Black Watch 25 Centre Console

In the beginning there was... Well, truth be known in the beginning there wasn't a lot. Our idea of project boats hatched way back when BlueWater was but a twinkle in the publisher's eye and we snuck around under the Trailer Boat banner. The concept of displaying complete working rigs began with some, well, humble tinnies.

But the Trailer Boat rigs certainly progressed and grew over the years, the last being a SR20 Southwind that we took outside its comfort zone to be a gamefishing boat.

The very first project boat to wear BlueWater signage was also a Southwind - an eminently more suitable SF655. In time that gave way to a craft much more familiar to regular readers, BlueWater II, our custom-built Honda-powered 6.4m Pacific Sportfish Centrecab.

The pattern of progression was pretty plain to see - each time bigger, better in terms of fishability and, to be frank, just a little wankier!

You see, as well as being a working sportsfishing boat, part of the job spec of a project boat is to attract attention. It is, after all, a promotional tool for the magazine, and to a certain extent the project suppliers... In other words, if in the midst of dozens of brandspanking-new boats it doesn't stop people in its tracks at each and every boat and fishing show it attends; if it doesn't draw attention in each town it rolls through on the way from tournament A to tournament B; and if it doesn't make other fishos alter course just to have a closer look, then it hasn't done its job.

Let me tell you on both the show and go fronts BlueWater III, our new Black Watch BW25 CC, does its job... And then some.

The basic specs - performance and dimensions - are impressive. Over 10m long on the trailer BlueWater III's around 29ft from the tip of the bowsprit to the back of the FICHTs when it's floating. (Indeed, when coupled up to the editorial Suburban, the rig's barely a metre shorter than a semi!) It's able to swallow over 640lt of BP's finest and 100lt of aqua pure... And able to top a GPS-certified 44kt with full tanks, a full complement of gear, riggers swinging in the breeze, a crew of four and every one of my lure bags onboard!

But big fueltanks and speed do not a proper gamefishing boat make... And anyway I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Let's go back to the beginning... Of BlueWater III anyway.

A MEETING OF THE MINDS
Like many a good project, BlueWater III was a case of a combination of interests being present in the same place at the same time - at least fi guratively. For a start, Black Watch was looking for a guinea pig - a customer who was keen to help develop a 'new' addition to its range... Its first trailerable gamefisher.

On the equipment front, Tailored Marine Accessories was looking for a showcase for its impressive range of gamefishing accessories.

OMC at the same time was looking for a high-profile testbed for its 2000 Series Ram Inject FICHT, direct-injected 2.5lt V-six two-stroke outboards. The testbed had to be capable of doing hours upon hours of trolling - exactly the sort of running that had seen some well-publicised problems develop in the original 150-175hp FICHTs. Gutsy call... The boffins were obviously confident they had cured any problems.

Finally there was us - the BlueWater crew. We were looking for a boat to replace our stalwart Sportfish. One that was seriously fishy and seriously flash...

Once the seed had been sown, again we roped in Quin Marine and Simrad to supply the electronics. More than just a case of sticking with equipment we know and like (and more on the stunning 40-Series big-screen Simrad combination unit in an upcoming issue).

And Australia's best trailer builder, Mackay Multilink, was our choice to supply the trailer. When a trailer does as many miles as the unit under one of our project boats, then, in my opinion, there is only one choice...

Voila, instant project boat... Well, sort of - if you consider six months of planning instant!

THE SAME PHILOSOPHY
The twin driving forces behind the project were Black Watch's Graham McCloy and TMA's John Zac and we liked their concept of the BW25 CC from day one.

With its 3m-plus beam, Black Watch's existing 26 was far from trailerable. Graham wanted to give trailerboat gamefishermen a stepping stone into the Black Watch fold. To be of real worth, the boat had to reflect the same philosophy of the marque's big boats.

The entry-level 'ultimate offroad vehicle,' it had to be able to tame both the sea and the gamefish it chased. At the same time it had to look 'right' to really be part of the Black Watch family.

Sure, it was going to be trailerable but it wasn't going to be cheap. It had to reflect the main line's build quality, and despite a hefty pricetag, still offer value for money.

McCloy wanted to see incorporated some of the touches that separated his big boats from the crowd. A well-placed and embossed gunwale bolster here, a touch of teak there... And gawd dammit, why couldn't a trailerboat have a proper alloy Carolina-style steering wheel!

With a background in supplying gamefishing equipment for boats big and small, Zac knew what keen anglers wanted to see.

Thus John wanted the 25 to showcase all the relevant TMA goodies - items both homebuilt, like TMA's own tuna tubes and concealed fixing rodholders, as well as some of TMA's imported brands like Lees telescopic outriggers, etc.

I'm not afraid of putting my likes and dislikes forward either, so there were things I wanted incorporated - after all, it was going to be my magazine's boat. As far as I was concerned the boat had to be both quick and economical. I wanted decent seats, excellent access to electronics and real underfloor storage - for all those lure bags. Among my other considerations were the fact it had to be easy to trail and be able to be launched and recovered one-up (at a pinch).

Got a fair idea how the boat spec was shaping up?

To say that the boat was new from the hull up would be a lie. Even before Graham, John and yours truly put our heads together, Black Watch had the hull in mind.

As anybody who has read Dave Lockwood's tests of BW25 CC hull number one (Tailored Marine's own boat, see BlueWater Jan/Feb 2000) will recall, the basis of the new boat is the old SeaVee 25.

