Many people have called my boat "hard core". I guess that is part of it. I have had people tell me that they tried outboards after seeing my daughter ski and could not deal with them. I tell them that I will set up their outboard for free or tell them how to do it. I don't have any secrets. If done right they could have a better boat cheaper and easier to deal with. I also think that skiing is a social gathering in many cases, the boat just needs to be big and roomy, and I can understand that. We had one of those before we got serious about it. I have driven the big Nautique bow rider. It is heavy and more difficult around the dock. I have driven a Malibu Response and the older lighter Mastercrafts. They are just too big and heavy and the wake is not as good for our purposes. jim
It seems the more experience people have with different boats, the more they appreciate outboards. The same goes for baby dynes vs. other outboard ski boats. There were a few other outboard ski boats that were very nice boats. But they were more geared towards speciffic disciplines. i.e. barefoot Saenger, barefoot warrior, etc... It seems like it comes down to whether you want a ski boat, or an entertaining boat that skis pretty well.
A few years ago I visited the Alton IL club before they folded. They had a 20 single rig and an 18 twin rig with two 175 mercs!!! I walked up to the 18 driver and said I just had to know what the deal was because as you can imagine it sat very low in the water. He said he needed to pull a kite and preferred to drive the 18. AND, man could he drive that boat. He told me the 175's were going to be replaced with 200's. Why not they are not any heavier and he is one guy that could handle it. He owned the boat. jim
There is no Coast Guard horsepower rating tag on Dynebob's 18. This must have been before the Coast Guard got so involved witht the small boat manufacturers. What would they rate an 18' for now just out of curiousity? Greg
I do not know if anyone here knows Rami Amir of Twin Lakes. I know he has a new style 18 that he NEVER uses. I think he might be selling it soon. Greg
USCG Formula: (2 X L X W) -90 = rated horsepower Where: L=boat length W=transom width; if the boat does not have a full transom, the transom width is the broadest beam in the aftermost quarter length of the boat. The rated horsepower may be rounded up to the nearest "5". I guess this comes out to 126.
20' is the magic number. No HP capacity plate is required once you hit 20 ft. in length - inboard or outboard. When I run the USCG formula that I printed off their website I get 90HP but I'm probably doing something wrong. I've seen people calculate it as high as 140HP. According to the USCG, the ratings do not relate to how much "power" the boat can handle but rather to how the boat will behave when it is swamped (i.e. it must retain nuetral flotation). The reason the coast guard was traditionally concerned about outboards is that the high center of gravity of the engine tends to make the boat roll over once it is swamped - so HP ratings were intended to keep engine weights down to minimize instability in the water after the boat is swamped. In today's boats, you can put a max rated HP on a boat and still make it a very dangerous boat, performance-wise, just be over-trimming the engine at high speed, resulting in chine walking or other undesirable behavior. Anyone building a handful of new 18's as special order boats can probably put whatever HP rating they want on the boat. Indeed, the coast guard will tell you that it doesn't tell manufacturers what HP limit to put on boats - it merely suggests guidelines. Many state laws (Wisconsin for one) require that any boat under 20' must have the placard, but the state actually has no control over what the placard says, so if you are rebuilding a boat, you could theoretically put whatever you want on the placard, as long as it has a placard. The problem would be that if you start to become a volume manufacturer you will eventually draw attention, if not liability claims, by putting unrealistic HP ratings on your boats. I have a theory, which I have closely followed all my life with enjoyable results, that more power is, by and large, better, all other things remaining equal. If handling is a big issue, one might choose to go with a smaller, lighter engine. However, we've all seen these boats heavily twin-rigged and yet manuevered pretty well. I've always preferred overpowered cars, snowmobiles, motorcylces, etc. I will say that the 2002 Suzuki GSXR-1000 that I used to own was the one vehicle that finally convinced me that, indeeed, you can have too much power. I sold it mostly because I was afraid of it. I used to have an Arctic Cat Thundercat 900 triple that was insanely powerful and what fun that was.... I know Dynebob will end up using his boat before mine is done. If he lives to tell about how the 250 works on that boat then I guess I can probably keep the sky-side up in mine with the comparably modest 225! Wink
