Engine choices

It seems New England is full of waiting around for the right time then not having enough time. Most of the Winter has seen little work done on our boat and now as Spring rolls in it looks like we don't have enough time to get everything done. Right now we are coming down to the final decision on choosing a new engine. We have thought of every possible scenario to not have to do this but to be reliable in the long run our old rusty Volvo needs to go.

These are the two options right now  a Beta Marine or a Yanmar. With every big purchase you get stressed over the little things. Both engines are very good and would work fine so it comes down to the little stuff and trying to figure out which works best for us. The major area's we are comparing are: price, ease of maintenance, customer support, resale value, ease of installation and ability to buy parts in the future.

Doing research there is no shortage of opinions out there, it seems the more expensive the project the more opinions people have. Unfortunately the internet makes it to easy for everyone to share their opinion and have little or no real experience to back it up or a varitey of other reasons to make their opinon not helpful. So the amount of time spent sifting through peoples write up on the challenges of installing an engine just to find out they hired someone to do it anyway is quite frustrating. Also as expected most people in the boating world have a whole lot more money and time than us and this changes what is feasible for them as opposed to what is feasible for us. It is hard to look at the ideal set up and then be forced to have to choose the bare minimum, but that's the way it is.