My search for a boat so far has come up empty handed. It might be a bit unseasonable to be looking for a rowing shell when theres a foot of fresh snow on the ground, so hopefully the prospects will improve. My observations so far are the the used rowing shell market is somewhat limited. There are of course shells for sale, but not necessarily the shell your looking to buy. I'm basically looking for a boat from one of three manufactures, maybe 4. It has to be a mid weight, or70-80kg hull. I'm looking for a racing weight boat so that narrows it down a bit further.
The thing that amazes me the most is the asking price on some of these boats. An new rowing shell runs about 8-10k for a good carbon fiber lightweight hull. I've seen boats 8 years old listed for 4k, and even more. One person even offered me a 11 year old boat for the "steal" at 5k. Thats over 1/2 the cost of a new one. By comparison I could have bought a 2 year old boat for $5,500 asking price. So far it seems like the older boats have inflated asking prices or the boats are much newer and not that much less then a new boat. My assumption is that the boat should deprecate about 10-15% a year depending on use. so my search to find a solid good boat that has been well cared for continues.
In the meantime I signed up for rowing camp the second week of March. I'm stoked to be going to spend a week in the Florida sun. I could certainly use the vacation from work, and my rowing could definitely use the coaching. A couple weeks after I get back i should be able to get out on the water and do some rowing up here, maybe even sooner.
I also finally broke down and bought some winter snow boots. The slogging through piles of slush and dunking my foot in icy snow covered puddles has just gone too far. It seems like every year I have this train of thought around this time and then it warms up before I actually do anything about it. On Thursday I order them. They will be here next week, and by the time I get back from Florida, well it should be spring.
