less around here.....the price seem high without a trailer and motor.

I suppose I could get him to come down a bit on the price but what drew me to the ad was the price. I thought the price was pretty cheap.
About a year ago I priced new hulls and a new, bare, 16' hull was over $2,500, with some being more than $3,500.
Finding anything with a short transom like that is also tough, most have a transom for a 20" long motor.

I'm willing to drive a bit to save some money if one further away was cheap enough. The next best deal I saw was a similar Sea Nymph boat about the same age for $1800 on a rusty painted trailer and a cheap electric motor. The motor and trailer weren't worth more than a few hundred bucks at best.

I looked at another Starcraft just like this one last month that the seller wanted $400 for but two of the bench seats were torn out leaving only a few inches of jagged aluminum on each side and it needed a bunch of new rivets. I don't mind fixing a few leaks but I wouldn't know where to find new bench seats like that.

Most older boats I've seen all need a lot of work, the saltwater here is tough on boats. Those that don't get all corroded from the salt are banged around by the storms when their left in the water.

IMHO....the best price for a boat is what the buyer and seller both think is just OK. If each feels he got a good deal....each did get a good deal.

I've bought and sold lots of boats over the years. Never felt that I had a "steal".....but never felt screwed either.
Only bought one that was a total mistake. Too little power for too big of a boat.

I agree that a lighter, properly rated, bigger boat shouldn't run any worse than your present 14 foot rig. According to the rating, you can add HP when you can afford it. That's a good thing.

I used to fish with a guy who owned one of those Starcraft SF16 boats, he ran a 35hp Evinrude tiller motor and it flew with two big men in the boat and way too much ice and beer.
Price wise it don't look out of line to me here. Since NJ is mostly an electric only state in Freshwater, most boats just don't come rigged with a motor. I often buy just a hull and swap over all my old gear to the newer boat.
On a boat where the motor is just clamped on its common to see them for sale like that one.
The same for a trailer, new light duty trailers aren't expensive, a good used one will often sell for as much as or close to the cost of a new trailer. I just bought a new bunk trailer for $550, brand new, no worries. In two years I'll sell it and get another, that way I always have a perfect trailer and they bring nearly what I paid new at that point, sometimes more.

Those boats were basically just extended 14' boats, one more bench seat but with a good bit more capacity. I did a search in your area there and its by far the best deal on there right now. The next best deal I saw was a raggedy old 12' boat on a fenderless trailer for $1200. Most 16' aluminum boats were well over a grand with few well over two grand.

Unless your willing to drive pretty far west in the off season, that $850 the seller is asking don't look too bad to me.
Maybe even a bargain if that's the boat you want. When I see an ad like that I sort of assume I can get a few bucks off the price, so if you got it for $750, I'd say you were doing pretty good.
For comparison, I just sold a 14' Sears aluminum boat for $1200, on an old painted trailer, it was listed for less than a day.
Lately, any boat that has all its paperwork is a deal, I see more and more listed with no papers, often for more than the one your looking at.

Sounds like you have done your homework and there is a lot of difference in price between Jersey and Bama. I think you will like the extra space and you can upgrade to more HP when you want. Good luck.

[url=https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=365011#p365011 said:

flintcreek » 31 Aug 2014, 21:26[/url]"]Sounds like you have done your homework and there is a lot of difference in price between Jersey and Bama. I think you will like the extra space and you can upgrade to more HP when you want. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Are new boats cheaper down your way? The best price I've gotten here on a brand new deep 16' hull has been $2,300 plus tax, or about $2,500 out the door for the bare hull only. Add another $1,200 for a galvanized bunk trailer with 12' wheels.

The way I see it, $750 versus $2,500 sounds pretty fair. I did look at another one but not a Starcraft for $900 with a trailer and motor but the motor wasn't running and the trailer was a rusty painted trailer. Neither of which are of any use to me and probably not sellable for much either. I've had my eye out for a 16' hull for a year now and this is the first one that looks decent for a good price. The larger boat also gives me the option of adding a larger motor later on down the road as well.
I keep hearing that its too much for a boat like that, does anyone have anything for sale cheaper near NJ?

This is the next best deal I've seen and its rough at best, the foot of dirt and two trees growing out it don't do it any favors and I'd expect it to need all new wood and who knows what else is hidden under all the dirt.
The next best deal is over $2k.

