2020 23SC Owner Review, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:58 pm
Hello all:
Having had our new boat for a few weeks now, I thought it would be fair to write up an honest review. I've been helped by the information on this forum many times leading up to the purchase and just want others to maybe benefit from my experience so far. I'm putting pictures at the bottom of the post for those of you that love pictures. (like me)
I'll break it down to 3 categories. The "Good" (and there's lots of it), the "Bad" (things that didn't turn out quite the way I expected), and a few "Ugly" (things that in my opinion just shouldn't be)
Let's start with the "Good" stuff:
1) She's absolutely stunning. Everyone that sees her, especially the interior and the head layout, raves about how beautiful she looks.
2) For a 23' boat the ride is luxurious. Handles 1-2ft seas in the Atlantic very nicely and if you're one of lucky passengers to be sitting in the bow rider seats the hull design and balance creates a shock absorber effect like you're flying above a cloud of water. It's pretty impressive.
3) She's faster than I expected. With the 300 Merc V8, on the break-in run we saw an honest 55mph at 6000rpm also meaning she's perfectly propped from the factory. This was with a full tank of fuel and water with 2 passengers.
Before we move on to the "Bad" I like to share that I really didn't think much about how a boat dealer's actions can make a purchase a pleasure - or a pain. We bought our boat at a major boat show and then subsequently got passed to the dealer's location closer to our home. So, who we got supporting our delivery was pot luck. For those of you with options, I suggest you ask for recommendations from others that have gone through the process and see if you can deal with someone with a good reputation. For the below not so favorable items, some of them were dealer related and others simply should have been caught and corrected.
Now for the "Bad":
1) The boat arrived all wrapped up from Cobalt in pristine condition and the dealer said it would take a day or so to prep her and set a tentative delivery date for two days later. About a week or so of amazingly fabulous weather later the boat was still on the dealer lot with no committed delivery date. A couple days later when the severe weather warning came in mid day, at 4:30pm the dealer called and said the boat was in the water and ready for delivery. But it was too late in the day for delivery so our brand new Cobalt was tied up to a dock with two ropes (no spring lines) and weathered extremely severe Florida thunderstorms all night long. (yes, it's a boat, but wait for the bilge pump part)
2) The next morning after signing the paperwork, being told that "Cobalt forgot" to send along any owners documentation (still don't have any) I drove to the dock, checked for damage (thankfully there was none), manually activated the bilge pump to no water discharge and I drove my new boat home for a short trip in the rain to get her safe and on a lift.
3) She drove a bit sluggish on that ride so when I got home and put her up I pulled the plug and watched water pour out of the bilge for about 20 mins. Upon inspection, the bilge pump strainer was plugged with construction related fiberglass debris. This was when I was first surprised to see a single bilge pump on such a high end boat. But hey, what could happen? Well what is happening is that even cleaned out the bilge pump operates sporadically whether on automatic or manual. Not a good thing when there is only one. Obviously needs to be replaced. (and consider adding a second one)
Now for the "Ugly": (these are things that in my opinion are related to factory QA issues)
1) The quite expensive RGB LED lighting system option has a DOA strand (doesn't change colors like the others and should have been caught) but more importantly, the mounting of these lights was not properly designed. During the break-in run (a few 1 min WOT intervals in 1-2 ft seas) left all the LED strips down hanging out of place. The method of mounting is a not so strong adhesive with the lighting strip placed directly on the textured vinyl upholstery side panels. In my opinion, they need to come up with a better way and retrofit the systems they have installed so far. It looks embarrassing.
2) A minor issue but makes you wonder how it left the factory like this... Our boat is optioned with the electric porcelain head and after a few rides we decided to try it out.
Well, it didn't flush. The pump ran, but no water. Checked the valve, it's open, very strange... So, don't ask me how I figured it out, but I found an air leak in the system preventing it from pulling the water up from the through hull. What was it? The drain plug from the sea strainer was completely missing. Looked everywhere in the bilge to see if it maybe loosened up and worked it way out (I've never seen that happen btw) So how did it leave the factory and how did the dealer not notice the toilet didn't work on their checkout run?
