2019 Yellowfin 5800 Folding Hard Top review

Available in three sizes – ranging 5.8 metres, 6.2 metres and 6.54 metres in length – the new folding hard top is expected to be one of the stronger sellers of the new-for-2019 Yellowfin Plate range – even if most owners are unlikely to ever drop them.

This is the Yellowfin Plate model optimised for urban ownership. If you need to squeeze the boat into a garage alongside the Holden Commodore, pulling back the aluminium roof to its stowed position, and rotating the windscreen back into the cabin will crunch the height of the boat as it sits on the trailer back to a compact 2.12 metres.

The hard top can change configuration on the fly. If it starts raining, you can drop the leading edge of the roof down to the top of the windscreen, lock it in place and still enjoy good, well-protected forward visibility through the windscreen. Add a set of clears, and the protection from the elements gets even better.

You’ll notice that the name of Yellowfin Plate’s most compact model now reflects its length far more accurately than the boats these replace; the 5800 measures 5840mm long.

Brisbane Quintrex has boat, motor and trailer packages for the Yellowfin 5800 FHT starting from $56,955. This price includes an Evinrude 135 HO outboard engine, 12 months of Queensland boat and trailer registration, safety gear, and a battery.

You might wince a bit at the sticker shock, but bear in mind that this is a premium product compared with other members of the Quintrex stable – Yellowfin Plate is still technically part of the Quintrex family. The extra stretch in price shows in the quality of the fit and finish – not to mention the full standing headroom hardtop that at the tug of a handle and the flip of two catches becomes a coupe.

One twist for the revitalised Yellowfin Plate line-up is the introduction of a Platinum Pack, a collection of features that most buyers used to pick up for the old range but neatly bundled into a set-and-forget box to tick on the order form.

This includes cabin lining, cushions and backrests, an LED light package, a GME GX750B VHF radio, a three-step dive ladder and transom door, a pair of stainless steel sinker cups that help fishers re-bait lines at the gunnels, a burley bucket and raw water deck wash, a flip-up rear lounge with backrest (the folded-down lounge now leaves enough clearance to allow feet to fit underneath after customer feedback from owners), a transom cutting board, and a covered spare wheel for the trailer. All this adds another $7570 to the Yellowfin 5800 FHT’s base price.

One other part of the Platinum Pack that needs separate mention is that the pack also gives owners a choice of hull colours from the stock white. The dark grey hull on light grey interior of our test boat looks the business.

The 5800 is the most radically changed model in the entire Yellowfin Plate line-up. Extra beamy at 2.4m, Telwater had to compensate by reducing the hull’s deadrise from 20 to 17 degrees just for the smallest Yellowfin Plate model alone to help with stability at rest and under way.

Yellowfin Plate builds most of its boat range with 6mm plate on the bottom, and 4mm plate on the topsides and transom, but for the 880kg 5800 FHT it uses 4mm all around. The highly seaworthy Offshore HD Hull (the “HD” stands for “heavy duty”) introduced in 2015 uses ribs spaced 500mm apart, and stringers set 200mm apart and running all the way out to the chines to help with rigidity.

The underfloor kill tank of the previous model makes way for an extended 190-litre fuel tank to improve operating range.

Because the Yellowfin Plate boats are a more bespoke product than other Quintrex products it will have at least 50 hours spent on welding alone.

Much thinking has gone into how to make the space on the hull more useable. This includes moving the entirely new cabin designed specifically for the hardtop forward by 300mm, and adding a transom door that lifts up and flips back into the boat – this simple solution has removed the need for a transom door-mounted latch that always rattled.

The sealed deck design means the 5800 FHT comes standard with an automatic 1250L/h bilge pump and one-way scuppers.

Tied up at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron jetty, our Yellowfin 5800 Folding Hard Top test boat, fitted with the Platinum Pack, is an impressive thing to look at. This boat is kitted out with the dark/light grey paint combo, with raw aluminium exposed for the gunnels, duck boards, transom and hull bottom. The contrast works really well.

Jump inside, and blacked-out features against the lighter grey, such as the cutting board, inspection ports and Sopac door that keeps the battery safely out of sight, add a tasteful contrast.

The side decks are topped in soft rubber to help with grip while stepping in and out, and contain recessed rod holders and a pair of stainless steel cupholders that also double as sinker holders – they have nicely curved bottoms so you can easily grab small items.
The floor is checkerplate aluminium.

Two comfortable Pro-style chairs with armrests and emblazoned on the back with the “YF” logo face the console, and sit on top of inward-opening storage boxes with rear-mounted footrests for when all the attention focuses on the back of the boat. These chairs are placed further apart than in the model this one supersedes; feedback from owners said they needed more space to duck between them in rougher sea states.

In front of the crew’s chair is a large portal into the cuddy cabin. The cabin contains a 1.7-metre vee-berth that, in our test boat, was cushioned in black lining. A decent-sized hatch with gas struts provides access to the anchor well.

The trailing edge of the berth contains a checkerplate foot rest for the crew. A wide handrail runs along the entire top of the cuddy entrance.

The pilot’s chair faces a broad, flat dash that can comfortably take up to a 16-inch screen. On our test boat, it was filled with a 12-inch Lowrance HDS touchscreen chartplotter and sounder. To one side is a GME VHF radio and to the other are the analogue gauges for the 135hp Evinrude fuel-injected two-stroke engine and the comfortably mounted throttle lever.

