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If mine were a casualty today I'd happily replace it with a 2008 model. Yesterday saw the 210th hour on it.
Shopping new?
Pros:--
Good wake in range of 18 to 23 mph.
Probably great wake-to-gph ratio (if I bought, say, a MasterCraft, it would be X-2).
Interior is comfortable to about five.
Storage under everything.
Boarding/swim platform is spacious.
Rear walk through! (It not only saves the sundeck's upholstery from board tips and fins but naturally guides traffic during rider changes and so cuts down on traffic jams.)
The ON/OFF toggle.
Push button start (push button everything).
Rear seat can be slid forward, to create a gap with sundeck, and thus making a bench for rear-facing seating (anyone with a camera wants this as their own).
Under-the-tower Bimini provides a fairly steady shade to the middle third of the interior (obviously, when the sun gets low, it comes in anyway).
Reliable (no maintenance to date beyond 50 hour service). (Every trip, every start, push the 'start' button, and engine fires up.)
Cruises the lake smoothly at 30 to 35 mph.
Stereo and sirius radio makes bobbing like a cork fun enough that we're sometimes lazy between rider or location changes.
Trailers well (especially down here, where there are a lot of big lakes, and with corps engineer ramps every seven or so lake miles, that gives some twenty to fifty choices ??? haven't counted).
Carpet snaps out to dry out.
All upholstery pulls out of flips up so everything can dry out, therefore without upholstery-to-uphostery rubs trapping dampness(my boat shines, and I thank Babes products for a lot of that)
And so on.
Cons? If I must.
It's wrong (well, ailing) for a introducing a crew of, say, seven high-schoolers to wake sports (I was enlisted to do so).
Ice chest sure melts the ice fast.
Other things:--
I haven't got all the ballast metrics down, but know what works for my average experience with two to five. We entertain ourselves always with rear tanks full, experiment with the belly tank, and with a large crowd move people out of the open bow and might leave the belly empty. When the lake is choppy, it seems, a lighter crew and less ballast makes a serviceable wake. A heavy crew on a less than perfect day just produces a roiling wake. In other words, the worse the day, go lighter.
Six-footers will always want the under-the-tower Bimini unfolded, otherwise, wise heads have always found the speaker cans.
When I bought mine, I thought I had all the options. I was not aware that you can four (or perhaps modify to six) tower speakers. Two work, but more are stylish.
I have an FCT with FCT clips. Swivel racks are a puzzle. Yes, they would be more convenient. But then, as I understand it, you would have to have an over-the-tower Bimini, which would compromise the shade protection. The Bimini is a key factor in this climate for the summertime. You just got to escape the scorch for most of the middle of the day.
The ballast-pump impeller situation might be solved for 2008, but I've got a 2006. Problem was, the original impellers were a hard (black) plastic, which sometimes got stuck. At the next year's winter boat show, while visiting my dealer, and explaining this issue, all three of the dealer, the regional rep, and the corporate officer swiftly offered to give me the soft (yellow) impellers. I changed out the impellers (which is kind of a job, if you need advice on how to manage the kickplate, and if I'm in the same mood, I'll offer some advice on some workarounds that helped me). Everything is solved... that is, for the rear ballast tanks. Problem now is, the belly ballast tank's pump is located at floor level in front of the helm (ahead of that panel, the kick plate). The soft impeller is evidently too soft to prevent water from syphoning in while cruising. So I'll pump the tank empty, we'll cruise the lake, and watch the belly tank self-fill itself. It appears in the 2008 model that this has been solved by locating all three ballast pumps in the engine compartment, at a high elevation (relative waterline). I suppose I can fix this by getting a longer water hose and making a loop from the belly ballast pump to the tank that extends above an elevation that will disallow this auto-fill thing to happen.
If you search my posts (there are but ten or so), you'll see one showing mounting a satellite antenna on the tower, which is a great thing, since we now get a clear signal every moment without block outs from tower or crew.
Oh yeah, another 'Pro,' especially if you're buying new, is the CorrectCraft community of dealer, rep, and corporate. In my day, Greg Melloon still made the rounds to the winter boat shows. It showed to me a producer's pride in its product that...well...is so lacking behind about everything else I own.
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