Here is the general description of the scam....

Basically it goes like this, someone post a legit sale of a car, boat or whatever high dollar item. The "bad" person takes it, creates a new "sale", lowers the price and starts posting it all over the country. When people contact them instead of the normal pickup they say they will start an private Ebay auction so you can have a secured buy. Only problem is the Ebay site they send you is a fake and all the information you send is collected by the counterfeit seller.

There are variations to this but this is the general method.

He usually claims to be tryiong to unload it quickly because he is about to be deployed.

If that boat is something that you really want at that price ( assuming the seller is not a crook) Go there bring cash or the equivalent and be prepared to test drive the boat, set up a local mechanic to check out the motor ( the Internet works for locating reputable mechanics) bring a tow vehicle and bring the darn thing home. For the price of $ 5,500. it is worth the extra expense for the trip. The boat value is easily $ 30,000 on the low side. If this cannot happen then forgetabout it. If it is a scam then be done with it. I have seen scams like this on Toyota Supra adds. Modified cars that are easily worth $ 50K selling for 6K. If it is too good to be true that it's not true.

With all the scams going around these days I have adopted the old saying "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" .

The scammers would probably get more interest from potential buyers if they actually got a little closer to the market price and it just looked like a good deal, not an insanely great deal. Most can see right thru the insanely great deals and write them off as scams from the get-go.

I would be skeptical of anyone not wanting to make the deal in person. This goes for anything, not just boats.