JDP

Totally agree and the fact they don't recommend using them speaks for itself. People need to ask outboard manufacturers, not dealers who sell fins. There are also other ways that can help with trim issues, such as outboard wedge plates that allow an outboard to be trimmed in more but these are not needed to often. As most boaters will know, an engine trimmed in to much in big following seas is not going to handle well.

You only find how dangerous they can be in conditions you would rather not find how dangerous they are. When you are pushing to get home in big seas and find yourself taken side on by swell and the fins exaggerate the motion and hold you on your side you will need to react fast in order to not turn the vessel over. You can expect this continually if you are being hit by the right sized waves from a certain angle. The only boats Ive ever left them on after buying a secondhand boat have been boats to be used in calm conditions ( river and estuary boats). Self leveling tabs are about the same money and don't seem to have this same effect of holding the boat at extreme tipping angles. Over here fitting fins to outboards voids the outboards warranty, many outboard mechanics claim they also put unnecessary pressure on the pivot areas where the engine turns. Ive seen many engines where the plate they have been attached has cracked or broken from people using them as a step to get into their boats. In saying that you dont very often see them being used on offshore trailer boats anymore here as people have had bad experiences from them ( including me ).

There is a marina but the river and lake are tidal and the east coast is exposed to swell almost all year round, hence why some parts of Oz are so well known for surf. We have a swell prediction for around 8m over the weekend for some parts of the coast, we can get large swell without any wind, unlike when I lived on the IOW where most of our rough sea conditions were due mostly to wind waves. Bar crossings here and New Zealand have a reputation of being quite dangerous. You can sometimes be far offshore experiencing beautiful conditions only to find the bar playing up when you return, which isn't fun after dark!!! This is why fast deep V hulls are so common, they help soften the ride and give you the speed to outrun bad weather or dash between waves when needed. Staying with a wave coming back in could mean running over 24 knots just to stay with it but you need a lot more than 24kts up your sleeve. I do enjoy coming in through it when its bad but heading out takes very careful timing and often holding the boat in reverse against a run out tide and big waves for quite some time.

These guys had the safety line attached but even in these relatively calm conditions for our bar, when the boat got caught by a wave they accidentally pulled the release and after trying to start the engine with it disconnected ended up flooding the motor. This has happened numerous times with people accidentally disconnecting in this situation, hence why it placed around my leg is far better. By the way these were inexperienced boaters at crossing bars, which is obvious from the video.

I will sometimes put the kill switch leash around my leg, they get in the way to much when put around your wrist. I have seen cases here where people have put the leash around their wrist and accidentally disconnected it while crossing the bar, which has then ended by the boat getting caught out by the waves, ending in fatalities.

I do sometimes get the opportunity to switch the engine off but usually the sea conditions mean Im mostly needing to touch the boat in and out of gear even drifting fishing (jigging). With divers in the water spearing I need to be constantly on the watch with the engine running to pull them from from the water if they shoot fish or block boats that don't seem to understand what two large dive flags and bright coloured dive floats mean!!!

My seagull was probably the most unreliable outboard I ever owned and the first. I think its these early engines that have embed the fear of breakdowns into many of us where in reality modern engines are extremely reliable. Just like an old two stroke lawn mower with heavy oil ratios, the seagull was the same, constantly oiling up the plug if I trolled lures for a while. Hard to start both hot or cold to the point when I did start the dam thing I wouldn't stop it again until I got home, which meant re-fueling it while it was running out at sea around the Needles area!!!! Out of interest how long do most run their engines for on an average trip, for me it would be the entire trip most of the time, yesterday being around 7hrs. Petrol or Diesel engines started and run short distances to fishing grounds would barely be getting warmed up.

Yes but there are many different Chinese braids, some people were caught out buying 50lb green Chinese braid that snapped like cotton because it was actually cotton over here. One fella asked me to take my 1800m spool of saltiga braid to work to see if it compared to his saltiga he had bought off eBay from China. Instantly you could see the label was different (why don't people copying simply scan a label ). His line had a really bad chemical smell and the colour easily rubbed onto our hands. The braid did however seem pretty strong until it became wet after the first time, where it then dropped to an easy hand pull and break. To me it simply isn't worth the risk, I buy genuine line from reputable suppliers. Jervis Walker do a braid that is very cheap, under $10 for 300m, I bought some to put on a reel I was selling which was the first and last time I will buy that!!! This stuff was meant to be 20lb but was thicker than the saltiga 150lb I own.

These braids some people like may well be ok on fish of 10lb on 30lb braid but turn that around to 30lb fish on 10lb line to see how they last. I like thinner light lines as they are so much more sensitive when I'm dropping plastics, jigs or baited rigs in depths of around 120m. If I can target a species using 10lb drag, then using line heavier is simply overkill. 20lb braid is still relatively thin but doesn't give me anything like 10lb in terms of sensitivity and up to 20lb of drag is some serious stopping power. When I see people saying their 50lb Jbraid, powerpro or Chinese braid has never given them any problems and then look at their catch reports, I'm not surprised at all the line hasn't given them any problems.

