Oh, heck yes I love my boats. My wife says I have a fleet of boats, I say I have almost enough. from a early 1990's aluminum with a little tiller outboard, up to a sparkleflake bass rocket that'll go 70+mph. Totally true they are a hole into which you throw money, but I love em nonetheless. I also disagree with most of the clichee's about boats. They can be expensive though, and I agree that they may not be for everyone if you just want to use it a small handful of times per year with zero other effort or thought into it--that doesnt generally go well.
Speaking of which...the OP's boat, its not the dent I'd worry about per se, its the stringers inside the hull and whether they are still attached and providing support. This is a random picture I pulled from the internet of an older tracker hull after the inside floors, etc of the boat was removed. It may not be exactly the same hull, it's just for example. All those ribs and lengthwise stringers in the photo are what gives the boat the strength and rigidity to pound into waves at XX mph...the faster the boat will go, the more this matters, especially on an aluminum boat with relatively flat surfaces. The dent looks like where the hull either collided with a rock or dock on the water at some speed, or where something else hit it while on the trailer--either it jacknifed on the trailer, a car drove into it, etc. It looks like a pretty significant impact that severly dented the hull. If those internal stringers are separated from the hull as a result, even if the hull was pushed back into place then there isnt as much structure to support that, which allows more and more movement every time you hit a wave, which further tears itself apart. The result is you get accelerating damage to the hull that increases as you use it, even if you treat it well. Trackers are not overbuilt from the beginning, so they really are relying on that structure having full integrity. Nothing wrong with an old aluminum boat that's structurally sound, it's when the bones are broken that it becomes a real problem.
