Best Deck Boat

[snowman]

I'm looking to buy my first boat and new to boating. Looking for a family boat around 24 ft. I'm leaning towards a deck boat given the extra space and most have a Porta pot at that size. My top choices are Regal 24 Fast deck, Chapparal Sunesta, Sea Ray 240 Sundeck. Having a smooth ride is a must given I have small kids. Will a 24 ft boat have that much of a better ride than a 22 ft boat? Also if I'm looking for a smooth ride should I be sticking with a bow rider?

[thinkxingu]

My suggestion is to take some test drives, especially if you've not a ton of experience are looking to drop some serious coin. Godspeed!

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[winnipiseogee]

The answer depends a lot on when you plan on using the boat and how you plan on using it. Winni on the weekends with small kids means you definitely want the 24 ft or you will get tossed around. We have 2 small kids but before them I loved having a deep V bowrider. It was easy to bomb around the lake at 45mph and cut through all the chop.

Once we had kids we started cruising a lot slower and spending a lot more time at anchor. The roll that comes with a V hull was hard for the kids. We just got a deck boat at the beginning of this summer and its working great for us. It is much more spacious than our previous boat even though its a foot smaller. It is also much more stable. When I'm buy myself it kind of sucks for going fast but such is the trade off of being a dad lol.

As thinkx said spend a lot of time test driving them (with kids preferably). Those are all great boats. The choice between them is a personal one.

Have fun!

[Dave R]

If I were in the market, I'd be looking at one with an outboard engine. Hurricane comes to mind.

I have owned three I/Os and I hate them. Spent half my Sunday morning (yesterday) elbow deep in grease and grime changing U-joint bellows on my Bravo 3. Blah. Outboards are awesome.

[8gv]

I have a Sea Ray 240 Sundeck.

It's a 2008 model. I believe the model changed significantly in 2009. The newer ones are smaller. The 240 that I have has more interior space than its successor.

My previous boat on the lake was a Sea Ray 18' bow rider. It was smallish for the seas it encountered here but I could ALWAYS find a place to dock!

The 240 handles the waves/wakes well with a dry ride. You will see many on the lake as they are quite popular.

You can make nearly any size boat work but if you want to buy one that is hard to out grow, go for a 24'.

[znh]

I would avoid the Hurricanes on Winni. They are a little too low in the water, we know people with them and unless it is fairly calm out they say it's pretty rough and constantly get splash over the bow and sides.

We have a Four Winns Funship deck boat. It is only a 214 but we have not had too much issue with being out in the rough water. It holds a lot of people for a 22' boat and we always have lots of kids and always plenty of room. It's a great family boat and has served us well the last three years.

As for the porta potty, we don't use ours, seems like too much work. Although with all the kids there have been a time or two where we certainly could've used it but have managed without for three years now...

[Old Hubbard Rd]

Hello,
I have a 29' Harris Kayot Crowne Tri-toon. I wood highly recommend the longer the better and get as big a motor as possible $$. I have noticed that Bennington over at Channel Marine is making some real pretty Tri-toon pontoon boats!! Be prepared to spend some $$$ as these pontoon boats have gotten really popular and very $$ because they are really tricked out with options!! I have my pontoon boat for big groups and a 19.5 foot Stingray for tubing etc. If your looking for something that does both nice cruising and tubing etc then I would consider a nice 26' Sea Ray. Good luck and have fun test driving!!

[SAMIAM]

Deck boats, because of their design are apt to slap quite a bit in the chop. I've had a 24' and a 26' Hurricane and they both pounded quite a bit going into moderate chop.
My 25' pontoon tri hull cuts right through it as smooth as can be.
Most passengers, especially woman, don't like to get bounced around out there.
If I were you, I'd go with tri hull or stick with a deep vee.
Wifey will be happy

[meredith weekender]

Originally Posted by SAMIAM

Deck boats, because of their design are apt to slap quite a bit in the chop. I've had a 24' and a 26' Hurricane and they both pounded quite a bit going into moderate chop.
My 25' pontoon tri hull cuts right through it as smooth as can be.
Most passengers, especially woman, don't like to get bounced around out there.
If I were you, I'd go with tri hull or stick with a deep vee.
Wifey will be happy

As the saying goes "A HAPPY WIFE IS A HAPPY LIFE" HA HA HA

[snowman]

Thanks for all advice. I'm planning on buying a new boat so hoping the unexpected i/o engine problems will not be an issue for several years down the road and covered by a waranty for 5 years.

