We've been using the boat now for a couple of months. Been out in everything from flat calm to a 3 foot chop in 25 knots of wind. In the lumpy stuff I was amazed how well the boat ran. At first I was unsure if we could get up on plane going upwind, I was just driving through the waves at low speed, but then hit the throttle and she jumped up on plane and just ate up the waves! It was super dry and very comfortable, and you could feel the power of that 175 just pushing the boat from wavetop to wavetop. It was like mogul skiing. Once on plane the boat never fell down into the troughs! The only time we got wet at all was when we had to stop to set marks.
Also did a 70+ mile tour of the Islands for my mom on mothers day. All day cruising with 5 people and a full tank of gas, and the boat cruised along at 25 knots at 4200 rpm. Still not sure how much fuel we used as the gauge appears to be inaccurate below 1/4 tank... (ask me how I know!) I just bought a Floscan which I plan to install to measure fuel burn.
We've done 5 nights of Race Committee work for the Yacht Club, setting and retrieving marks and staying on station to start and finish boats. The marks in the pic's are our racing marks, and the white rack is the flag rack which we use for signal flags.
I'm very glad I raised the transom. Thanks for all the advice from the forum. I'll post some more pics of the work I did.
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