Friday, April 07, 2006

What to do on a Sea Trial

I know it's been a while since I post, but I came accross this and couldn't think of another place to put it so that I would be able to find it in the future.

We've been looking at getting another boat and I've started going out on a few sea trials. It's difficult to think of what to do when you're on someone else's boat that will give you some confidence of how good it is. I found this comment posted by Clark Roberts on Boston Whaler forum that gave good suggestions for what you should look for:
My suggestion: test drive each and put through paces; steerage at idle speed, backing down, coming to plane, hands off straight ahead, list in cross winds?, access to bow (fast, safe, easy??), ventillation in cabin, lowest comfortable cruising speed?, hard turns, climbing and decending large cruiser wakes, vision and seating at helm, stand up comfort and throttle position at hand, docking/line handling/cleat&chocks.. etc..etc..etc... often it's the small things that account for a pleasurable boat! Others may have other suggestions... do your homework and "fly before buy"! No, I don't own either but I did spend the night at a Holiday Inn Express last night! What? Happy Whalin'... Clark... Spruce Creek Navy