Those with a new deck boat, do you feel that they are still as rough on the chop as the original deck boats? I've test driven equivalent size bowriders and decks and feel that they are pretty similar. I wasn't going faster than 35 because I had my little ones on board with me.

[VitaBene]

Originally Posted by snowman

Thanks for all advice. I'm planning on buying a new boat so hoping the unexpected i/o engine problems will not be an issue for several years down the road and covered by a waranty for 5 years.

Those with a new deck boat, do you feel that they are still as rough on the chop as the original deck boats? I've test driven equivalent size bowriders and decks and feel that they are pretty similar. I wasn't going faster than 35 because I had my little ones on board with me.

I sound like a broken record, but look at the deadrise angle at transom- it gives you a pretty good idea of how it will handle Winni slop and chop. 24 degrees is about the most you will see. I would not buy a V hull with less than 21 degrees.

Our 26 plus foot Wellcraft is 24 degrees and is a pleasure on sloppy days.

[Lakeboater]

If you are buying new I would highly recommend looking at 26 foot boats. As someone said above the boating manufacturers changed the way a boat is sized. An example is the Sea Ray Sundeck 240 is now a 22 foot boat with a 2 ft swim platform. The older 240's are 26' 4"....with the swim platform. I wouldn't want anything smaller than a true 24 ft boat on the lake.

[winnipiseogee]

Originally Posted by snowman

Those with a new deck boat, do you feel that they are still as rough on the chop as the original deck boats?.

I've got a 2 year old Hurricane - I've found it performs quite well but I'm not sure I'd want it out on the broads on a busy July saturday with the kids aboard (although I'm not sure I'd want to be in any boat on a busy July Saturday but thats me lol)

I really hesitated to buy a deckboat because of what I had heard but for what we do its worked out great.

[snowman]

Is there really a difference in the ride between a 20 and 21 degree deadrise? Most of the deck boats I'm looking at have a 20 degree deadrise, but one has 21.
Thanks again for all the advice.

[Dave R]

Originally Posted by snowman

Thanks for all advice. I'm planning on buying a new boat so hoping the unexpected i/o engine problems will not be an issue for several years down the road and covered by a waranty for 5 years.

For me, the hatred toward I/Os is not just about the unexpected stuff that fails, it's the expected stuff that drive me nuts. They are maintenance hungry and the annual parts and labor bills for normal maintenance can be substantial. They also have lots of corrosion issues and don't hold their resale value like an OB. A typical I/O annual maintenance schedule includes: changing impeller, changing engine oil and drive oil, inspecting U-joints, gimbal bearing, bellows, and checking alignment (the drive has to come off the boat for these), sanding priming and painting areas of corrosion, changing anodes and other stuff.

Some of the outboards on the market require no maintenance for the first three years and can be Winterized by pushing a button and waiting 15 seconds. When you are done using them, you tilt them up completely clear of the water and you don't have any corrosion issues to deal with. They also automatically drain cooling water completely and won't freeze and crack the engine if the temps drop to 31 F before you Winterize.

Maybe I'm just frustrated because my 3 year old u-joint bellows (that looks perfect in all but one well-hidden spot) failed this weekend and caused a leak into my boat. If I had slipped my boat, I may have had no way to notice this and it could have easily sank my boat while I was away all week. Fortunately, I trailer my boat and noticed a nice stream of white-tinted water (the white comes form emulsified u-joint grease that got mixed really well from the u-joinst spinning in a water bath) when I pulled the garboard plug out after putting the boat on the trailer. Think about how ridiculous the design is that a thin tube of corrugated rubber, that can fail at any time (it's much thinner than a radiator hose, for instance...), is one of the key elements in the I/O for keeping the lake out of your boat. Consider that the failure of that part is normal wear and tear too, and costs around 400 bucks to change because Mercruiser buried it way down inside the heart of the drive. Because of this leak, I can now expect shortened life on a brand new Gimbal bearing I put in this Spring. That's a $100 wasted, but at least I own the tools to change it myself because that would be another 400 bucks for labor, I bet.

Anyway, good luck! There are zillions of happy I/O customers out there, so I'm probably just a grumpy old engineer...

[Dave R]

Originally Posted by snowman

Is there really a difference in the ride between a 20 and 21 degree deadrise? Most of the deck boats I'm looking at have a 20 degree deadrise, but one has 21.
Thanks again for all the advice.

