The Captain’s phone rang earlier this year. It was John Haines Junior, boss man of Suzuki Australia and heir to the Haines Signature fortune. In his polite but matter-of-fact manner he asked, “what are you guys doing in June?”
“Let me check my calendar, John,” I stumbled. I didn’t want to look free as a bird, but I didn’t want to look unavailable, either, because he might have something tasty available, like a run on his new 788 centre console. So I played it cool. “Something with you by the sounds of it”, I offered. “Excellent, get your passport in order, you’re coming to Miami for the launch of something special,” he said. This was good news. It could only mean one thing: I’d be needing a brand-new Hawaiian shirt.
The special occasion was the launch of Suzuki’s biggest donk yet: a 4.4-litre, naturally aspirated V6 delivering 350HP. It tips the scales at 330kg, but the most distinctive feature is the dual props. Essentially, the props are spinning in opposite directions. It’s not a new phenomenon, but having them on a high-powered Suzuki outboard is. They’re designed to reduce torque steer and improve stability. Props go up to 31-and-half pitch, but you don’t want to bump the reef because there are six blades on this baby.
TESTING TIMES
To test the theory, we jumped on a 24ft Gulfshore built by Gray’s Family boats in Florida. This thing chews up the chop, but only draws six inches of water. It features a sweet tower down the back and with a 2.6m beam has room for six guys. This rig would dominate on Sydney Harbour kings and then get you to Brown’s Mountain at about 75km/h, but you might fall out because there’s not a lot of freeboard. The numbers on the Suzuki were pretty tasty. At a cruising speed of 30km/h we were doing 3000RPM and burning 22L per hour, getting 1.4km for every litre.
The new outboard runs at a compression ratio of 12 to one, the highest-ever for a production outboard. At the business end, there are two injectors per combustion chamber in each cylinder, meaning a small amount of fuel and a high amount of air. The air is fed through a direct-air intake that uses two louvres to eliminate water and vapour.
IF YOU LOVE IT, SET IT FREEMAN
Just to be sure they were good things, we hitched a ride on an insane Freeman 3700 cat. This thing had four new 350HP Suzis bolted to the back of the transom. It’s over six tonnes on the water, with a beam of 3.5m and a 2000L fuel tank, but we flew along the Florida coast at more than 110km/h. At that speed, we were burning over 400L per hour. Mrs Captain won’t be impressed when she hears we’re bringing one of these babies home.
After a long day testing, we knocked together a video for The Captain fans on Facebook. We made a bet with John Haines that it’d hit 20,000 views by nightfall. The loser would be shouting the bar for the night. We won the bet and also won the title for the best hangover by a considerable margin. John won the title of most money wasted on The Captain’s rum habit. By the way, our AA group is pretty disappointed in you, John.
PICK ME UP
If you like pick-up trucks and huge centre-console rigs, then Florida is the place to be. In fact, everything is pretty big in these parts. The tackle stores are bigger than Kmart and feature automatic weapons for sale. The highways are three or four cars wide, spiralling in every direction, but always somehow deliver us to the next serve of jalapeño poppers and giant nachos washed down with Budweiser. We stopped at every boat dealership with a 30ft centre console in the yard, but it got boring when we realised there was one on every corner. Our attention turned to one manufacturer: Contender. They carry a big reputation as a good sea boat with a 24.5 degree deadrise. Some of the fishiest crews we know roll in them, like Nomad Sportfishing and Eddy Lawler from Peak Sportsfishing. We got word that The Captain’s salty mate, Jason Hedges, had ordered one, so thought we’d check it out down Homestead way.
Contender wasn’t the eat-off-the-floor-type operation we were expecting. It was a sprawling factory and they clearly relied on migrant labour to get the job done (did Trump know of this?). Boats were being pumped out faster than kebabs from a Kings Cross kebab shop at 4am, but fortunately they looked just as tasty.
Jason’s rig, a 25T model with three-piece construction sat outside. A strip of masking tape with a number indicated it was his. We thought about reapplying the sticker to the 39-footer with triple Yammies, but a large rottweiler prevented us from getting close (sorry, Jase). We demanded that it be moved further up the production line in the interests of international relations. However, our chaperone looked at his watch and told us it was time to leave.
RAMP RATS
What do you do when you love boats but don’t have one? You go to the boat ramp, of course.
We headed to the same ramp that Invincible, Contender, Sea
Vee and SeaHunter use as their local testing ground. We got distracted by a sweet “little” 28 Contender skippered by a former cop from New York. He’d lived a rollercoaster life in the Big Apple. Memories were tattooed all over his body, including the GPS marks of the twin towers, the birthplaces of his kids and some favourite yellowfin GPS marks. We tried bribing him with Contender hats to take us to some of them, but unfortunately he had a full crew and they were off to the Bahamas.
