Hello,

Well, the wife and i just purchased a 1986 36' Carver Mariner as a project boat. It is our first "big" boat. The boat's previous owner purchased it this spring off the estate of the original owner who took delivery back in June of 1987. The purchase was a stop gap measure for the 2nd owner, as he was looking for short term housing so he spent the summer living abord in the marina. We had looked at the boat back in Sept. and decided that it was more of a project that we wanted to take on, but the wife fell in love with the layout. Everything else I took her to look at just didn't measure up... His asking price kept droping, so we ended up throwing out an offer and he accepted.

Our Mariner has the 350ci Crusader 270's and Walter v-drives. Starboard motor has 1103 hours, while the port motor is freshly remaned with only 19 hours. Original owner had the motor rebuilt the winter before passing and never got to use it. He also had the original Onan generator replaced somewhat recently with a 7kw Westerbeke that only has 14 hours.

The boat needs much in the way of cosmetics, and a fair amount of mechanical's too. But we're hopeful that we'll be able to put together a boat worthy of the occational cruise and will use it mostly as a weekend water condo up on Lake Erie. Stringers and transom appear to be solid. I have no doubt i could sell the motors, v-drives and generator and get back most if not all of my money, so we chose not to have a survey done. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite us.

The boat is now out of the water and being winterized & shrink wrapped this week, and we'll begin the process of working on the inside for the cosmetic facelift this offseason. That is the wife's domain so i'll just be along for the ride until spring when i can dig into some of the mechanical items.

Just wanted to introduce myself as i'm sure i'll be asking tons of questions and need lots of advice.

Looking forward to the new adventure.