If they both weighed the same and had the same exact hull design other than deadrise, Id' think you could notice a difference. However, a 5000 lb boat with 20 degrees of deadrise will very likely ride as well or better than a 4000 lb boat with 24 degrees of deadrise, mass has a lot to do with comfort in rough seas. Also, deadrise is measured at the transom and much of the ride quality of a planing-hull boat is a function of shape of the bow, so you can't just go by deadrise and weight either. Everything else being equal, a boat with a fine bow entry will ride smoother than a boat with a broad and buoyant bow. This is why toons ride decent in chop (and why deck boats typically pound in chop...). One other thing, longer/skinnier boats ride better in chop than shorter/wider boats.

The perfect boat for a sea-kindly ride would be really long, not very wide, and have a very fine entry that pierces waves rather than ride up them. It would also be very efficient, but it would lack usable passenger space. Think about just how opposite that is from a deck boat.

[winnipiseogee]

Dave - if you don't mind me asking isn't what you are saying true for the ocean but not as much for the lake? Not arguing - I'm truly curious.

My father in-law was a lobsterman. I was looking at an Eastern a few years ago and was talked out of it because while its an incredibly seaworthy boat on the ocean he argued it was less so on winni. On the ocean the seas/waves are all coming from a single direction. Aim your bow at the right angle and you cut through the waves.

The lake it seems has no predominant direction except in a storm. On the lake the waves/boat wake come from every direction. Therefore the roll of a deep v becomes more of a problem while the ever popular tritoons provide more overall stability.

My person decision of a deck boat had nothing to do with seaworthiness (if its bad the family isn't going out) and everything to do with a cost per person of capacity.

I'm not arguing the point - quite frankly I'm not informed enough to do so. I'm more hoping the educated boaters here will help settle a family argument

[Dave R]

Originally Posted by winnipiseogee

Dave - if you don't mind me asking isn't what you are saying true for the ocean but not as much for the lake? Not arguing - I'm truly curious.

My father in-law was a lobsterman. I was looking at an Eastern a few years ago and was talked out of it because while its an incredibly seaworthy boat on the ocean he argued it was less so on winni. On the ocean the seas/waves are all coming from a single direction. Aim your bow at the right angle and you cut through the waves.

The lake it seems has no predominant direction except in a storm. On the lake the waves/boat wake come from every direction. Therefore the roll of a deep v becomes more of a problem while the ever popular tritoons provide more overall stability.

My person decision of a deck boat had nothing to do with seaworthiness (if its bad the family isn't going out) and everything to do with a cost per person of capacity.

I'm not arguing the point - quite frankly I'm not informed enough to do so. I'm more hoping the educated boaters here will help settle a family argument

It's true in any body of water. If you let the wave push the bow up, the rapid deceleration and direction change of the collision is transmitted to the deck and people on board feel it, if the bow splits the wave, there is less deceleration and the bow rides up less and at a slower rate, so the people on board aren't as uncomfortable. At some point you need to make sure there's adequate buoyancy to keep the bow from stuffing too deeply into a wave and that's where bow flair comes into play. The deeper the bow goes, the more buoyant it is and the more it rides up the wave rather that splitting it. The variable here is the wave size. No boat is going to be completely smooth at any speed in any sea state.

I think an Eastern would work very well on Winni, but not as a boat for entertaining a crowd. That's an all weather work horse. There are tons of boats on the lake with similar hull designs (well for that mater, plenty of Easterns...) and they do just fine. I think a tri-toon would be ideal for all but the really rough days that would likely have water on coming over the deck in really steep chop. I don't think typical toons have enough bow flair to get the bow up and over the biggest steepest waves you can get on winni. I know I've stuffed the bow of my 24 degree, 25 footer a few times. It has a fine entry but rapidly broadening bow flair and big, reverse chines carried far forward, so it takes a lot to ship water on to the foredeck.

[ishoot308]

Just an fyi... The Eastern hull is a completely different animal than a V-hull or a pontoon. The Eastern has a flat bottom semi displacement hull that takes some getting used to. Once you do it works quite well on Winni.

What I did wrong when I first had mine was trying to trim the motor up...There is no sense trimming a flat bottom boat up just to allow waves to crash into it, instead keep the nose right down and let that semi displacement hull do it's job...and it does it quite well!

Winni's wave action is completely different than the ocean. Winni gets what I like to call a "machine gun chop". One small wave right after the other crashing against your hull. It can be quite annoying actually! Unlike the ocean which gets huge rollers you never really see that quick chop unless your at the mouth of the Merrimack or similar.

Dave R is quite correct when he says the Eastern is not a boat for entertaining. The Eastern is a first class island boat that as Dave says is an all weather workhorse. I love mine and would never sell it. For entertaining and cruising I always used the tri-toon.

FWIW

Dan