Sommaire pour March 2017 de Boating

AH, BOATING SEASON IS FINALLY HERE. THE ICE IS OFF LAKE Michigan, and we can’t wait to get our boat out, trolling for salmon and fishing the rocks around Chicago’s marinas for smallmouths; watching the Chicago air show; and heading to the Indiana Dunes lakeshore, where hundreds of boats line up and have a beach party just about every Saturday. As a senior master-certified mechanic for one of the Big Three automakers for 30 years and the go-to guy for all my buddy’s boat problems, I meticulously maintain my 20-foot Renken 3.0 runabout so it’s at the ready for such adventures. Poor maintenance leads to breakdowns and safety issues I tune it every season, change all the filters, use full synthetic oil, change all bellows every five years, and replace…

THERE ARE THREE HOT TRENDS IN runabout boating, and Grady-White capitalized on all of them with its new Freedom 235. The first is outboard power in family-fun boats. Thanks to changes in Detroit-made engine blocks, sterndrive propulsion costs increasingly more per horsepower, narrowing the horsepower-to-dollar ratio it had once enjoyed over outboards. Grady-White has been building fishing outboards with Yamaha for decades and is no stranger to the advantages of Yamaha’s engineering advantages. Swift acceleration, smooth, quiet power, low emissions and a long, reliable running life are properties Grady captured in mating outboards to its transoms. The relationship has kept Grady- White boats rolling in all kinds of customer-satisfaction awards for years. Second, in coastal waters boaters also enjoy the advantage of fully tilting the motor from the water when…

WALKER BAY STOPPED COUNTING ITS small dinghy sales (many have sold through West Marine) at 150,000 boats, which speaks volumes about the company. Its new Generation 525 marks a shift into the luxury market, and Walker Bay nailed it with a delightfully fresh design. For those who haven’t yet considered a RIB for use as a runabout, the Generation 525 would be a good boat to begin with. For starters, you don’t have to sit on squishy side tubes: The 525 offers comfy settees with backrests on each side. The squared bow not only provides thronelike seating forward but also makes it easy to board from a beach or a larger boat. There are huge stowage bins under each seat (great idea), and each is removable for access to the…

HONDA MARINE HAS MADE SOME LONG-OVERDUE UPDATES TO its portable outboards with the introduction of a new 6 hp BF6 model and the nearly identical BF4 and BF5 models, rated at 4 hp and 5 hp respectively. This trio of new motors will replace the current BF5, which has been in the Honda line for decades. Honda has finally fitted these portables with integral fuel tanks, a feature on every competing portable outboard on the market. The previous BF5 required an external tank that compromised the portability of that motor — two things to carry to the water — and could really clutter the deck of the small boats these motors typically power. The new Honda motors carry 1.5 liters (about 0.4 gallons) of fuel, a little more than the…

Communicating is always good, right? Well, not always. Like when you find out too late that you’re on speaker phone after sharing a saucy thought with your significant other, or when you cringe after accidently pressing “reply all” with a cheeky office email. Let’s face it. Much of the time, you don’t really want to share with the entire world — just with a close friend or two. Nowhere does this apply more than among boating anglers, who often form so-called “code” groups — tightly knit cliques that quietly share up-to-the-minute information on where and when prize game fish such as king mackerel, striped bass, marlin or tuna are biting. AIS STRATEGY AIS (automatic identification system) uses special VHF frequencies to broadcast the position of AIS transceiverequipped boats on a…

For the past five or six years, integrating audio-system control through multifunction navigation displays has been the hottest trend in audio — and it’s not cooling off, especially in larger boats with full navigation suites. Fusion Entertainment was first to integrate audio systems through Lowrance and Simrad displays using a proprietary gateway protocol. Soon, Furuno, Garmin, Humminbird and Raymarine offered Fusion-Link access to their systems and helped Navico develop SonicHub (a Navico audio product used most often with smaller inshore boats). Fusion has guarded its system carefully, and the demand has cornered what some estimate is 50 percent to a whopping 98 percent of the marine market. Then Garmin bought Fusion, creating fear it would restrict access to the system. Raymarine brought Rockford Fosgate into its fold a year ago.…

