Boat Forum / Cruising / June 2006

"Scott" <dave99352@yahoo.com> wrote in news:1151324889.765984.135110
@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:

I bought a 1997 Sea Ray Sea Rayder F16XR2 jetboat with the Mercury 175
Sport Jet.  It has no steering other than the pressure from the nozzle,
no steering at all with out POWER.

Every time I backed off on the throttle, the boat veered to starboard out
of control.  It took me a while to figure out it was the external sonar
transducer just barely to starboard from the ride plate under the jet.  I
had no choice but to mount it off center, of course, because of the jet.

The solution was to buy the through-the-hull sonar transducer for the
unit and eliminate the outboard dragger.  It helped a lot but the boat's
faulty design still veered to starboard because of my weight in the
starboard side driver's seat (side console).  That still made it
dangerous to drive.

I solved that problem with sandbags...(c;  In between the cockpit liner
and the hull, out of sight, I added small sandbags up under the port
gunwale as far off center as I could get.  At about 80# of sandbags, the
moment of them across from me on the other side of the centerline
balanced my 250# closer to center and the boat drove straight as an
arrow....of course until a new passenger in her little bikini came
aboard.  She always sat in the port seat of the 3-across-the-back seating
to balance the load.  After the sandbags, quite enjoyably, we moved her
bikini to the center seat to "maintain balanced" and "eliminate
list"...which sat her right next to me, a much finer condition...(c;

I always noticed that if you could talk some sucker into riding around in
the lounge up in the bow, the boat got on plane much faster and rode much
smoother as their weigh caused the bow to drop, counterbalancing 60
gallons per second of thrust from the jet.  Now fooling around with
sandbags, I put about 90# of sandbags as far up in the bow as I could get
them and blocked them in with a 2x4 against a handy lifting bolt in the
storage compartment under the seating.  That made the boat ride like a
boat much longer than 16', eliminating the light bow from bouncing so
hard with the added 90# of mass it had to move up and down, now.

It was a much nicer boat after that.  The guy I sold it to still has the
sandbags in it and appreciates the 2-passenger balanced seating as much
as I did.  His bikini-seated-on-centerline is a beautiful, well endowed,
short girl, half Phillipino and half German...(c;

Life is good......