My favorate by a mile

Or get both, its only money.

Captain Cook deserves a real boat.

Those advertising videos can be a bit misleading. Firstly they are often (as in the above video) in freshwater. Secondly dead flat conditions with no current or wind and finally they are in water so shallow most of us can simply look over the side with good polarisers to see the fish!!! You have to ask how often will you be fishing those conditions. Today we had 2m swell and 20-30kts of wind which swung completely around the compass during our trip on the water ( Im smashed!!). Much of the time I struggled with basic 2d sonar due to how rough conditions were. In the last three months I still haven't had good conditions to utilise sidescan or panoptics live scan to their full potential or anywhere near that. Don't get me wrong, these features (transducers ) are fun to use but I find Im constantly working the controls to get the best out of them, yes auto gets you adequate results but not great. If you do decide to get one, first check out the size of the transducer and whether you have the space for it. My panoptics pc30 is a big lump of a transducer to squeeze among the other things already fitted. Also with the Garmin I would need all three of the panoptics live transducers to do what they showed in the video, do you know if you would need the same with Lawrence or just one?

Never had an aux outboard and never needed one, very few boats have them over this side of the pond. Trying to get back to shore with a little putput on the back would take me around 3 days!!!

Trouble is all engines are pretty high tech these days, which in some ways is good but dad in others. At least hooking them up to a computer will often show the exact cause of an issue rather than wasting time going through bit by bit. I had a seagull, was terribly unreliable, it was best not to stop it once you got it going!!!! I tend to trust peoples word way too much!!!!

Yes its certainly a tough one and better to get things looked at by a mechanic but that can often be pretty difficult. With most engines getting the seller to obtain a current computer print out could be one option but still doesn't guarantee much. I bought the boat I have now unseen during the fires, I was blocked from leaving our town for two months and didn't want to miss out on another boat having just missed one a week before. I checked out the seller who was a school teacher and semi professional basketball player who seemed to have a pretty good reputation on social media. The hours were 235 and had been serviced (with receipts) four times. The outfit was claimed to of been kept in a specially built garage with photos included. There was a full diagnostic printout of servicing, hours, rpm etc. Fully scoping someone out through social media will often be a good way of finding out how a boats been cared for, in my case I wasn't looking at the right people, these were previous owners from several years before !!! The boat was 1200km from my place and a gap in the fire gave me a chance to slip away to get it. I arrived at the address only to find no boat and the people selling it had only rented the place for a short time (so they didn't build the garage specially, simply took photos of the boat outside it. The people would not answer phone calls and neighbours told me the people who had the boat hadn't lived there for 6 months. By now I was thinking I had ditched $40000 and had a long drive home boatless. Luckily one of the neighbours put me onto someone who had known them and 4 hrs later I located the boat hidden on a property. The property owner had been asked to keep the boat hidden out of sight from the road incase anyone stole it and didn't seem aware of the dodgy deal he'd been asked to be part of. He managed to get hold of the people who had put the boat there ( a pair of large middle eastern thugs ). I bluffed my way around them telling them I had informed the police. They forged the registration paperwork and I couldn't get out of there quick enough. The boat looked in very bad shape but at least it was better than loosing everything. I had a mobile mechanic come to my home to service it. The prop was totally written off, looking like it had been run through rocks destroying the blades completely. The electric wiring from the battery to the main circuit switch panel had to be totally replaced. Under the cowling it was plain to see this engine had been exposed to high temps, possible from running without pumping water on the muffs. Water wouldn't pump at all but the impeller was fine. The thermostat had been changed as well as the anodes on its 200hr service. The engine had done just 35hrs since that service, problem being these 35hrs had been over 3 years since that service. During that 35hrs in three years the powerhead anodes had totally dissolved and the thermostat wasn't much better (hence what I mean on low hours). The whole cooling system was solid with dried salt which was chiseled out with a screw driver. The system was soaked with concentrated saltaway solution. Eventually water started pumping through. Everything on the engine that could rust has rusted, even the black plastic has gouging to the white plastic. The engine still gives me problems but Im stuck with it for now. In contrast the anodes on my Yamaha when I sold it having clocked 950hrs in two years were still in good condition. Suzuki powerhead anodes need to regularly be checked and replaced. Its pretty easy to take a socket set and just remove a powerhead anode to check inside with a torch, no need to remove them all, one should show enough to see if they have been looked after. Trimming up the engine to check the power trim for leaks is pretty straight forward (yes mine leaks at 235hours). When the engine is trimmed up you can lift the engine by hand from the gearbox area to feel for play around the steering pivot area (yes mine has play). While lifting the engine from that gearbox area you can also look for any flexing in the transom (a sign of rotten transom). You can also check to see if the engine mount bolts have sunken into the fibreglass from the inside of the boat. If the bolts have pulled into the fibreglass or someone has put a plate on the inside of the boat this could well be a sign of a rotting waterlogged transoms. If the floor flexes as you walk on it or bounce up and down, again a sign of rotten stringers and waterlogged underfloor flotation. Over on the other forum you can find people with Suzuki problems which again had low hours, where they have corroded from the inside out. These issues with my 140 Suzuki are almost identical to the problems I had with a low hour Honda at 10 years old, which I ended up scrapping. Salt inside any engine isn't a good thing but at least running them regularly before the salt dries and bakes onto the internal cooling passages greatly reduces problems. Anodes need checking or replacing even on boats used only in freshwater. Overall my boat and trailer matched the condition of the engine. Ive put around $12000-15000 into it and its still not worth what I initially paid for it!!!!!.... Its a well known fact that a recreational outboard had a life expectancy of around 2000 hrs where a commercial outboard is more like 8000-10000.

