If it was salt, I would flush all the interior out, including the electrics. Then use a leaf blower to dry everything off, and soak down everything with WD40.
Pop the distributor cap, use a lot of WD40. It may have to be pulled if it is pocketing a lot of water.
Drain the fuel tank. Be sure water is out. Refill with a quarter tank, slosh around, siphon some out, see what you have.
Squirt WD into the instruments. I don't think it will hurt any electrical device. Someone please correct me if I am off base here.
Drain the oil, put fresh oil in (cheap stuff, because you'll have to drain it out again). Fill the cylinders with ATF or MMO, turn everything over by hand. Eventually, when you squirt out the ATF or MMO, then you can hopefully spin the motor with the starter (with plugs out). At that point, drain the oil again, re fill, and it's ready to sell.
If you wait for rust to take hold of the piston rings and valve stems, then you're going to get a few pennies on the dollar, and the motor may well have to be taken apart. If you go after the essentials and get fluid circulated as noted, you should be okay.
Very sorry to hear about this bad news. It does happen, more than we would all like to admit, but there are a lot of boats out there still runnig that spent a short while like a submarine.
Tom
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