KNOW NEUTRAL Joysticks can be quite sensitive, responding to the simple weight of your hand. Learn the feel of neutral for your system and consider removing your hand from the stick when stopped. Mercury Marine’s Joystick Piloting now incorporates a color LED ring to indicate operation mode, which is helpful for this very reason. LOOK SHARP It’s common for outboard boaters to reference the attitude of their engine cowling to help with steering. But with a joystick system, there is no tie rod and the engines (or drives or pods) steer independent of each other. Check out the splayed engines in the picture. Look where you want to go, not at your engine cowlings. STAND WATCH Stationkeeping is the generic term for the ability to push a button and allow…

THE NEW FOUR WINNS HD 220 OB HAS A trunk for your junk. When the Michigan boatbuilder converted its 22-foot HD 220 from sterndrive to outboard power, it was left with an empty space where the engine used to be. After considering a number of options, Four Winns decided to simply throw down a floor and let the owner figure out how to best exploit a space bigger than the trunk of a 1967 Buick Electra. The big storage space is one reason to consider the outboard-powered version of this boat — Four Winns continues to offer the HD 220 with sterndrive power — but it’s not the most compelling benefit. Built-in outboard advantages include quieter operation, easier maintenance and winterization, lighter weight and — potentially — more space in…

WE SAY The Glastron GT-180 stands out for finish, for quality construction and, yes, because it’s just plain fun. As a starter boat for families with small kids, the high coamings, thoughtful padding and good handgrips make it secure. But when the kids become teenagers, this is also a boat where you can hand over the keys without worrying. It’s not too fast (45ish mph), but it’s great for tubing and, if their youthful hormones overcome them, it’s hard for teenagers to get into trouble. Crank the wheel, and the boat just takes over and cools things down. With normal handling, you can make the turns you want for towing, but get too rambunctious, and the GT-180 sheds speed and keeps things calm. Our test boat had the XL package…

SCAN ME! To see our online photo gallery of Alaska, scan this tag or visit boatingmag.com/savoonga It was 11:10 a.m. in Nome, Alaska, and I was in the enlisted mess of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley. Thirteen Hours of Benghazi was on the TV, and a handful of off-duty sailors were focused on the movie’s developing firefight. Lunch was cooking in the galley, and it smelled spectacular. I’d boarded the Alex Haley just moments ago, making my way up the gangplank from the Port of Nome and passing through the chopper hangar and a maze of fluorescent-lit passageways and ladders. I was slowed by lugging way too much baggage in a bat-bag-size duffle on my shoulder, along with a laptop and camera in a backpack. Petty Officer 3rd…

I arrived in Nome the day before Alex Haley’s departure, leaving me about eight hours to see this town known in B-movies as the military’s end-of-career station for misbehaving officers. Nome is not the bleak Quonset hut in a frontier blizzard it once was. It is charming, the end of the Iditarod sled-dog race, and currently the stage for the popular Discovery Channel (un)reality show, Bering Sea Gold. In August, residents tend small patches of grass and colorful potted pansies that are often cultivated in the enormous steel buckets of abandoned gold dredges. Picture a 40- or 50-foot-long chainsaw, each tooth being a bucket pulling the seabed upward and into the barge. Seth Burnenschenkels works Norman Todd Haig’s diminutive gold-dredge boat called Aurora Marie. He was dockside when I walked…

