September 20, 2006

Upholstery and You (with me riding shotgun)

I am aware of situations in which potential buyers of wake boats have placed buying decisions on the condition of the upholstery. Ok - not terribly exciting stuff - but I just wanted to offer this philosophy on upholstery that has been handed down from many generations of Wakeboard Reporters.

When looking for the best deal on a lightly used tournament inboards, you will probably find boats that are gorgeous and pristine in many ways, with upholstery that isn't as perfect as the rest of the boat. Time is more gentle on gelcoat than on vinyl, as is the Sun, which is why in most cases I would not weight the condition of the upholstery extremely highly. It is of course going to be a consideration because overtly apparent bad condition of and part of a boat indicates a rough past.

Many spots can be patched easily with cheap commercially available kits. You can even sew certain upholstery problems. But I would definitely not recommend dismissing a boat that has a few cuts in the upholstery or even some cracking at the seams. And if you did decide to purchase said vessel, I would also not reccomend going off and completely reupholstering the thing. Chances are, you'll have the cuts in the same spots in a year or two and you could have used that money toward an automatic ballast system or a plasma television. My advice is pretty basic, and it is to let upholstery get pretty bad before it gets addressed (see above). People with $75,000 gussied-up wake boats will disagree with this, but I personally think of upholstery as little more than padding and protection from bumping around, or whacking your elbows and shouldn't be worried about. Nicks happen. Someone is going to glance their fin off the side of the sun deck or engine cover - and it isn't the end of the universe. If you pay to have that thing reupholstered, you'll just be worried every time someone brings a tool near the boat or if a kid is in there with a toy. You'll have everyone removing their figure skates before they get in your boat and you may not even let them bring their javelin. Nobody wants to be around someone like that, you killjoy.

Please enlarge the thumbnail above. It is the seat I sat in for at least 5 years. IT needed to be reupholstered. I finally did have it done. But I used it in that condition for quite awhile.

Posted by erik