Stretched 23' seacraft hull thoughts...

[kmoose]

Out this weekend with Mel and some friends on an evening cruise and prop testing. From a recommendation of a good friend I tested a labbed Bravo 1 22” and I was so impressed I brought a new non-labbed one and am now even happier. I still have some height adjustments to make but so far it is the most economical and fastest I’ve tried. It also took all the torque over out of the boat and has lightened up the steering load as well.

[Snookerd]

Very cool Ken! Any performance #’s??

[kmoose]

Originally Posted by Snookerd

Very cool Ken! Any performance #’s??

It was hard to get real solid numbers across the board but here is what I have. With 4 adults and 110 gallons of fuel on board I had a 31 (36 mph) knot cruise in a light chop at 4300 getting 2.7 nautical. The motor didn't struggle nor fluctuate in rpm at all and with 4 people on board I wouldn't be running the boat much heavier on a dive trip.

My top speed for the prop is kind of skewed as I was running into a very hard ripping tide on the river. At 5800 I was getting a little over 42 knots at about 1.7 Nautical. I wasn't really pleased too much with those numbers until I got to a no wake zone and felt how bad the tide was as we struggled to keep moving forward at a high idle. On open water I think I would have gained at least another 100 rpm and a knot or two. Either way 42 knots was top speed with the 20" Zuke prop.

The real performance gains were in handling, planing and elimination in torq steer and torq over to the starboard side. I'm not hardly using tabs at all and all three riders were in chairs sitting at the stern. No way that would have happened with the Zuke prop. The Bravo 1 also excels in high mounting positions and I am already too low. Going to raise the motor 2 holes and things should be close to perfect.

[kmoose]

Ended up raising the motor 3 holes and gained a knot across the board and 150 rpms. Better fuel burn by about .3 nmpg across the board. Those with Suzuki 300s should consider the Bravo 1 over the Zuke props. Much better all around performance and handling with just a slight reduction in top end speed....<1 knot.

[kmoose]

Gotten some request for interior pics and of course the only time I get is at night....

[strick]

Just went through this thred. Very nice work. The big down fall of the sceptres is the lack of room on the console for the electronics..I like how you fixed that problem. Was wondering how you like the auto trim tabs?

strick

[kmoose]

I have given up on the Auto part of the tabs as I never really got them to work and the effort to pursue a resolution wasn’t worth it. They work fine as manual deployment and in all reality there isn’t a lot of effort on my end to keep them where I want. I knew up front I would have conflict with how the computer would make decisions on trim so it really didn’t matter. Some things are simple enough not to require automation.