IPS emerged in marine displays last year in Garmin’s highresolution GPSMap 8400/8600 glass-helm MFDs, including the 17-, 22- and 24-inch models. For 2017, Lowrance offers IPS — tradenamed SolarMAX HD — in 7-, 9- and 12-inch displays with the new HDS Carbon series. At the same time, Simrad offers IPS in 7, 9, 12 and 16 inches in the new NSS evo3 series (shown above). With IPS, the liquid crystal molecules align horizontally to the screen rather than vertically as they do in other LCD displays. This nearly doubles the viewing angle and enhances clarity and sharpness to see more details. Mass production of IPS computer displays has driven down the cost in recent years. As a result, brands like Lowrance and Simrad can now integrate these advanced touchscreens into…

BOAT DOC SPECIAL IT WAS 1995, AND A GOOD FRIEND FROM ST. THOMAS DECIDED he’d been through one too many hurricanes. His idea was to move below where the big storms blow, which is south of the 12-degree line of latitude. If he wanted to stay in the Caribbean, there was only one logical choice: Trinidad and Tobago. During his multimonth cruise aboard his Fales 32 Navigator motorsailor, he didn’t tow an inflatable dinghy, even though everyone else does. Instead, he towed something much more valuable — a proton magnetometer. The towed “fish” of a proton mag is designed to detect ferrous metals — iron — and one day while cruising near an island, he got a hit — a big one. The next thing I knew, I was on…

AT SCOUT BOATS’ DEALER MEETING, A convention where first-issue models are debuted for dealers and select members of the boating press, we tested this new 215 XSF. I was accompanied by a mid-Atlantic Scout rep, who told me he’d just signed a new Scout dealer near where I live. Not long after, I began seeing new Scouts on my local waters. Our test indicated many reasons that these boats should be popular on my waters of coastal Virginia — as well as other places. Scout Boats and the new 215 XSF impressed me. With a 400-pound combined captain and crew load, plus about 60 gallons of gasoline, Yamaha’s steadfast F150 pushed us to a 43 mph top speed at 5,500 rpm, twisting a 14¼-inch-by-17-inch Yamaha Reliance threeblade stainlesssteel prop. That’s…

WE SAY Yamaha’s GP models epitomized the “muscle craft” that dominated the PWC market in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Like the original, the newest GP is hellbent on performance. Squeeze the throttle and 30 mph passes in as little as 1.5 seconds. Dive into a turn and the craft displays the same aggressive manners enjoyed by racers. Our top-speed numbers hit just shy of a blistering 69 mph. The new GP’s hull and deck were lifted from the existing VXR but lightened via the second generation of Yamaha’s nano-engineered SMC hull material. It’s that hull’s soft bow chines, well-defined strakes and race-honed keel that deliver its aggressive handling. The engine is the supercharged Super Vortex High Output version of Yamaha’s 1.8-liter four-stroke, paired with a highperformance intercooler. The…

1 NAVIGATE THE “GREAT CIRCLE ROUTE Depending on where you start, this classic cruising trip takes you through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, up the East Coast, into the Hudson River past New York City, across New York via the old Eerie Canal, and back into the Great Lakes. From transiting locks to going offshore to idling through the Intracoastal Waterway and inland lakes, you’ll experience every type of boating imaginable — and see the country. For inspiration, visit boatingmag.com/great-loopblogsmall-boat-big-summer 2 TRANSIT A LOCK It’s almost impossible to get very far in the inland waterway system without having to go through a lock, and learning proper lock etiquette — as well as transiting one without panic — is an invaluable…

HEAVY METAL Fishing in 200 to 300 feet of water requires specialized rock-cod jigs made to sink quickly and dance when vertically jigged. I prefer to replace the standard treble hooks with a large, single siwash hook, which I adorn with a 6-inch curly-tailed grub. Bouncing this large offering off the rocks creates sound and incites savage attacks. THROW THE RUBBER Smart anglers cast and retrieve 7- to 9-inch soft-plastic swimbaits to catch lingcod up to 25 pounds. It takes practice and a 6- to 8-ounce lead-head to work these baits close to the bottom. Cast out as far downdrift as possible, and when the lure hits bottom, take 10 winds on the reel. If you don’t get bit, redrop and repeat. The key to hooking up is to resist…