I Bought A $3,000 HOUSEBOAT From Facebook Marketplace! (massive restoration project)

well hey there ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the channel we are literally so close to a hundred thousand subscribers i need that plaque man i gotta get that plaque i've been aiming for it it's such a big accomplishment for a youtube channel so please head up please just subscribe i've always been told by men that are much older wiser just better people that the two purchases that cause a man the most trouble besides a a wife love you hon the two most stressful constantly breaking down purchases a man can make as one house and two a boat so i decided to do it all in one six months ago i got this idea i just got the facebook marketplace bug i started looking through every used houseboat in the entire surface area of the united states so the more research i did on houseboats it was really hard to find one that you could trailer and move without having to pay like thousands of dollars every time you moved it from one body of water to the next the maximum legal width of a trailer behind a truck for somebody with no specific permits or license or anything is eight foot a normal bass boat is eight foot wide i thought that the whole idea was ruined but then i came across this sucker right here a sea camper it basically looks like if you took the hole of a ski boat a 24 foot ski boat and took the top half of a camper and just smooshed them together i found a 1970s model seat camper resting in virginia which is kind of a problem because i'm currently in georgia and i have a two wheel drive truck i've been stuck in my my front yard before my front yard's grass my dad happens to have a massive dually diesel dooley the perfect truck for the job so i gave him a call and we headed to virginia [Music] it is the morning of folks the morning of i get to see it for the first time 20 30 minutes we get to see the boat everything you've done in your life is coming off i see boats oh my gosh that is a sea of boats so he said it's in the back with the other trash boats it looks so funny how in the world are we gonna jack that up when you bought it how was it just sitting on a trailer yeah i was sitting on this trailer it's been sitting on this trailer for a long time i just worry about that busting it ain't going nowhere but you know that famous last words i guess if you're getting a wreck it'll come off and so the trailer lights you think it's worth it i think it's going to cost a fortune to redo it how much i mean it all any boat the motor is the money and so if the engine if you got to repower this thing it's going to cost a lot so we have kind of come to the side and we're talking the trailer does not look good it's rusted what's holding the boat on does not look good it wouldn't be a problem but we're in virginia and we live in south georgia it's a long haul with the boat of this stature we don't want to be too loud we're still strategizing thinking last time it's touch water is 93. it's just so hard because it's right there you know and i know that would be an unbelievable project i just don't know if it's worth twenty five hundred dollars the one little cable holding that on the boat has been sitting out you know for 28 years in the in the elements and rusting and anything could make it pop i mean anything any little squirrely thing that hasn't it's been on that trailer since 1993. yeah if we have to hit the brakes hard or we have to do anything um and that thing shifts the only thing holding it on that trailer is that old rusty cable that just sucks man we came a long way but i do hear what you're saying i think it's important to avoid the big mistake and i think this would be a big one yeah i think it would be cost you so much money and the motors major party foul phil i learned a very valuable lesson from you phil you dirty dog if you're ever gonna buy anything off facebook marketplace and you call them and they sound desperate that is a red flag that i will never overlook again phil he told me a few things on the phone number one his wife didn't know he had the boat i've never talked to the man he asked me to stay overnight at his house which i couldn't blame him the thing that bothers me the most about phil is he told me the motor was good he told me the trailer was in good condition and when we got there after eight hours six months of research finally finding a boat i just missed all the red flags i missed that he was desperate i missed that some of the pictures of the boat were taken from 30 foot back and after my dad talked some sense into me and i look back at the footage that motor was nowhere near repairable completely rusted pipes were burst terrible condition he completely lied to me told me the motor was fine and it was completely toasted so we decided to come home empty-handed and it sucked it sucked bad so at this point the unthinkable happens before i left for virginia about a month before i put an offer in on a boat on facebook marketplace in eufaula alabama very very close to where lojo lives within two days of being listed the boat had been sold was moved gone the boat looked so epic so unique so different than anything i'd ever seen i messaged the lady or the man that sold the boat and i was like hey look i i want that boat so bad have you sold it yet is it is it gone because i'll pay you 500 bucks more right now they responded with the name of the man who purchased the boat so i messaged him a direct message on facebook