New Wellcraft owner.

[Walleyes]

Good afternoon everyone, new to the site and a new Wellcraft owner coming to you all from up in Alberta, Canada from Cold lake a small city along the Mid East of the province. I do a lot of fishing on the west coast of British Columbia for salmon and halibut and plan on useing the boat mainly out there and on my home lake it's quite a large lake with a good population of lake trout in it.

My boat is a 1996, Wellcraft 264 coastal. With twin 2009 175 Suzuki's with less than 150hrs on them. Yamaha 9.9 kicker on power trim with less than 50hrs. 2 Scotty downriggers, Raymarine radar, 2 gps / sonar combos, She's ready roll just needs some love and care. Mechanicaly and functionally it's in great shape. The fellow I bought it from retired in 2006. It had the original engines on it they read 197 hrs but they were 2 stroke engines in 2009 he put on these 4 strokes and he put less than 150 hrs on them so as far as anyone can tell the hull only has about 500 hrs on it and it shows. It's needs a good buff and bottom paint but thats about it. Gave it a heck of a good cleaning today and ran some of the electronics through their paces, did a wet run in it yesterday ran great.

The bottom paint needs to be redone my big concern is not so much prevention with new bottom paint but just looks, that old stuff as you can see looks like crap. I didn't spend to much time on the bottom with the pressure washer but what I did it was coming off quite easy so it was not a proper job. In the spring when things warm up I will hit it hard with my pressure washer and after clean it properly and new paint. like I say for looks as much as prevention reasons. Also there are a couple fairly nasty scrapes in the gel coat one side so over the winter I'll strip all decals, do gel coat repairs, power buff the whole boat and buy new decals and pin striping, she'll look new by the time it hits the water next spring. Yesterday I stripped the whole entire boat of contents all cushions out of the cuddy. Sprayed the entire vessel inside and out with a good degreaser and pressure washed every nook and cranny it really freshened it up. Placed fans and a space heater down in the cuddy dried it out overnight and all today. I was quite worried about some of the top and deck as it was quite heavily black spotted and mildew dew to it being stored out doors summer and winter. There was even moss growing along some of the crevices in the back of the deck. Let me tell you that degreaser and my 3500 psi pressure washer made her look like new. I guarantee this boat has not looked this good in years, pulled all the black off her. Now it will just take a good power buff and she'll be like new. I am amazed how good a shape she is in, not a bad hinge or loose bolt she really is a tight vessel. A few minor modifications to some small things like replace hose clamps on fuel lines with stainless crimps just because I'm fussy. By spring she'll be ready for a new show and tell.

[Walleyes]

So I guess my question is what can you all tell me about my new toy. What are the hulls like, are they composite or wood I've read different opinions on the matter. What should I look for are there any known issues with these models of Wellcraft. It's impossible to get any decent info over the web there are haters there are lovers we all know how that goes.