What everyone else has said, plus--- what do you want out of the boat? Do you want a project to use your rebuilding, carpentry, mechanical skills on or do you want a boat to use more than work on?
If it's the former, this could be an interesting albeit potentially very expensive project. If it's the latter, look elsewhere for a boat.
Boats have finite lives unless they're Hacker Crafts, Gar Woods, or vintage Chris Crafts that live in a museum or someone's out-of-water, climate controlled collection. Old working boats have tremendous appeal--- I suspect most people on this forum would agree on the aesthetics of an old working boat at the same time they are vehemently arguing the design pros and cons of production recreational boats. The sight of an old working boat, particularly one with a lot of character in the design, can get a person really worked up to "save" it. Truth be known, however, that by the time these boats reach the super-affordable "save me" state, they are generally past saving. Unless one has a ton of money and wants to do this simply because they can.
The boat pictured below is one of my favorite designs. I have no idea of its condition, other than it's still floating. But I do know that to take this kind of a project on would require far more time, patience, skill, experience, and money than I have. I'd love to have this boat if it was completely restored and ran totally reliably, but it would probably take a Bill Gates or Paul Allen to put it in this condition.
The suggestion to hire a good surveyor who is very familiar with wooden boats is the only way to go in your case, but you'd better book him for at least a full day because I suspect he's going to spend a lot time writing things up. Which--- if you want to get insurance, and many marinas require it these days as a condition of getting a slip--- will ALL have to be fixed relatively quickly.
-- Edited by Marin on Thursday 7th of October 2010 12:51:17 PM
