Good timing you asking about Sea Eagle as I was about to post an update on my experience with my SR 14. You can find the original thread under Sea Eagle SR 14 + Mercury 30 hp last post being April 2016. For awhile me and Sea Rider had an on going argument about the the build quality of Sea Eagle boats. He taking the position that people should not purchase them because they fell apart and in general they were junk. I took the position that even if they did fall apart during or even after the three year warranty period their customer service was so good that they would replace the boat with a new one. I now have to agree with Sea Rider.
I've owned two Sib's both being Sea Eagles. The first one was an 8ft tender I used with just a trolling motor. For three years me and a buddy had fun going up and down our slow moving river. We were not in a hurry to do anything so the set up worked fine for us. At the three year mark right at the end of warranty things started to come unglued and falling off along with air leaks. At the beginning of the fourth year everything had come unglued and fallen off,it would not hold air and worse of all the transom had come completely unglued. Needless to say I was pretty mad so called customer service. To their credit they offered to give me all the money I had in the tender towards another Sea Eagle boat of my choosing. I decided to go from their smallest boat to their largest and supposedly toughest boat, the SR 14.
I had become disabled and my income had dropped a lot so it was going to take me awhile to set the boat up just how I wanted it but I was willing to wait. First purchase was a high quality cover I got here at iboats. Then a friend gave me a trailer so right away the boat was inflated,on a trailer,under a cover and kept in the shade. Jump ahead to the 2 1/2 year mark and the boat was all set up and ready to go as soon as I took care of some engine issues. Jump ahead to the three year plus one month mark and I had to make a 180 mile move with the boat on it's trailer. I had never felt good about traveling down the interstate with the boat only having two tow rings to hold the front end down and boat on the trailer so I had added two high quality d rings using good Clifton adhesive. Good thing I did because one of the tow rings came unglued and fell off but thankfully the other tow ring plus the two I had added held. Shortly after parking the boat though the other tow ring fell off.
Again I called customer service but this time what I got was a bad attitude. After explaining all that had happened the man came back with "What Exactly Do You Want Us To Do"? Deciding not to give the guy a piece of my mind I just told him to send me two new tow rings and I would glue them on myself. Well they took a very long time to send them and the ones that they sent were unusable junk.
Jump ahead to the four year mark and again everything has come unglued plus four small air leaks I just got done patching. Thankfully the transom still looks solid but time will tell. So to wrap this story up I have always taken good care of this boat,always kept it clean,treated,under a cover and
in the shade.In fact it still looks like new but again just like the first one by the forth year it's falling apart. Bottom line I for one will never buy another Sea Eagle anything.
Long story I know but something I wanted to get off my chest.
