I had a cal air which is basically the same boat other than it had the under the floor ballast and tower. I only had it for a short time and never actually even boarded behind it. Calabria did some very nice things on that boat that most didn't have. The fuel tank is under the floor in the front so the rear locker is absolutely huge compared to other boats like it. The locker is probably big enough to fit a 750# or bigger bag. The trade off is that there is no ski locker in the walkthrough though. Most had little jump seats for each side of the dog house. They are simple and don't have backs but are a nice little feature. Another great feature is that the rear seat bottom lifts up and sets on the arm rests of the seat giving you a full vdrive sized sunpad. This is another place you could put a large ballast sack. The problem is you have great places to put up to about 1500#'s in the rear of the boat but to get any weight up front you have to put a sack on the front seats or in the walkway.
I felt it was a very nicely put together boat. The boat itself has a hull design similar to most supra's and moomba's. The front half of the hull has a fairly steep deadrise but abruptly turn into a flat bottom hull about half way towards the back. Point being if you can keep the bow down and cutting through the water the ride will be ok. The boat you are looking at probably has a manual adjust trim plate. With it down far enough it will keep the bow down. The problem is that is probably not the best place to have it for creating it's best wakeboard wake. If the boat could be retrofitted with a bennett trim tab it would be sweet.
My biggest complaint and the reason I sold the boat was the boat took water over the bow way to easy. I can't imagine there has ever been a worse boat at this in all of tournament boat history. It literally felt like it was going to take water over the bow just idling with 2 people in the boat and no ballast. I had about 10 people in mine and came off plane while not paying enough attention. I buried the nose and ended up with 6" to a foot of water in the boat. It was scary as hell. I put the boat up for sale the next week. We have since named that boat the submarine. If you are going to use it in rough water I would look at something else.
I completely agree with how easy water got into the boat because of the way the bow sits in the water. The wake also made a double lip, which made it difficult to wakeboard behind.
I had a Cal-Air D-Drive like Brett. I used to run around 600lbs in lead, the stock ballast and ton of stereo gear and batteries in it. Made a good wake and was easy on gas compared to larger V-Drives. Handling was great too. Water over the bow is going to happen. You need a very experienced driver that knows how to come off throttle and rotate the boat at the same time. It prevents the bow from dipping and rollers from happening. Put an inexperienced driver in it and you'll get soaked. A buddy of mine is a really good driver and he could get it to soak just the back seat passengers on purpose.
8k sounds like a good price. The boat in decent shape has to be worth at least 12k. With those hours even if it is a little rough, buy it, use it, clean it, fix some things and sell it for 12-15k.
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