Welcome!

Welcome to my first of many blogs about my 2000 Mariah Shabah Z250. I purchased the boat in January of 2006 from a marina in Baltimore, MD after over a year worth of rigorous searching. So I packed the car and headed up there for the inspection and sea trial. We took it out Jan 27, 2006. I had the trailer ordered and picked up the boat February 18.

Why Mariah?
Well, they claimed to be "Built Like No Other Boat in the World". That they are. It's got just about everything you could think of, and is one of the most luxurious cuddy cabin boats besides Carvers & Silvertons that I had ever seen. Leather interior, italian wood, custom guages, all the bells & whistles. It even has quite a few James Bond type things on it too, like the Power Retracting Anchor light. I've never seen another boat with this. Power hatch lift, (which mine had been removed by the previous owner) Also has a keyless start, which allows you to enter a code and start the boat just in case you lose the keys. This was quite a step up from my 1991 Sea Ray 180 Bowrider. In fact, one of Mariah's marketing campaigns in the late 90's was "The boat Sea Ray owners are upgrading to". Once again, truth in advertising!

Now for the shitty part. Mariah went out of business in 2001, for a few different reasons, mainly financial, due to profit loss and union problems with the staff. From what everyone says, they were dumping too much money into their boats and not making enough to keep everyone happy. I understand, these things happen. In 2003, the "Mariah" name was purchased by Sea Fox, and all the molds, and parts for Mariah's 17-24ft boats went to Sea Fox. They redesigned the interior, cheapened them up WAY beyond belief, and have now appeared on the market as a "starter" boat. The molds for the larger boats (25-30ft) were sold to a company called Challenger Offshore. They redesigned the interiors also, cheapened them up, and now market them as the "Family series" on their website. They still look like the original Mariah's from the outside... Inside, that's a different story. SO, this sucks for the original Mariah owner. There's no longer a place to fix the hull under the Lifetime Hull Warranty, find a cushion for the seats, or even find a cupholder, they made everything custom in house. Finding parts is a total bitch. Basically it's a crapshoot between ebay and the random dealer that might have a few salvage parts. I'm trying to baby this boat so nothing has to be replaced. You'll read all about it in this blog.

I ran the boat pretty easy the first couple months to figure out how it handles. For the rest of the summer, I spent some time fixing the quirks and enjoying it. Then October came too quickly.

Here it is, for anyone that hasn't seen it before!