Honda Bay Legend 565

While we were testing the Honda Bay Legend 565, a rather pre-loved boat of a similar size pulled up to the Hastings boat ramp and jetty on Western Port Bay, providing a stark contrast to our flash new wave-tamer.

On the one hand, there was the beautifully finished but bare-bones Bay Legend, and on the other, a boat that had been well used over the years and extensively fitted out to suit its owner's preferences.

After poking my nose around it for a moment, my attention turned back to the Bay Legend and it struck me what a great boat it would be to customise.

So new was the boat that New World Honda at Narre Warren, Melbourne's latest and most exciting entry into the marine world, only just had time to fit the 115hp Honda four-stroke powerplant. All other niceties would have to wait for another day ... or the instructions of the new boat's owners.

New World Honda is the first dealer in the Australian boating industry to package a boat, motor and car together. The company's massive two-storey dealership has its own driver training lake and launching ramp, 4WD track, and enormous after-sales service centre. The dealership stocks practically everything with the Honda brand on it. The Bay Legend is just one of the boat models New World Honda is marketing. It also has a range of fibreglass boats that Trailer Boat will feature in upcoming issues.

BULLETPROOF
The Bay Legend 5.65 is a beamy plate aluminium half-cabin boat with a 4mm bottom and 3mm sides, built by Sea Jay in Queensland, which is suited to individual customisation and fit-out. And at a package price under $44,000, there should be enough left in the kick to spend on extra goodies.

The boat's design is fairly conventional, with a raised cabin behind an open anchorwell and a solid bollard that is easily accessed through the wide cabin hatch or around the cabin sides, which are wide and liberally covered in non-slip. There are also twin handrails on the cabintop to help the passenger navigate between the cockpit and the bow in rough weather. There is no bowroller or bowsprit. However, the split, unpainted aluminium bowrail is designed so that the anchor rope can be hauled up between it.

The upper deck is fully, and beautifully, welded to the hull (not "stitch welded"). The baked paintjob on the boat is first class. It is white on the upper cabin and deck and painted only on areas that need it. High-use and impact areas such as handrails, bowrail and hull bottom are bare aluminium, and that's a fairly sensible decision. The sides are painted Honda Silver and combined with the white upper deck make the boat look quite smart. Everything inside is painted white with a black fleck ? even under the cockpit sole ? to protect against corrosion. Not many tinnie builders would bother, and perhaps it's this attention to detail that adds to this boat's appeal.

The open cabin is spacious and airy with wide V-berths and practical, vinyl-covered cushions. There is plenty of storage underneath, although there is no shelving for those bits and pieces that always seem to accumulate in a boat. It is partially lined with grey marine carpet overhead and down the sides. Headroom is excellent. The double-lock clear hatch is plenty big enough for shoulders to get through.

BACK TO BASICS
The skipper looks at a fairly basic instrument console in its own module, which features trim, mph, rpm, fuel, PSI and watts above a Teleflex Morse helm with a four-switch panel on the right. There is room beneath this to mount a radio. The controls are mounted lower than you would expect but fall to hand fairly well either seated on the adjustable, armless skipper's seat or standing up, which you'll tend to do in a rough sea.

The white-painted dash is narrow but probably wide enough to mount the space-saving sounders and GPS units that are on the market these days. A solid black bar that curves around its top edge reinforces the one-piece tinted acrylic windscreen. It looks good and works well.

The navigator's chair is identical to the skipper's, but there is no glovebox in the passenger-side dash, just a solid grabrail and footrail that matches the skipper's. Both chairs are mounted on aluminium poles.

The bimini with front and side clears does the job, but I'm not as confident about the aluminium six-pot rod rack to which its trailing edge attaches. Overhead rod-rack structures tend to double as grab-holds in rough weather, and people can tend to "swing" from them at times, especially when coming off the crest of a wave. I wonder whether this structure would be strong enough for that sort of treatment ... Certainly it would be more than adequate for rod storage and as a "holding post" in average weather.

SPACED OUT
The cockpit sole is carpeted over resin-impregnated ply and is quite practical and strong. The sidepockets are certainly not huge, running just three-quarters of the cockpit length. Clipped on to one of them is a white navigation light on a short pole. Overall, storage capacity on the boat is probably a little less than you would expect in a boat of this size, but then again the Bay Legend is pretty much a basic boat perfectly suited to individual fit-out.

I liked the wide, flat gunwales that are positioned slightly above knee height. This boat had only two lightweight plastic rodholders in each stern quarter, but there is plenty of room for more. The fuel filler is found on top of the port gunwale and a painted aluminium box plate protects the hose to the underfloor tank. Two handrails towards the stern add to the safety factor. Two solid sternposts define the stern quarters.

Across the transom is a swing-down seat that can be removed altogether if you wish. This would certainly help access to the bilge, which is a little cramped with the seat in place. Small padded backrests add to the comfort factor. The battery is accessible on the starboard side below the wide transom and behind the seat, where it is mounted in a protective box above floor level. On the port side is a two-drawer tackle box fitted into the transom above another open box that is a little more awkward to get at.

On both sides of the Honda outboard are boarding platforms with handrails, and a swing-down boarding ladder is attached to the port side.

SUPERB PERFORMER
The hull itself is beamy with an 18° deadrise, fairly modest reverse chines and a double keel for strength. It felt strong, too, in the 20kt winds on Western Port Bay. The short, sloppy sea conditions to about a metre really gave the Bay Legend a thorough working over ? and it came through very well, particularly down and across sea. It punched a little hard into the slop, but there are few boats that wouldn't in the conditions we had. And the boat was super light, too, with little fuel on board and no gear.

Achieving 50kmh at 4200rpm in these conditions is a testament to the boat's ability. It was tough going, but the boat performed well. Across and down sea we achieved 60kmh at 5000rpm, and there was plenty of performance left after that. There was no prop torque or wind-lean in any of the runs, but it simply wasn't the right day to jack out the powerplant and go low flying.

Backing down caused the boarding platforms to disappear under a fair bit of green stuff, and we took some water on board through the control lines opening (a cover was missing). But there was no real cause for concern. In tight figure-eight turns there was some cavitation from the stainless prop, but only in extreme turns.

The New World Honda package for this boat includes a dual-axle Dunbier new-design trailer that features centre rollers, extended Teflon-covered side support slides and drive-on catcher V.

This package represents good value for the angling-minded family boater. While not huge on storage space, it's a comfortable little craft built around a seaworthy hull. The four-stroke Honda outboard should deliver years of economical service and little extras like additional electronics, a stainless rocket launcher, more rodholders and a baitboard could be added as finances allow.

For the first-time boater, this rig could open up a whole new world.