Seafarer, if you like the boat and the price....buy it before someone else does. richg99

I most likely will if its still there when I get back from vacation next week.
My basic plan would be to strip the boat down and paint it the same green color my 14' is painted, add some lights and swap over my motor and trailer and see how it does on the water here. I was sort of hoping something even cheaper would turn up but I doubt that's going to happen.

I've never seen a good boat buy hang around for weeks, unless it was being sold in the middle of a winter. Good ones go in hours.

I bought my 14' Seafarer last July off Craigslist, it came with a minty clean trailer, mint clean 9.8hp Mercury, and the hull looks brand new, even though its a 1973. The guy had it listed for almost a year, I emailed, got no reply several times then I finally emailed the guy my phone number and said CALL ME TODAY. He called me back a week later. When I went to see the boat I was amazed how clean it was. He was asking $1000 for it, it was turn key, ready to run. It needed nothing.
He even had the original paperwork from when he bought it new.
He told me I was the first person to show up, he said he had 30 others call or email and no one ever showed up. I haggled a bit and got the whole package for $900. I sold the motor for $750 a week later and bought a new four stroke. I sold the trailer in favor of a galvanized trailer this past spring figuring that the painted trailer would never be worth more than it was when I got it. I got $600 for the trailer, a 1970 Gator bunk trailer with new tires and lights.

Here's the two pics from the CL ad which I answered, https://oi61.tinypic.com/28vf58x.jpg
I'm not sure if it was the seller who drove off any buyers or just a lack of money in the area.
I've had some pretty nice stuff for sale cheap with no buyers lately, not even an email.
I had a super clean Honda 15hp, a 2006 model, that was in perfect running shape, not all beat up, but a tiller only short shaft which was too heavy for my boat.
I listed it for $1000, got no replies in two months, I went as low as $400 and got no takers, I had two guys actually show up, one offered me $200, the other wanted to trade me a broken jet ski. I ended up trading it for a new shed a few months ago. I think what it boiled down to is that there was no one looking at CL with any cash. I had lots of trade offers, but nothing of any real value. The motor had less than 10 hours on it.

There's a ton of boats for sale here, just nothing smaller, it seems everyone is downsizing or just selling their boat, but most are 14' or smaller, or over 20'. For some reason 16' boats are hard to come by here. Those who own them either die with them, or don't sell them till they're totally rotted away. I don't want anything that's been in the saltwater, which is one thing that caught my eye about the 16 SF I looked at.

I was originally going to sell my 14' hull but figured I wouldn't get near what its worth to replace it, so the plan will be to rig on boat up with a gas motor, and the other with an electric trolling motor for the smaller ponds. If I were to sell my 14' hull, there's no way I'd let it go for the $850 that the seller wants for the 16' boat, I know I could never replace it for that. For that reason its most likely going to be mine forever.

[url=https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=365151#p365151 said:

Seafarer » Yesterday, 22:31[/url]"]There's a ton of boats for sale here, just nothing smaller, it seems everyone is downsizing or just selling their boat, but most are 14' or smaller, or over 20'. For some reason 16' boats are hard to come by here. Those who own them either die with them, or don't sell them till they're totally rotted away. I don't want anything that's been in the saltwater, which is one thing that caught my eye about the 16 SF I looked at.

Click to expand...

16' is the best size for NJ freshwater. big enough for comfort, but can still get 15 mph with a 9.9 or 20+ with a "9.9" on the horsepower restricted reservoirs. if it had been posted when i was looking for a 16', i definitely would have checked that boat out.

I called the seller to see if I could secure the boat before I get there and he told me so far only one person other than me had looked at it but they didn't have cash and wanted to trade instead.
Either way, I'll be back there next Monday night, hopefully its still there. I'll be looking around while on vacation as well but I've not seen a thing so far.

I did consider a flat bottom bass boat but I go into the back bays too often and I figured a flat bottom, modified V type hull would swamp too easy if it got rough.

For some reason 16' aluminum boats are just plain hard to find here, even the dealer had mostly 14' boats on the lot.
I think some people also stick to the 'under 16ft' boats to save registration money too, once you hit 16' here the registration goes from $12 to $28. I was surprised at how many people won't pay the extra fees for the larger boat.