marketplace and i say look man if you haven't touched the boat you haven't done any work i'll give you 500 bucks right now you can make 500 bucks if you give me that boat on the way home from virginia a month later the man responds and says he's willing to sell me the boat lojo let me borrow his truck and i headed down to south alabama to check out boat number two today is the day i can feel it i've talked to the owner don't think i'm gonna get scammed that is the most cash i've ever held my hand legally next stop houseboat hello hey yeah um er do you live close to a little uh set of three barns i got uh what what where are you getting that's out big dude that is so cool [Music] here goes nothing i don't know if i just made the biggest mistake of my life or the best decision in two hours well now [Applause] i had no idea that every gas station in alabama closes by 9 p.m i pulled in five gas stations all of which were closed none had working pumps and i was seven miles to the next gas station this video is just going phenomenal just spent last night and in my little already put all my bags back in the back seat but spent last night in my back seat really had big man tiny coat type vibes going have about 50 mosquito bites i'm hoping that's what they are i've called pretty much every towing company in the state every body shop heck i started calling gas stations dude downloaded uber the only man that would answer my phone call was how was your night buddy you should have called me man really well i don't i mean i don't know if i would have woke waking up man it was like three your time or whatever you sound like you spent the night in a houseboat not on the water i also love your wood block strat here yeah the log block strap i don't know if you showed your folks that but i love it i'm also loving this duct tape light right here dude oh the whole thing's duct taped up yeah we don't i don't i haven't revealed anything but that's that's sorry no no now i just want to i mean maybe off camera you can give me a tour but i i gotta now that i'm here and full of daylight i got to see this thing that you've gone you have gone through just with boats in general like restoration project boats in the last month you have broken your back on these projects dude oh my god well yeah i've got the i got the freaking goods man all right to do videos like this you just got to be a stubborn son of a gun man you got to be ready to dodge a freaking dirty phil in virginia you got to be ready to sleep in the back of a 0-3 step side nobody likes step sides after six months of research keeping this secret from you guys and finally succeeding and getting this boat home i am now the proud owner of the itty bitty this vessel is a 23 foot steward i believe these vessels were discontinued in the 1980s there's only a few of these tight boats for sale in the united states today we've genuinely stumbled upon a hidden gem in south alabama i think this boat could be one of the coolest investments i've ever made i feel like if i had to buy a boat that perfectly represented me it'd be that kind of awkwardly built a little unproportional but gets the job done now the real win in this boat as i talked to the guy who bought it and he showed me the motor the motor looks completely leaps and bounds better than the first motor we looked at unlike the previous boat the seat camper this stewart has a full-on car motor inside i believe fingers crossed we're not gonna try in this video but there could be a chance that we don't have to buy a completely new motor and start from scratch in the rear which is honestly my biggest hope for this boat because that's gonna be the most pricey thing we do and i would love to take the money that we would have to spend on a new motor and put it towards just making like the most stupid upgrades to this boat before we do anything else with the boat before we start restoring remodeling and bringing this thing back to life we need to hop in here and show you guys the current state now the thing that really stuck out to me about this boat compared to the sea camper the sea camper was last registered in 1993 whereas this boat was last running in 2011. that's almost a 20-year difference in seeing water and being out and running which gives me so much more hope for the old itty-bitty clearance on the front deck is um it's pretty tight so before you enter into the cabin you have this cool little front deck area where you can fish mount some chairs if it's raining you're not able to do anything this is a perfect area to come hang out and chill also on the very front of the boat we have a minn kota electric anchor which is wired to the captain's chair so you can drop the anchor from inside we have two little lights i'm definitely gonna replace these might just run some led lights across the entire front just have this thing freaking shining i like how we have this outward bend for aerodynamics just to cut through the air pretty sweet and now for the part that i'm ready to show you the interior of the itty bitty there's no telling what critters and snakes and spiders are in here right now we actually have a lot to dive into in here first off soon as you come in the captain's chair i freaking love the little steering wheel there's little bits of the boat that we're gonna make sure to leave in here as we restore and bring it back might not leave in the current wiring system i don't know how old this hummingbird system is but it says range speed temperature depth