RE: Rc boat n00b
Hemi is right,
with a decent budget like you have gas would be more logical.
There are quite a good amount of guy's on this site that are from your Area and hopefully they will chime in, they may be able to point you to something in your area (cheaper on shipping).
RTR boats are not like RTR or ARTR kit like the 1/8 buggy, with the buggy you can take for example a basic SVM Cronos Prima (modify later down the road) or go all out with the SVM Cronos RS07 (full race version no upgrade required), boats however they don't come like this, eventually you want to upgrade to better parts (always), unless you are content with the boat the way it came but I haven't seen or heard of anyone not upgrading something.
The Rio 51 is a boat that you may enjoy the way it is out of the box for quite a while (I believe problems have been rectified) and the only thing you will want to change from the start is the prop.
maybe later on down the road you may want to do an engine upgrade and maybe not (I say that you will, we all do) lol
look around, there are other good RTR or ARTR boats (gas) out there that won't need or only need minor upgrade and you may be able to find a used one like a lot of us do.
IF you find anything on Ebay, please come back here with the link so the guy's can advise you on it. There are a lot of good used boats out there Ebay included but there is also a few misleading people as well.
Dan.