I did look at a newer, much wider SF14 today, the boat is only a few years old. Its got a Coast Guard rating of 35hp, and a 67" beam width. The bottom of the boat is much wider than the 1979 SF I looked at with a slightly wider beam width. Of course the guy selling it wants a lot more money. Its less than two years old and he paid $4100 for it new. It has a trailer but the trailer in my opinion is too small, at least too small for me to try and tow it all the way home if I were to buy it here.
Either way, its out of my price range, if I didn't see the 16' for sale cheap I'd have never even thought about changing boats but I do need more room, or more capacity. I did notice that the modern SF series carries much more weight and handles more hp than the 70's or older models. My 1973 is almost a foot shallower with only a 63" beam width.

What gets me is that if you go through all the Starcraft brochures, the early Seafarer don't change much, they got all aluminum seats in the mid 70's, and a new hull shape in the late 90's. The specs listed are all over the place HP wise, one year shows a 14' SF as 10-40hp, another shows it as 20hp max, another shows it as 10-35hp. The problem is that mine don't match any of the specs listed, mine has the beam width and depth of the 16' Seafarer, but the length of the smaller Super Star at 14'1". The plate on the transom calls it a 14' Seafarer model 14SF.

The 16' boat on CL matches the specs exactly, it exactly matches the specs of a 1979 Seafarer.
After looking through every posted Starcraft brochure and a few that I've got here, I came to the conclusion that they built hulls that were never listed in the brochures.

I figured I'd add an update here.
By the time I got back last week, the 16' boat was no longer for sale, I'm thinking the owner decided not to sell it because when I went by there he had a super clean 33hp Evinrude on the back with a four blade prop, and the boat was full of crabbing gear.

After finding out that the SF16 wasn't an option, I for bit figured that I'd just as well stick with my current boat, when I found a super clean 1962 Starcraft Starmist for sale around the corner, just the hull, no motor, no trailer for $500, it needed new floors, a windshield, and some new transom wood but its huge compared to the SF16. Either way, that was going to be the next fishing boat. I got the hull gutted last week, cut out some new plywood for the transom and about that time a guy rolled in the driveway asking if I was selling the boat I was selling the old Starcraft I was standing in working on. I told him I was committed to fix it at this point, I had just bought 4 sheets of plywood for it.
After talking for a bit, he chimed in and offered to trade me a newer 14SF, with a 15hp motor and galvanized trailer even up for the 62 Starmist as it sat right there in my driveway laying on a piece of old Astroturf carpet. I told the guy bring it by, I'd take a look. He left and returned about 20 minutes later with his boat.
It don't take a brain surgeon to figure that a turn key 2000 model Starcraft that looks almost new is worth more than the $500 pile of aluminum in the driveway that was no doubt going to take me the next three weekends to get in floating condition. Not to mention a minty looking 15hp Evinrude and what looks like a brand new trailer, all with proper papers to boot.
We made the trade, and he came back the next morning with a bigger trailer and took the Starmist hull away. He didn't even want the plywood, he said he would only use marine grade ply in a boat, no problem, I'll use it for something or return it. He didn't even want the new transom panel I had glued together and cut to fit, but I suppose I can cut that down to fit any number of other models if needed in the future.

So now, I've got two 14' boats, one will get a permanent battery only set up for the smaller ponds, the other will run a gas motor.
As it stands now, I've got a turn key 14SF now with my 9.9hp four stroke on it on a minty trailer ready to fish.

The first time out with the newer 14' boat, the guy with the 16' SF flew past me on the river with that old 33hp on the back, with him and another guy in the boat and a load of crab pots he buzzed by me like I was standing still. I've got no clue as to how fast he was moving but the boat was almost fully out of the water and making barely any wake at all, I'd guess he was doing at least 30mph.
I'll have to try the new boat with the 15hp and maybe something bigger for the river if I can find a deal, unlike my other 14' boat, this one is rated at 35hp. Its also a lot wider, so I've got a lot more capacity and a lot more stability and I still only pay for a 14' registration each year.
My GPS reads 12mph with just me in the 14SF with the 9.9 four stroke motor, it don't seem to lose much speed with a second passenger, but it does prevent it from even trying to plane. One thing I really like about the newer SF is the built in livewell and pump, it comes in handy for keeping bait alive or in our case, keeping crabs in. Nearly 3/4 of the rear bench is live well tank, so it probably holds the better part of a bushel of crabs, and since its sunk into the foam filled seat, its well insulated.

Pretty neat adventure story. Keep us posted.

Sure wonder what the final appearance and use will be of the $500. wreck. Must have been a match for that guy's father's boat or something.

richg99