Re: best brand of hydofoil stabilizer for porpoising?
True Story. A few years back , I was looking for a smaller boat than my<br />Four Winns cuddy, mainly for taking the family out on small lakes for water<br />skiing and tubing. After looking around a bit, I purchased a Stingray 180<br />RX bowrider. It seemed to meet our space and performance needs and seemed<br />like a real value for it's cost. And it was, except for one glaring fault.<br />At anything less that W.O.T and speeds below 35-40, it would porpoise<br />horribly unless you kept the trim fully down. Because you had to drive with<br />bow always plowing the water, instead of planing as it was designed to,<br />cornering was very unpredictable, gas mileage suffered and handling in<br />general was poor. It got to be so bad, my wife refused to drive it when I<br />wanted to ski. Having owned many other boats that you could trim at any<br />speed (once on plane), I knew this was not correct and tried to work with<br />first my dealer, then Stingray the company, to get this corrected. To make<br />a long story short, lets just say they both were an absolute joke. All I<br />had to show for months of effort of trying to go through the proper<br />channels, was countless unanswered phone calls and e-mails, wasted trips to<br />the dealer, money wasted on another prop, a lot of frustration and the<br />first hand knowledge (after trying other 18 & 19 foot Stingrays out) is<br />that they all porpoise just as badly! Many other disgruntled owners had<br />also contacted me with this same issue, after I started asking for help on<br />various boating forums. But just as I was convinced this is a flaw in the<br />design and was putting the boat up for sale, I learned of the smart tabs<br />from Nauticus. I contacted the company, who was very helpful and promised<br />they would completely fix my porpoising problem. After all I had gone<br />through with the shallow answers and promises from my dealer and Stingray,<br />I was extremely skeptical, but I went ahead and ordered a set, figuring it<br />was a lot cheaper than buying another boat. Got them a few days later and<br />installed them in about an hour.<br />Let's just say the results were far beyond my highest hopes. There is<br />absolutely no more porpoising. None whatsoever, no matter what speed or<br />trim the motor is at. Additional benefits are that the thing planes almost<br />instantly, it virtually doesn't even lift the bow at all! You feel like<br />you're in a car, not a boat when you take off! Because of this the hole<br />shot improvement is amazing. Heavy slalom skiers I could not pull out of<br />the water previously, now are no problem. Gas mileage is improved and the<br />thing corners predictably and rides much better. I even called the owner of<br />the company and thanked him personally. That was 2 years ago, and I can<br />truly say I am now 100% satisfied with this same boat I was so disgusted<br />with before the smart tabs installation, and can't even imagining using it<br />without the smart tabs. I hear so much about boaters looking for<br />performance improvements with expensive engine and prop modifications, <br />or complicated hydraulic or electric trim tabs, <br />when they could just add a set of these and get better performance<br />improvements (except top speed, that was not affected) at a fraction of the<br />cost. Several of my boating friend have installed them after they heard of<br />my success, with similar positive results. So go ahead and give them a try,<br />you won't regret it. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.<br />Thanks, Randy M
