Llake_lida_weekendsOPWeekenderVergas, MNPosts 11Joined Oct 2025#1
matt asked me in his thread to write mine up on its own, so here it is, and mine is less tidy than his.
2021 Sun Tracker Party Barge 22 DLX, Mercury 115 four stroke, 164 hours. it was at a lender facility at Rothschild, Wisconsin, about 340 road miles from here. i put in 21,800 in the sealed bid in april and won it. wire the following monday, on my lift on Lake Lida by the second week of may.
why a Party Barge instead of something fancier. we are on the water maybe fourteen weekends a year, my wife likes the loungers, and i wanted a boat i would not be sick about if somebody's kid dropped a fishing rod through the fence. new ones at the dealer in Perham were 34 and change out the door. a 2021 with 164 hours for 21,800 was the whole argument.
i found it the same way matt did, through lakeparkautoconnection.com, and i will say the same thing he said about the sealed bid: it is a strange feeling and it took me a week to stop trying to game it. there is no clock to snipe and no second chance. you write down what the boat is worth to you and then you go do something else.
here is where mine goes different from his. he paid 425 for a surveyor. i looked at 47 photos on the lake park listing, decided a Party Barge is a simple boat and there is nothing on it i cannot see, and kept the 400 dollars.
photo 34 was the port stern quarter of the fence, taken from about ten feet away in flat gray light. that panel is not the original panel. there are pop rivets in a line where there should be none and the aluminum is a slightly different color than the panel next to it, and once you know it is there you cannot unsee it. i looked at that photo before i bid and my brain said the light is funny. somebody backed into that boat at a dock and it got a panel and probably a rail.
is it structural, no. does it bother me every time i walk down the dock, a bit. would i have bid 21,800 if i had spotted it, no, i would have been at 20 even. so the 400 i saved cost me somewhere around 1,800, on my own eyes and nobody else's.
a replaced fence panel on its own is nothing, we do two or three a season and the panels are a stocked part. what i would want to know is whether the impact went past the panel into the crossmember or the rail. get down on the deck inside that corner with a flashlight and look at the top of the crossmember for a kink, and put a straightedge along the outside of the tube under that panel. if the tube took it, the panel is the least of it.
while you are there, look at what the repair was done with. stainless rivets into aluminum is fine, steel rivets into aluminum will bloom white and eat a ring around every hole in about four seasons. that is a tell for a cheap dock repair versus a shop.
and for anybody who reads only one line of this thread: photos taken in flat gray light hide dents. if the listing photos were shot on an overcast day, ask for a set taken with the sun at a low angle across the tube. shadow is what shows you a dent, not resolution.
do not be too hard on yourself about the 400. i have watched people at the landing miss a bent skeg on a boat they were standing three feet away from. photos are not the problem, looking is the problem.
what did the DLX come with. mine is an older Party Barge and the thing i wish somebody had told me is that the stock bimini on those is small enough that at two in the afternoon everybody is sitting in the sun anyway.
Llake_lida_weekendsOPWeekenderVergas, MNPosts 11Joined Oct 2025#4
bill, went and looked with a light and a four foot level. crossmember is straight, tube under that panel is straight against the level with no daylight anywhere, and the rivets are stainless. so it was done properly by somebody, probably the marina where it was kept.
wanda, DLX means the upgraded loungers, the ski tow bar, a bimini, and the fish finder at the helm. mine came with the tow bar and no fish finder, there was a rectangle of adhesive on the dash where one used to be. that was on the lake park listing in the write up so it was disclosed, i just did not read that line as carefully as i read the price. bimini is 8 feet and you are right, it shades four people and there are usually six.
paperwork was straightforward. Wisconsin title signed by the bank, lien release with the HIN on it, bill of sale from the lender with the broker listed as agent. deputy registrar in Fergus Falls took about twenty minutes and i paid Minnesota tax on the purchase price, which is a number people forget to put in their budget.
delivery was free, we are inside the thousand mile line by a lot. eleven days from the wire to my driveway. the driver put it on my trailer with a winch and a strap and did not touch my fence with anything.
thanks for putting the fence panel in writing instead of leaving it out. that is the post somebody needs.
one thing i would add for anybody sitting where you were in april. the survey is not really about the 400 dollars, it is about having a second set of eyes that is not attached to your excitement. i had already decided i wanted my boat before i hired the guy. if i had been the one going through those 61 photos i would have found reasons why everything was fine, because i wanted it to be fine.
the lake park auction moves quick once the listing is up, and quick plus wanting it is exactly how people talk themselves past a photo like your number 34.
i gave matt a hard time about his number so it is only fair to say this one is good. 21,800 for a 2021 DLX with 164 hours is under what those move for around here in any month, patched fence panel or not. a new panel and rail if you ever care enough to change it is what, six or seven hundred installed.
the fish finder is a thirty minute job and a 400 dollar unit and you get to pick the one you want rather than living with a 2021 base model screen.
Llake_lida_weekendsOPWeekenderVergas, MNPosts 11Joined Oct 2025#7
closing the season out on this one. 217 hours now, so 53 of ours over fourteen weekends, which is about what i figured. the Mercury never gave us a bad morning and it burns about 6 an hour the way we run it.
the thing i did wrong this year had nothing to do with the purchase. my lift bunks are the old carpeted kind and the carpet on the port forward bunk has been holding water for years. it left a chalky white band on the tube where it sat, about a foot long, and you can feel the texture change with your thumb. that is corrosion starting and it is a hundred percent my fault. new bunk caps in plastic are ordered for spring and i will sand and treat the band when the boat is in the shop.
on Lake Park Auto Connection, for whoever finds this later: the process is what matt says it is, and it did what it said. the two lessons out of my version are that you should pay for eyes you do not own, and you should read the disclosure lines in the listing as carefully as you read the number at the top.
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