Finally Got My 1st Sea Ray!

D

DieselDogg

Member
Dec 18, 2013
98
Boat Info
Boatless
Engines
Diesel
After 2 years of research and preparation, finally brought the 1st Sea Ray home! This is my 4th boat, with last being a 240 Cobalt cuddy, so quiet a jump for me.

She is a 2007 290DA with 235 hours on twin 5.0 litters / B3s. Got her from the Toronto area and ended up driving to Toronto from Seattle, WA and towing her back. 5200 mile round trip in 7 days!

I had all kinds of reservations about towing her back and now that I've done it, I was not wrong to be hesitant. It was one of the most challenging things I've ever done, but with a lot of luck, I got her home safe just in time for Seattle Seafair.

Can't wait to take her out this weekend and looking forward to finally have a real need to read the forum on regular basis.
 
Congratulations DD - - the best place in the world to have a boat at the best time of the year, weather this weekend looks perfect. Have fun mi Amigo.
 
Welcome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
DD, welcome to CSR and congrats on getting a very nice size boat for your area. I really like the 290.

If I might ask, what were the challenges you faced while towing?
 
There were many things that could have gone wrong and luckily, they didn't. The biggest challenge for me was towing the boat through road work zones. Whenever I saw those damn orange signs, I would say to my self: "here we go again". When you are towing something that big and heavy, anything other than smooth road makes the job exponentially harder and more dangerous. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of road work areas.

The 290 has a 9.5 foot beam, so the first challenge was getting permits for 9 states and Ontario. I had my assistant coordinate with permit company. They obtained permits for the 9 states, which cost around $500. According to them, Ontario's permit process takes 5 days and since I was working with a very short window, there simply wasn't enough time to get a permit. I hooked up and went for it. It was about 160 mi to the US border. It was nerve-wrecking to know that I could be pulled over in a different country and God only knows what kind of crap I would have to deal with.

The wide load actually proved to be a non issue from the towing stand point. What turned out to be a bigger concern for me was the height. The broker that set up the trailer and boat, told me on the phone that he measured her at 13 feet high. Well, when I put a measuring tape on her, it turned out that she was 13.5 feet, which is the max legal limit. When I got to US and started driving through MI, I hit some bridges that were marked at 13'8". I actually had some guy tell me on the off ramp that I'm getting real close to hitting the bridges.

The next problem was that once I got to US and started driving through MI, IN and IL, even though I had permits, I didn't have the oscillating amber lights, which according to permits was a requirement. So again, I ran through MI and IN without displaying the red flags and wide load signs.

Once I got through IL, I thought to myself that that now I'm in the home stretch. Well, it was a premature celebration. In ND, I hit cross wind with gusts of 50 mph. It made towing pretty much impossible, so I parked for the night.

Those are the highlights. I could write another 10 pages.

In retrospect, this is inherently a very dangerous things to do, but at the same time totally doable, assuming you have the right truck and towing experience.
 
Last edited:
Congratulations. You are going to love that boat.
 
Man, welcome aboard and enjoy your 290. I can relate to your travels as our previous boat (310DA) came from Tuscon to Northern Colorado. I know for a fact there were some cones that wished we had taken a different route. Damn work zones.......

Cheers and enjoy her.....
 
Yesterday we took her out for the first time. It was wife and kid and I had the father in law help me launch her. He has a 24 foot ski boat, so he's got experience in launching boats, which definitely helped. As I said before, this my 4th boat, so I kind of had some expectations, but after getting out of the no wake zone, I was blown away by how much different it was to be in the Sundancer.

All I have to say is that whatever this thing cost and hassle it was to bring her home, it was all more than worth it. This is a whole new league! I've had a ****ty smile for 24 hours now!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
113,256
Messages
1,429,437
Members
61,135
Latest member
Gregger
Back
Top