So we sat around spotting manatees – an aquatic mammal that resembles a cross between a seal and baby hippo. Five minutes later, the biggest console we’ve ever seen rolled down the ramp. It was a 45ft SeaHunter fitted with quadruple Yamaha 350HP outboards. We were lucky enough to be loitering during their sea trials. The dealer had a soft spot for “Oss-seas”, so we hitched a ride around the bay, cruising at over 100km/h burning up 400L of fuel every hour.
SEA HUNTING
The SeaHunter brand was created by Ralph Montalvo. He comes from the aeronautical world and is recognised for his use of carbon and Kevlar. Perhaps it was his previous career that inspired him to drop a 35ft console onto concrete. The boat survived and the video proved a YouTube winner. That wasn’t enough for Ralph, so he cut the boat in half and drove it around for the cameras. The Captain likes your style, Ralph.
The hull design features a padded vee-bottom with a stepped transom, perfectly designed for optimal sounder performance at all speeds. The boys from SeaHunter reckon they’re the strongest ‘glass hulls on the market due to a proprietary laminate schedule involving a chemical bond of Kevlar, vinyl ester resin, carbon fibre and other patented products with small letters next to them. The lightweight build gives the SeaHunter awesome long-range tour-ability.
Our ride was fitted with a 2800L fuel tank with a range of 1000km – that’s at a cruising speed of 65-80km/h, burning about three litres per kilometre. The long range is designed for chasing tuna and sailfish. The key to catching them, says our well-tanned skipper, Bernie, is live bait. The 45ft model features four live wells, designed to keep bait such as pilchard, herring or goggle eyes all in separate zones. Navigating to the fishing grounds is done with three 16-inch Garmin screens. The living area for the captain features an air-conditioned bedroom underneath the console.
The Captain doesn’t usually accept discounted project boats from manufacturers, but in this case was forced to “modify” his iron-clad rule. We offered the 445F project boat, three of our kids and even a collection of rare Series LandRovers in exchange. Strangely, the SeaHunter crew declined, dropping us back at the ramp five minutes later.
NORTH BY NORTH-WEST
In Florida we got our fill of deep-vee glass boats, Hawaiian shirts and Budweiser, but America was big and diverse. We wanted something different. So we pointed our compass in the opposite direction; north-west to where the sun never sets in summer: Alaska.
It’s North America’s Cape York – and the flurry of bearded, boot-wearing fishermen carrying styrene boxes full of fresh fish through airport check-ins indicated the country was plentifully stocked. The wildlife is abundant and black bears roam wild like the salmon. Sadly, while we were there, a local kid lost his life after being stalked during a cross country run. That’s one of the reasons most people carry a rifle in these parts.
Our man on the ground was Travis from Ron’s Recreational Centre. He sells ATVs, motorcycles, Honda outboards and Stabicraft boats. More importantly, Trav had the keys to Ravencroft Lodge, a remote lodge on the east side of Prince William Sound. It’s an eco-explorer’s paradise, surrounded by glaciers and waterfalls cascading down the Chugach Mountain Range. There are no roads in, so you’ll need a chopper, kayak or boat to get there.
We jumped aboard a Stabicraft 2500 Ultracab to nudge around the icebergs.
I just wanted to cast a lure into the hordes of schooling salmon, or maybe drop a line in for halibut, but Trav had other plans – he wanted to show us puffins, humpbacks, sea lions and salmon sharks. The later species caught our attention. Salmon shark? Was this some kind of made-up species? Trav says they’re a relative of the great white and one of the fastest sharks in the world, having been clocked at more than 80 km/h. The salmon sharks are only around for a couple of weeks of the year – feeding on the salmon – before they head off into the Pacific. Trav teases them up with silver herring and draws them close to the boat for photo shoots, often with documentary makers who make longer and far more serious movies than The Captain’s crew ever will.
ALLOY ASSAULT
There are very few fibreglass deep-vee consoles in Alaska. “Aluminium is the material of choice for our world,” says Trav. He reckons most trips to the Columbia glacier involve bumping around icebergs that are crystal clear, incredibly dense and hard to spot. There are also floating logs and the rocky coastline to navigate. We rode aboard a 25ft Ultracab with a pilot-house design.
The forward-raking cabin isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Trav explains that it’s designed not to fog up in high humidity and cold weather. With a diesel heater it’s nice and toasty inside the cabin. Trav says he regularly goes out hunting for three or four days at a time, living out of the Stabi. Tempting, but sadly, our flight was waiting to take us home to Sydney.
LEG-LESS IN ALASKA
Unfortunately, one of The Captain’s crew didn’t make it to the puffin parade at Ravencroft Lodge. He was bailed up in an Alaskan hospital after copping a bad leg infection diagnosed as cellulitis. A minor nick had become infected and the rate of swelling that consumed his whole leg from the knee down was pretty damn scary. Many a limb has been lost to cellulitis and the doctor said that if the patient was over 70 years of age, or a diabetic, he’d be in critical care.
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