The Outdoor Line Forum

A question I hear quite a lot from prospective boat buyers involves basic construction materials.

These days the boating market is dominated by aluminum and fiberglass boats. I am a huge aluminum boat fan and I believe that anyone that is in the 20-foot boat market and above should seriously look at metal. If I lived in other parts of the world, with warmer waters and "hot" marinas I might think differently but for me its aluminum all the way.

What do you guys think?

I may be a bit bias but the fact is after all the pros and cons of each, one thing always remains the same. Resale value. Welded aluminum boats depreciate mucho slower than glass boats. That's my story and I'm stuck in it.

I just think the cleanup and maintenance is so much less with alloy.....I've watched Bucket wax-on and wax-off his petroleum-based boat for days at a time, even while we're pretending to fish

NOFISH wrote:I just think the cleanup and maintenance is so much less with alloy.....I've watched Bucket wax-on and wax-off his petroleum-based boat for days at a time, even while we're pretending to fish

Ya but it always looks good! BTW your nickname is the only reason we would be "pretending to fish". Now that thats behind us, after owning 3 very nice glass boats, I'm pretty sure my next boat will be alloy. I'll clean it as much as I currently do the Sea Sport. For Sale BTW!

Glass boats all the way. The variety and flexibility you have with a glass boat is nice if your out looking and I haven't seen an aluminum boat of comparable size that can handle the water the way my glass boat does....I'll concede on the cleanup part of the deal but in my mind it's worth it to have a nice clean looking white boat, that way I don't have to ride around in an ugly alloy boat.

Ugly alloy???? Really? Just for that I'm gonna take an ice pick and check your stringers and transom for rot!

Seriously, I think that Bayliner gave all glass boats a stigma due to their shoddy construction in the late 80's / early 90's.

Low quality gelcoat that turned to chalk in a couple of years and porous chopper-gun sprayed stringers and transoms led to a lot of unhappy customers. When those boats hit the used market, a whole bunch of folks bought a world of problems.

Don't discount the weight of glass boats as a big reason for their percieved softer ride and don't forget that it takes a whole lot more ponies and therefore ga$ to push that weight.

Reverse chine aluminum chambered hulls in my opinion offer the best weight/ride compromise in the market these days.

sounds like we need an un-biased, third-party to compare the two and see what their preference is. i would be willing to take on such a task, so here's what I propose:

Nelly- you should take me out halibut fishing in the Straits next month in Big Red
Tobeck - same thing with you but it should be tuna fishing in August

i shall take extensive notes, comparing ride quality, noise, fuel efficieny, blah, blah, blah and report back to the group this fall.

matter of fact, now that i think about it some more, maybe i should go out twice with each of you; you know, in the name of fairness

whadda ya say???

I think that is a capital idea! First we'll have to get confirmation of your skills as a technical report writer!

my high school english teacher will vouch for me, i can get you her name.......if she's still alive

Alloy all the way for a fishing boat...unless you want to look pretty while you're out on the water