A deep-vee design out of the US, with roots back in the dim dark past when names like Donzi and Formula were revered in hushed tones, the SeaVees had previously found an owner or two Down Under - mostly in inboard form. It also had a reputation as an excellent seakeeper, its 25° deep-vee making short work of angry water and enough flare up front to give you some hope of staying dry... Well as dry as you can in a centre-console.

WORK IN PROGRESS
Resurrecting the old moulds was just the first step in the Black Watch transformation. Truth be known, that transformation is still going on.

TMA's own boat was hull number one and we changed a number of build details - quite apart from layout (which we'll get to) - on our hull number two. Just a few months down the track, Black Watch has already incorporated a number of running changes into the boat, following feedback - not necessarily all good - from the BlueWater and TMA crews.

One of the key areas of development has been the outboard pod/bracket set-up. I make no secret of the fact the fibreglass unit on our boat caused us some early grief.

Don't expect the same on the 'production' models, however. The fibreglass cover now hides a sturdy alloy subframe that the factory reckons will cope with 100hp more than BlueWater III's already muscular 350 neddy armament.

And there's been other changes too. Already the factory has taken the decision to resite the console - a foot or so forward, to allow more room around the hefty bait-prep station fitted to the standard boat. It's looking, too, at changing this set up to incorporate a proprietory seat and icebox set up.

Again I digress... I guess the point I'm trying to get across is the fact that our boat is very much work-in-progress. It's a testbed and will probably remain so.

So, just what changes did we make in our original spec?

Well, we specified a bunch of dress up items like alloy T-top framing (rather than powder-coated), a blue hull (of course!) and extra teak, but many of the changes were those we've had (or rather not had) on other boats and wanted to incorporate.

In no particular order of importance or relevance, we specified: higher than standard bowrail (now sporting spray dodgers), extra battery capacity, insulated console icebox seat (eventually to be refrigerated), freshwater tank and handshower, overhead radio box, elevated comms and GPS aerial bar (to minimise those annoying T-top leaks), console clears, extra rodholders, extra bilge pump, saltwater washdown... (I won't list them all here. Consult the spec sheet hereabouts for a full rundown.)

The major structural changes were minimal. The biggest was extra fuel capacity (the reason for which will become apparent in an issue or two) and the ditching of the bait-prep sink unit in favour of a much simpler and roomier twin bucket seat set-up. So far we're more than happy with the result.

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME
This article is very much intended to be an introduction to the craft. Rather than gloss over aspects of the boat and try and run through them all now we intend to run regular updates on BlueWater III in each of the next few issues. In those we'll look at things like overall performance; we'll take a closer look at the Ram- Injected FICHTs; we'll do some prop testing - just to see if we can break the magic 50kt mark; and we'll delve into the electronics and look at details like interfacing autopilot and GPS for hands-free navigation. I also hope to be able to incorporate some accurate fuel flow instrumentation to give us accurate range to empty readings, as well as answering the usual fuel economy questions and the like.

That said it'd be remiss of us to introduce the boat without telling you how it performs - and I'm not just talking about top speed. There's issues like handling and ride to include. For instance, what's the point of a 28kt cruise if you can't use it?

With about 100 hours on the clock, we are over the moon with the boat, but (and it's a big but) we're really still fiddling and learning to get the best out of it.

Things didn't start off too well. In fact, they barely could not have started out worse - the maiden voyage of BlueWater III ended with one of our crew (Dep Ed Di Walker) on the way to hospital with a broken knee and the rest of us fishless, wet, cold and miserable.

I recall thinking, what the f%$# have I done, committing us to this boat till the end of 2001. Truth be known, on what was a shitty day, Di's accident could have happened on any boat. Indeed, the main reason the crew was wet was that we were still re-learning that you need to use boat trim to keep a low-sided centre-console dry at trolling speed... That and the fact that we should have fitted console clears from day one.

The fear that the boat and two-stroke powerplants might not combine to be fishraisers were dismissed a day or two later when the first marlin was tagged and released from the craft. However, the trip that 'sold' yours truly on the potential of BlueWater III was our real shakedown at the AIBT.

Here we had a range of conditions from perfect to pretty average and the boat excelled. Streeting the rest of the fleet from the bimini start was great fun, but raising two or three billfish each day, when much of the fleet hardly turned a reel, was even better. Even dropping most of those and finding even more ways of losing fish didn't cause it to rain on my personal parade.

Each morning we'd run to the shelf at between 22-26kt, keen as mustard. Each afternoon saw us running back, FICHTs purring, firmly ensconced in our Raeline buckets, the Softrider suspension pedestals, deep-vee hull and Robertson autopilot doing their respective jobs. One run back in from the Ulladulla Canyons was particularly memorable - all the goodies combining to cruise us hands-off back to port over about one-metre of slop and a conflicting but dying swell in excess of 32kt.

It felt like we were doing 20kt... Great stuff!

Even with all the hooning, the fuel figures were respectable. Logging around 30 hours over the tournament, we averaged just over 20lt/hr for our AIBT adventure - and that's total... Not per engine!

I don't want to hazard a guess at what litre per hour figure a 23-25kt cruise might generate. All I know is that at this speed, the thing seems like it's barely ticking over.

Might be time for an economy run to test the mettle. Hmm, I hear Lord Howe's nice in the spring...