Apologies, did mean to do a multiple quote but stuffed it up!!! As above in terms of boat information, those 17-18ft boats could easily top the scales at 2 tons when loaded ready to launch. An overall weight is far more useful than a bare new hull.

Just tried to find some info on these (in fact several UK boats). It seems very hard to find useful details on most boats, searches seem to keep heading to sites like this where people are chatting about boats. I was wanting to see what weight the 600 Alaska would be loaded on the trailer with engine and fuel etc, this is vital to anyone wanting to know their legal towing limits with the vehicle they own. I assume the 900kg is a bare dry hull new ? this could quite easily approach 2 tons or more when loaded. Also manufacturers over there who do post some info, don't seem to bother stating the degree of V in the hull. This is incredibley useful info for understanding how a boat will handle in chop and also helpful for estimating hp and prop size etc. Is there somewhere where this info can be found easily to make things easier for buyers.

Just to add, with my current Suzuki 140 that the service history had been followed to the book by the previous owner. It had had its 20hr service followed by three more services, so four in all but over 8 years. Also the term rooted is what people call f***** here.

Rather than carry on on another thread where some people seem a little touchy when you simply point out honest facts, I thought Id start a new one in the hope it may help anyone buying into their first boat outfit. This is trying to be helpful for anyone buying old rigs with low hours. I bought a boat with a 10 year old Honda and 250 hrs which had supposedly been flushed after every use but was totally rooted from the inside out. My current 2013 Suzuki 140 which has 300hrs is pretty much the same but I don't have the cash to replace on this one yet. A 90 mercury with less than 200hrs was again another engine I had to replace after buying what looked like a well looked after rig, so three low hour boats in 6 years have cost me a fair amount. According to the mechanics who've repaired or replaced mine, they claim a two year old engine with 2000 hrs is likely to be better than an engine 10 years old with 200 hrs. Engines which are run everyday or every few days don't get time for salt to dry inside the cooling and exhaust system unlike those which sit on trailers or moorings for weeks without use. This is something you soon see when boats start getting a few years on them in comparison with commercial rigs that run most days. Also the fact that recreational vessels tend to do short runs where they barely warm up before being switched off to sit at anchor and cool down again, hence the low hours. Many of the boats I drive commercially are running all day without freshwater flushing and don't give us any problems other than routine services. The saltwater environment is not like leaving a car in a garage for years, there are no anodes eating away inside the power head or thermostats building up salt etc. Its not just the engine either, a boat with a few years on it needs to be carefully inspected for water intrusion which may of gotten into areas it shouldn't. Waterlogged underfloor foam and rotten timbers in transoms is far more common than people might realise. Ive had a few rotten boats both here and the UK, more in the UK as they were boats that had been kept on moorings and the fact its a wet climate. Just saying buyer beware, a boat hit with a decent polisher to sell can look like new but also covering a heap of underlying issues.

Thats crazy low hours. Its not always a good thing having low hours on marine engines.

Turns out it was a false alarm, at least it was good training for those of us involved in the local rescue groups. Most of our so called rescues are simply tow jobs, where this was a full on search in rough conditions.

Not such a good end to the day. Two swimmers caught in a rip after dark at our local beach. Numerous search vessels and helicopters searched untill midnight without any sign, doesn't look good.

Maybe it's a combination of headache and dyslexia but that still looks like the same Mazda but assembled in a different plant. The new part Isuzu part Ford and Mazda vehicles will be available next September here. I simply can't see any change to Mazda after 2016 apart from a front end body panel change. I would be very happy if from 2016 Mazda were running the Isuzu dmax engine but they are and still are running the 3.2 Ford motor with basicly all the same Ford parts untill the new ones arrive here. Anyway what ever the 2017 is, Ive decided I will go with it even though the Ford Mazda engine doesn't have the same reputation as the dmax.

Had a good report midweek!!!! Now that my daughter skippers charter boats, her only days off are when the weather is bad!!!! So with the weather being pretty disgusting we hitched up the boat and drove three hours south to a harbour we could get out to sea from. My daughter did a little video of me sitting in the boat ramp car park with rain and hail hitting the the car window and me not wanting to get out!!!! Well we did get out but conditions were so poor we decided to hitch the boat back up and try heading out from another harbour, which again weather pushed us back inside. One final launch on our way home ended with a grand catch of 0. A very long wet and battered day, but some how we had so much fun our cheeks hurt from laughing!!!!! Today she had a nonstop yellowtail kingfish action on the charter.