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Not sure I understand your question? I will say that my post represents my opinion and my opinion only. I have conducted no scientific research to prove my opinion so take it for a grain of salt..............
Didn't mean to spool you, since my mind goes back to my first boat. It leaked really bad, we had more fun stopping fishing till it was just to full and power away pull the plug and where it drained is where we began fishing again. The point is some of us get in the frame of mind that if it ain't perfect there is no reason to own it. Flawed boats make some great boats. So it being your opinion, meant something along the lines of he may be the perfect guy to bring her back. Advise is awesome, answers are wonderful, yet that boat really needs an evaluation before it is avoided. Just my opinion.
As is the case with all of these "waterlogged" threads, the important thing is to determine just how much water we are dealing with. As stated weighing the hull is the only true measure worth going by and even this is not a completely accurate number but close enough. If you are carrying around 200-300 extra pounds of water locked between the deck it presents issues that are very hard to resolve and can be seen in the way the boat sits in the water. I also believe almost all Whalers have some water intrusion but I doubt it makes much difference except in a few of the more pronounced situations.
As the OP describes, stepping on the deck and watching water gush up from below could certainly be one of the more pronounced cases and worthy of a drag to the scales for some definitive numbers.
Pictures in my PP show my boat the day I picked it up. Cluttered with trash, leaves and twigs from sitting for many years uncovered. I found acorns sprouting in the rigging tunnel. The one thing I did see that gave me hope was that the drain tube was not plugged so the hull never did fill up with water that could not drain. Had the boat been full of standing water I am sure I would be faced with a more severe problem.
I would buy the boat, clean it out and take it to a scale to get some real numbers. Pictures would tell us a lot more about the overall condition of the entire package. My trailer is certainly worth $500 given the fact I had to put $500 in new parts on it! I would not pay much for an old motor even if I did the compression test and all seemed fine.
