After reading all these posts of people ordering boats last spring/summer and still not even having a est. ship date, I'm realizing I must have gotten extremely lucky. Early February, I went on my dealers website to see if they had received any 2021 boats yet and typed in my 16 AR240's info to see what they would offer on a trade in. Dealer called the following day and we threw around some numbers and he said he had a Black/Blue 255XD and Black/Green 255XE on order and both were "confirmed" but only the 255XE had a shipping date. To my surprise, no one had a down payment on either boat. I went to the dealer the following weekend and put a down payment on the 255XE (i wanted the black/green). At the time, the est. ship date was March 3rd. After the shipping date slipped three times due to lack of parts (ballast pumps), the boat finally shipped on April 7th and showed up to the dealer April 9th. (Tenn to North Carolina). I picked up the boat the following day. After talking to the dealer, he said there were now 5 other people behind me that were on the list if i decided to cancel.
I was only able to put the boat in the water for a few hours while i got through the break in period and then took it back to the dealer the following day to take care of several issues. I may have waited a bit longer till the 10hr maint, but i was going out of town for 3 weeks and wouldn't be able to use it anyway. Overall, once the dealer takes care of the issues i had the first day, i think i am going to be extremely happy with this boat. Coming from a 16 AR240, i already am pretty happy with the E-throttles and how much smoother they are, single throttle controlling both motors is nice, the boat overall feels much bigger, definitely more power with the SVHO's, and i havent even tried out the wake boosters or filled the ballast tanks to surf yet. Ill post an update on how well the wakebooster and extra ballast makes a surfable wave once i get the boat back and have some real time use.