Stabi-craft 753HT

When I first laid eyes on the Stabi-Craft, it occurred to me, when the ugly pills were being handed out, this boat had gone back for seconds.

However, after spending a week on the 753HT model, the largest in the Stabi-Craft range, I didn't give a damn about aesthetics - this boat is a real performer.

The 'Stabi' part of Stabi-Craft is pronounced 'stay-bee', as in stable, and it is certainly that. Without doubt, it's the most stable 'big tinnie' I've ever been in, with one qualification. Perhaps twin-hull designs have an edge, but if they do, it is only slight.

It's the hull design (and those looks) which sets this Kiwi-built boat apart. To fully understand that, let's precis a little company history from the brochure:

"At the southernmost corner of NZ lies Foveaux Strait, a notoriously stormy stretch of water that separates Stewart Island from the southern island. In 1986 two local fishermen approached the fledgling Stabi-Craft Marine with a brief to design a small, rugged, unsinkable pontoon-style boat so they could fish in almost any conditions and get back to the mother vessel with their catch."

SPECIAL SPONSONS
So the company's distinctive rigid buoyancy designs began. The first generation boats were designed with standard round pontoons, but the second generation pontoons have a deeper cross section which gives more freeboard. They are also slimmer, giving more internal beam.

The pontoon design underneath features two stepped, wide chines which provide lift, responsive cornering and a drier ride.

Each two separate pontoon, or sponson, sections on either side of the cabin area is watertight for positive buoyancy and safety.

The centre hull is a conventional vee-formation with a 20° deadrise at the transom. Twin 130hp counter-rotating Hondas bolted on a half-pod provided heaps of grunt on the test boat. But we'll come back to that later.

So, how does it perform? Well, an initial inspection of the boat on its Dunbier full roller dual-axle trailer raised the interest substantially. I admit to having wondered how such a hull design could possibly ride comfortably. How wrong I can be!

Thanks to Michael and Theo Rozarkis of MY Marine at Dromana (Vic), I played with and tested the boat for a week in Bass Strait and on the Gippsland Lakes. Wind of 15kt in the Strait's short, sharp and sloppy conditions is probably equivalent to 25kt in deeper waters, so we'd found an ideal testing ground.

The Stabi-Craft cruised comfortably in these conditions at a GPS recorded 45kmh at 4000rpm, which I found surprisingly quick. We didn't seem to be going that hard at all.

I hesitate to say this is a soft-riding hull. If a wave got caught under those wide chines on the sponsons it slammed and rattled the aluminium plate. That said, I was genuinely surprised at how well the boat rode. It wasn't often you copped a bang and usually only into a head sea and a side sea on the wrong angle. Downsea the Stabi-Craft flew.

It certainly rode better than comparable large monohull tinnies and probably almost as well as catamarans. They can rattle the molars a bit too in some seas.

In a trip from Lakes Entrance to Loch Sport (about 50km) on the Gippsland Lakes we encountered about 20kt of unfriendly south-easterly, which we ran with going down and against coming home. Lakes King and Victoria, particularly the area between Paynesville and Sperm Whale Head, provided some fairly lumpy water but the Stabi-Craft blew away the short chop, so long as I was prepared to cruise at a higher rather than a slower speed.

With the pedal to the metal, the boat seemed to get up and boogie, the hull really working efficiently. With the Hondas trimmed in we achieved a top speed of 60kmh at 5500rpm and trimmed out 68kmh at 6000rpm. The motors were fitted with SE Sport300 trim vanes.

DAYS OF OUR LIVES
Having been originally designed for pro-fishermen, the layout and fitout was fairly basic with just a few modcons. In that I don't include the dash-mounted mini TV, which the Rozarkis brothers reckon is essential on a boring fishing day... And they're right. Fishing offshore from Lakes Entrance and in the lakes system was so bad, even Days of Our Lives was entertaining.

Total catch (and release) for four days: two gurnard, one small flathead, one small salmon, one small pinkie. Are licence-paying Vic anglers being defrauded or what?

Back to the Stabi-Craft. The bow had a very solid 38mm split aluminium bowrail which is as solid as a rock. The bowsprit had a bow roller which was too small and wouldn't roll, so it was a devil of a job retrieving the anchor, particularly when the rope kept slipping off the roller and jamming between it and the bowrail post. Part of this bowsprit arrangement is a very strong swing-down step arrangement for getting on and off the boat while beached. A good idea, but it too jammed between the bowrail posts when you tried to swing it down.