Having had our new boat for a few weeks now, I thought it would be fair to write up an honest review. I've been helped by the information on this forum many times leading up to the purchase and just want others to maybe benefit from my experience so far. I'm putting pictures at the bottom of the post for those of you that love pictures. (like me)
I'll break it down to 3 categories. The "Good" (and there's lots of it), the "Bad" (things that didn't turn out quite the way I expected), and a few "Ugly" (things that in my opinion just shouldn't be)
Let's start with the "Good" stuff:
1) She's absolutely stunning. Everyone that sees her, especially the interior and the head layout, raves about how beautiful she looks.
2) For a 23' boat the ride is luxurious. Handles 1-2ft seas in the Atlantic very nicely and if you're one of lucky passengers to be sitting in the bow rider seats the hull design and balance creates a shock absorber effect like you're flying above a cloud of water. It's pretty impressive.
3) She's faster than I expected. With the 300 Merc V8, on the break-in run we saw an honest 55mph at 6000rpm also meaning she's perfectly propped from the factory. This was with a full tank of fuel and water with 2 passengers.
Before we move on to the "Bad" I like to share that I really didn't think much about how a boat dealer's actions can make a purchase a pleasure - or a pain. We bought our boat at a major boat show and then subsequently got passed to the dealer's location closer to our home. So, who we got supporting our delivery was pot luck. For those of you with options, I suggest you ask for recommendations from others that have gone through the process and see if you can deal with someone with a good reputation. For the below not so favorable items, some of them were dealer related and others simply should have been caught and corrected.
Now for the "Bad":
1) The boat arrived all wrapped up from Cobalt in pristine condition and the dealer said it would take a day or so to prep her and set a tentative delivery date for two days later. About a week or so of amazingly fabulous weather later the boat was still on the dealer lot with no committed delivery date. A couple days later when the severe weather warning came in mid day, at 4:30pm the dealer called and said the boat was in the water and ready for delivery. But it was too late in the day for delivery so our brand new Cobalt was tied up to a dock with two ropes (no spring lines) and weathered extremely severe Florida thunderstorms all night long. (yes, it's a boat, but wait for the bilge pump part)
2) The next morning after signing the paperwork, being told that "Cobalt forgot" to send along any owners documentation (still don't have any) I drove to the dock, checked for damage (thankfully there was none), manually activated the bilge pump to no water discharge and I drove my new boat home for a short trip in the rain to get her safe and on a lift.
3) She drove a bit sluggish on that ride so when I got home and put her up I pulled the plug and watched water pour out of the bilge for about 20 mins. Upon inspection, the bilge pump strainer was plugged with construction related fiberglass debris. This was when I was first surprised to see a single bilge pump on such a high end boat. But hey, what could happen? Well what is happening is that even cleaned out the bilge pump operates sporadically whether on automatic or manual. Not a good thing when there is only one. Obviously needs to be replaced. (and consider adding a second one)
Now for the "Ugly": (these are things that in my opinion are related to factory QA issues)
1) The quite expensive RGB LED lighting system option has a DOA strand (doesn't change colors like the others and should have been caught) but more importantly, the mounting of these lights was not properly designed. During the break-in run (a few 1 min WOT intervals in 1-2 ft seas) left all the LED strips down hanging out of place. The method of mounting is a not so strong adhesive with the lighting strip placed directly on the textured vinyl upholstery side panels. In my opinion, they need to come up with a better way and retrofit the systems they have installed so far. It looks embarrassing.
2) A minor issue but makes you wonder how it left the factory like this... Our boat is optioned with the electric porcelain head and after a few rides we decided to try it out.
Well, it didn't flush. The pump ran, but no water. Checked the valve, it's open, very strange... So, don't ask me how I figured it out, but I found an air leak in the system preventing it from pulling the water up from the through hull. What was it? The drain plug from the sea strainer was completely missing. Looked everywhere in the bilge to see if it maybe loosened up and worked it way out (I've never seen that happen btw) So how did it leave the factory and how did the dealer not notice the toilet didn't work on their checkout run?