whatever it is that it's probably one of the first hummingbirds ever made but if it gets the job done it gets the freaking job done there's so many different gauges and levers and so many things i have no idea what they all do the previous owner did nothing to get this thing ready to sell there's like miscellaneous kitchen knife sunglasses heaps of trash throughout the boat and a fire paint job that thing is wow the floor is so loose it feels like you could go through it any moment so moving on from the captain's chair my favorite place in here we got the old mini fridge if we can get this thing there's milk in there there's a gallon of milk i think it's water i think it's water unlike most smaller house boats or drift boats the cabin area has a ton of windows it doesn't feel like you're like locked down in this little chamber and there's no air and it's like a claustrophobic feeling like most small 24 25 foot cabin boats do the only problem that you get when you have a bunch of windows especially in a boat water will find a way to leak through these windows it looks like an old air conditioner too might be leading to a little bit of rain damage around the seal all this water damage is directly associated with whatever's coming through this window water has fallen in the base of the boat and the boat is part to where the water will run out the back and flow out of the plug we have water damage in the dining room the kitchen it gets really really dicey in this back corner if i put all my weight on here i could go straight through the back steps are kind of falling in they are completely toast if i were to put any pressure on those steps i'd be chilling with the motor so unfortunately that means we're gonna have to gut pretty much the entire boat and also in the back of the cabin where the bed the kitchen the dining room table clearance could be an issue so directly across from the captain's chair is a little slide out mattress this has 1970s baptist church pew written all over it so the kitchen area is actually pretty cool we have a small sink right here a stove top an oven and then there's a place to put a propane tank right here or on the front deck and at the at the front of the kitchen we have a little microwave [Music] sitting on a little metal shelf and then held in place by a little elastic band you gotta love the south alabama ingenuity so the number one thing that i was scared about using the stovetop and the oven i didn't want to blacken fish in an area this small because the smell would be so thick and it would just stay in here forever the really cool thing that they did with this boat was put a little fan in that sucks all that thick smell especially when you're doing catching cooks and spits it outside of the boat so you don't have to have that thick smell in your face the whole night as you're trying to sleep we have a handful of drawers cabinets other storage areas that can't stay it's it's an eyesore it just clashes with that mint paint job now this little dining room area is also a place to sleep this table has a leg that folds down sits there these cushions come out so you could have a bed up here and a bed right here for traveling with multiple people i got to do some serious thinking how we're going to use the space in here to fully maximize it and not be just crammed in here now the final part of the indoor section is the super tiny little bathroom fingers crossed they left us a little gift basket in the waste tank if you know what i'm saying i can't wait and then lastly directly across from that pristine bathroom we have a little closet where you can keep clothes and stuff i think i'm just gonna knock that closet out open up some more space back here now it's time to go to my favorite part of this entire boat the upper deck and finally ladies and gentlemen welcome to the top deck so we have about a ten foot long seven foot wide top deck that we can come out on fish off of maybe even duck hunt off of it one day i know for a fact this is gonna be my favorite spot on the entire boat so welcome to my new boat thank you guys so much for sticking around to this point in the video if you have i owe you a huge thank you because as weird as it sounds a goofy travel houseboat has been a goal and a dream of mine forever the things that we're gonna be able to do with this boat i'm telling you i i'm telling you right now it's gonna be epic literally if you're a body of water the itty bitty might be touching you soon if you guys have any ideas of what we should do with this boat how we should restore it optimize space make it the most epic survival trailerable houseboat make sure to comment down below we got a little bit of rain coming in i'm gonna wrap this video i've been keeping this secret forever better luck next time phil not today son we got a big project ahead of us it's gonna take a lot of time a lot of money it's gonna be hard but i am pumped man thank you guys so much i'll see you on the next one peace how does that even happen i looked like dr seuss drank a little too much one night and tried to write a book dang it

Channel: AYO Fishing

Views: 1,128,977

Keywords: houseboat, restoration, Facebook marketplace, boat, Cheap houseboat, trailerable houseboat, Facebook marketplace boat, purchase, buying, Facebook marketplace purchase, Facebook marketplace scam, fishing, ultimate houseboat, ultimate restoration project

Id: yAAiGQobK-Q

Length: 21min 14sec (1274 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021