A strong bowpost with a rubber mat for sure footing were excellent features, but the anchor well behind that was too small and lacked a cover. There was no hatch to the cabin, simply because the bow is so short there just isn't space.

Side decks are an unusual step down from the gunwales, but are extremely wide and safe with substantial non-slip stick-on strips. There were also plenty of handholds on the hardtop, windscreen and deck for the walk from the cabin to the bow.

The gunwales were exceptionally wide and flat with rubberised non-skid pads, the best I've seen. The depth of the coamings was exceptional - hip height - made even more so by perceptions from the outside of the craft. It looked so shallow, but on board it was a very different story.

The cabin was open with a long, cloth-covered V-berth with basic storage underneath for lifejackets, etc. Serviceable carpet lines all surfaces. The deck was all checkerplate aluminium. Sidepockets were long, but very narrow, obviously squeezed by the wide deck walkways.

AYE AYE SKIPPER

The skipper's position was good on a padded neoprene shaped seat set on an aluminium box, which was welded to the coaming and sits high off the cockpit sole, making it very easy to hose down. This box contained two storage compartments, one carpeted on the skipper's right hand behind the throttles.

Engine controls were a little low and forward, particularly at full noise, but apparently the control mount has been completely redesigned since the test boat was built.

Well positioned, on the left of the instrument panel, was a Garmin GPS/MAP 185 sounder combination unit, next to the Honda rev counter for the port engine, trim gauges for both motors and starboard rev counter. All instruments were perfectly positioned and visible. Beneath these are hour meters, as well as battery and engine performance lights.

To the left and a little behind the helm were the engine keys, warning lights and a switch panel on the right, again well placed for easy access. The very wide dash was carpeted and had a very long, black grabrail for both skipper and crew.

The huge screen on the hardtop consisted of three panels, the central one being safety glass and the corner curved bits acrylic - all tinted. This meant there was a substantial black aluminium joining column right in front of the skipper's vision but strangely, I got used to that quite quickly and it didn't bother me all. There was a windscreen wiper on the centre panel.

The front section of the hardtop's two side panels slid open easily, giving a good breeze-through - something we found we needed at times.

The large hardtop was fibreglass and had a substantial cockpit overhang. Carpeted inside, a lip above the windscreen contained speakers for the GME CD player (mounted to the left) and 27meg marine radio right above the skipper's head and a large nightlight.

Hardtop height was okay, but it probably needed a grabrail across the trailing edge, even though grabrails were mounted on the huge support pillars and on top. Each pillar had storage pockets incorporated at hip and ankle height, the higher with a lid, and the fire extinguisher was mounted nearby.

Topside was a black aluminium rocket launcher for four rods, mounts for twin aerials, two spot lights, nav light and GPS antenna. This was mounted too far forward making access to the rods one hell of a stretch for anyone under 183cm.

The cockpit was very large and I loved the wide gunwales (with four quality stainless steel rod holders) and deep coamings. The checkerplate sole was great to work on too. Sidepockets were long and wide, and although there was nowhere beneath to lock your toes, that really didn't matter as the hip-high coaming height was so good. There were no underfloor storage compartments, apart from the fuel tank. Cabling from the controls to the motors and batteries was exposed (albeit in a concertina hose), and zip-tied along the starboard side beneath the sidepocket, which looked rather agricultural.

The transom featured open, but off the floor and easily accessible, battery compartments either side of a small, but again handy, and open bilge. A lift-out panel on the port side allowed easy access, but maybe this would be better if hinged somehow. A chest height removable baitboard mid-transom was great to work with, but made the outboard fuel filler a little awkward to get at.

Beyond the transom was a wide, almost full-width panel to give the motors swing-up room. An after-market poly livebait tank with deck hose was bolted to this, and again, was within great working distance.

On the port side of the engine pod was a step aboard panel to which was bolted a swing-down two-step, very solid, aluminium ladder. This was great for boarding, but perhaps the two steps are positioned a little close together.

The berley bucket was mounted in the middle of all this and was really in the wrong place.

The above water contact areas on the hull were well finished in two-pack white paint and the hardtop featured colourful decals.

Even a non-tinnie person could get to really enjoy this boat. It's a big bruiser, especially on the trailer at almost 9m long. Although the Landcruiser handled it easily, it didn't tow all that comfortably because of poor trailer set-up, which caused the wobbles occasionally. A little more weight on the towbar, by shifting the bogie back an inch or two, would likely have solved the problem.