The switchgear for the lights and bilge pump are fitted to a carbonfibre-look panel, and a breaker board replaces a bank of fuses. All the wiring is now heavier, allowing more demanding electronics to be installed. A small criticism is the white fascia of the dash; if the light hits it just so, the glare will blind you. Black would be better.

Speaking of electronics, the kill switch is now located next to the transom door. It used to be housed in with the battery, but it made more sense to locate it where owners could easily reach it while the boat was up on a trailer.

There’s a wide carpeted, recessed section on the top of the dash for stowing loose small items, but it is not partitioned off to stop stuff sliding from one side to the other. There’s no lockable glovebox, either; just a porthole-style storage bin on the starboard side of the cockpit.

Setting or stowing the blacked-out hard-top and windscreen is a two-person job. The front of the hardtop, held up by gas struts, tilts down, and the rear bows unbolt from the side decks. The roof then lowers backwards, and once the windscreen is released via three locking levers, it flips backwards. It all takes just a few minutes to raise or stow.

This is an extremely beamy boat given its compact waterline. The sense of space this extra width yields is surprising.

The cuddy cabin sits 300mm further forwards than the generation of boat this replaces, bringing its placement in line with competitors. It helps yield enough room in the cockpit for two people to fish comfortably without getting in each other’s way.

The lack of a kill tank means the floor is free from any underfloor access portals, other than the blacked-out inspection hatch for the bilge.

The hardtop comes with six rod holders on the trailing edge of the hard top that flip down at the pull of a lever to make inserting or retrieving a rod much easier.

The cutting board down the rear is deep and wide, and a decent height even for a taller user, the coaming-mounted rod holders are nicely spaced and the sinker holders are a neat inclusion, even if they are an option. Under the side decks, deep, wide bins are long enough to store a rod without having to break it down.

On the portside transom is a plumbed live bait tank that includes a clear window allowing you to monitor the health of the bait. On the other side is a lift-and-flip transom door that folds into the cockpit. It is a complete redesign to get away from using a physical latch which always rattled – something customers had grumbled about.

The transom ladder now uses offset steps so that you can easily board even while wearing flippers.

Our Yellowfin 5800 Folding Hardtop was fitted with an Evinrude 135 E-Tec HO outboard engine, the maximum-rated engine for this boat. The “HO” in the engine’s name means it is fitted with the Lightning gearcase that mounts the engine higher on the transom to increase prop performance and generate higher speeds.

Evinrude’s two-stroke technology allows the maker to build outboard engines that can outperform equivalent four-stroke engines for power, speed or torque. Adding direct injection to the engines helps them cut emissions without any loss in performance.

These modern two-strokes are not like the old ones. At speed, our 135hp outboard engine is smooth and quiet, with a decent dollop of mid-range performance delivering good acceleration.

Performance

Maximum range at 4000rpm on 95% fuel reserve of 190L tank: 285nm

With three people on board and on the relatively calm waters of Moreton Bay, the 135hp unit was still comfortably pushing the Yellowfin 5800 FHT along at more than 50km/h.

The gentle swell showed why the smallest of the Yellowfin Plate boats needed that deeper vee. We could clearly see the 5800 was moving around a lot more on the water compared with the bigger boats we were chasing, particularly if there was a cross swell. The shallower vee was also more apparent in cornering, where the hull did not tip in as much as the bigger boats.

At rest, though, there’s not much to complain about. The wide beam provides an extremely stable platform that makes it barely noticeable when one person walks to one corner of the transom.

The Yellowfin 5800 Folding Hard Top combines the best of both worlds for suburban fishing enthusiasts; a hardcore fishing package with plenty of appealing features – particularly when the Platinum Pack option is ticked – and the ability to fit into a normal garage instead of taking up space in the driveway or out on the street.

At the moment, the FHT is only available in the smaller sizes, but depending on how things roll, the 7000 and 7600 could one day be added to the showroom.

But the 5800? Yeah, looking at how well the bigger Yellowfin boats on the water that day with the 20-degree deadrise clipped along on the chase back to Brisbane had me wistfully wishing I’d caught a ride back on one of those instead of the most affordable boat in the range. Given that, we'd probably try and stretch the budget to the 6200 Folding Hard Top and all the benefits that will bring.

Bigger is always better, isn't it?

Specifications
Model: Yellowfin 5800 Folding Hard Top
Length overall: 5.84m
Length on trailer: 7.62m
Height on trailer: 2.92m
Beam: 2.4m
Depth: 1.11m
Weight: 1186kg
Engine: 135hp
Fuel capacity: 190L
Passengers: 5

Priced from: $56,995 including Evinrude 135 E-Tec HO, live bait tank, 12 months trailer and boat rego in Queensland, safety gear and battery

Price as tested: $64,525 (est) including cabin lining, cushions and backrests; LED light package; GME GX750B VHF radio; three-step dive ladder; stainless steel sinker cups; burley bucket; raw water deck wash; flip-up rear lounge with backrest; transom-mounted cutting board; covered and mounted spare trailer wheel

Supplied by: Brisbane Quintrex