Re: Cabin Cruiser advise anyone?
Well its been a week now and I have been able to take this thing out to the coast finally. I was rather surprised at how soft it was compared to what I had heard here. I was expecting it to be like an amusement park ride, but to the contrary it was very soft. I would not say smooth though. I consider smooth glass water where theres no chop at all and you can drink wine off the bow. I would call it a soft ride, not a rough ride like I expected. Even though the bow would slam into the waves, you really couldnt feel the smashing of water although you sure could see it come flying out the sides sending spray like 20' off the sides. Pretty cool to watch actually. It was more of a soft push forward when you hit a swell. Seas were about 3.5' when I got to the outter edges of the coastal islands where it was the coolest ride ever. But inside the bay, rather boring if you ask me. Ran very smooth right over the bay chop. The wife did get seasick though, that was rather amusing hehe. But she gets sick even on our small lake hahaha. I didnt catch a damn thing, but the ride itself was pretty nice. I went out around the islands which is about a 50 mile round trip and it used about 1/4 of a tank according to the gauge. But I think its either got a bigger tank than its suppose to have or the gauge doesnt work right. Supposedly it has a 55Gallon tank. When I went to fill it, it was at about 1/2 tank and it took 43 gallons. When I re-filled it again after we took it out, I dumped the 3 5gallon cans I had in the back into it (15 gallons) and the gauge read full tank again up from just above 3/4 tank. So I dont know what to think about that. I think maybe the gauge is wrong or it has a bigger tank than its suppose to have. So it seems to me the whole trip took 15 gallons and we were out for about 5 hours. Although a lot of the time was spent just drifting bouncing bait off the bottom lol.
So the next thing I will be doing is running it dry here at home just to see how much it actually takes when I fill it again. I'm going to check the gauge as it's being filled to see if it's reading correctly or not. Then after that test, I'm going to do overnight on some of the public mooring bouys around the islands. All in all, I think this is the boat size I was looking for. It trailers great, and goes where I want it to go. Trailoring this thing was actually easier than my 16' boat. With the 16, I cannot drive it up onto the trailer because it'll always come out crooked. I have to keep it shallow enough so that it doesnt float off alignment which means I have to crank it up. But this one has driving guides so I could put it in deeper without it floating away and I was able to load and unload it alone. Course, I didnt have a choice either, wife is kinda picky about helping lol. All she will do is hold the rope pretty much lol. I was able to get the trailer close enough to the dock to walk into the boat, out onto the bow and jump down to tie it off after driving it onto the trailer. Climbed back up and over the bow, back to the back, onto the dock, and drove it out. Pretty simple.
