2023 Season Recap

We spent 17 nights on the boat and put roughly 175 hours on the main in 2023 and learned a lot about it. Our trips included a trips to Elfin cove, Glacier Bay, and Baranof warm springs. With our new range we were doing a lot of prospecting fishing grounds that were previously out of reach. At the end of the season we were still happy with our purchase. It really opened up Southeast Alaska. I can't remember anything actually breaking during the 2023 season. The boat was in great shape mechanically when we picked it up and lasted all summer with just a 100 hour service. Over the winter we worked on a list of upgrades to make our life easier. Standard load included the marine grade pool toy aka dingus aka an Achillies LT2 inflatable, Honda 2.3HP dinghy motor, 50 pounds of ice, cooking gear, salmon and halibut gear, and enough supplies for a week or more. The Yeti worked great keeping groceries cold, the wife was able to find spots to store everything.

 

2024 Upgrades Part 1

Cup holders, the boat had 1 cup holder on the port side dash, 2 on the dinette, and 1 for the passenger sitting on the Yeti. My wife can't leave the house without 2-3 drinks so we had a problem. I added a deep tumbler style to the port side dash and a normal depth to the helm side next to the binicale. She would like more though we are out of real estate.

Condensation was always a problem. We added 2 Caframo fans to the headliner. They spin around and work great for keeping the windows from fogging up. Whenever we are using the boat we leave 1 on low to keep the air moving, this really helps cut down on condensation. These should be factory on every pilot house boat.

We usually use an Ipad for navionics and had been leaning it up against the windshield, it would flop over at the most inopportune time. A Ram mount keeps it firmly in place now.

After swapping to a 13 pitch prop we had a spare prop that needed a home. I mounted it under the rear helm up out of the way with a long 3/8" bolt

The Yeti seat was nice though you couldn't see out the window and we could always use more storage. I made this lift kit out of marine plywood and a couple coats of epoxy. It fits 2 40 packs of water under it with room next to it for the 5 gallon trash bucket. The view is much better with plenty of room for your feet. When we bought the boat it had 1 2 pound household style fire extinguisher buried out of the way impossible to get in a hurry. We added a 5 pounder mounted next to the pilot house door and a 2 pounder under the dash for easy access.

 

Awesome boat and write up!

 

Thanks for the great follow up post. Fun to hear real world experience. Your living my dream.

 

I had the same boat, they are well built and probably the best aluminum ride I had, the mileage was a bit disappointing. Especially when 28 footers with twins were get over 2 mpg and I was 1.5.
That 250 is the same engine as the 300 and is just programmed to 250, I considered remapping to spin a different prop but never did. I did some prop work but never found the right one.
Still the best boat I ever owned.

 

The nizpro tune really helped, just the tune broght me from 1.8 to 2-2.2. Hint Hint more on props and increasing mileage coming in future updates.

 

Great write up! Thank you for sharing your experience and what you have changed along the way

 

What an awesome boat

 

2024 Upgrades Part 2

We were severely lacking rod holders and had some Scotties left over from our old boat. We did flush mounts per side. the flush mounts along with the 2 sockets on the fillet table give a lot of options.

The passenger side had a light duty mariner base, the driver's side had a very heavy duty. The passenger side squeaked like crazy. Bentleys sold me another heavy duty base, I was able to transfer the cushions over from the old seat. We also added boots from Bentleys, they may or may not help cut down on the squeaks. The mariners work ok though I think there's much better options out there, swapping in 2 shock waves wasn't in the budget.

At the beginning of the season we were hoping to get 1 more year out of the factory installed Lewmar windlass. We replaced the spring and pin on the gypsy and bought 500' of new 1/2" rhode. 500' of rhode was too much for the locker and the gypsy started having issues. We were down in Petersburg on the first trip of the year. I walked in to Rocky's marine, talked to Casey the owner about our issues and walked out with a new Lone star GX2 winch and 500' of 1/4" dynema installing it in the harbor. The windlass was wired with 6AWG wire from the factory, I ran 4AWG from the winch to the windlass contractor using the Lewmar contractor, switch, and breaker for the rest of the season not wanting to miss out on another day of fun.

The anchor wouldn't self deploy with the windlass or the winch, you'd have to go up on the bow and give it a shove. I replaced the factory installed roller with a pivoting roller from Anchor Winch Direct. We no longer have to go up on the bow, it works great though once in a blue moon the rode will get stuck between the roller and frame.

The 9.9 high thrust Yamaha had always been hard starting. One day pounding home in 4-6's in dawned on us if we needed to start it in a hurry to keep the boat straight we may have been in trouble. I had myself convinced to replace it with a fuel injected 25hp Yamaha though Casey at Rocky's talked me through a fix. Our Yamaha dealer is great to the deal with by the way, he could have sold me a $4k motor and instead walked me through a free fix. Here's the write up I did on it. We also always start it and usually run on it from a couple minutes getting out of the harbor each morning now which has really helped.

https://www.ifish.net/threads/yamah...s/yamaha-9-9-high-thrust-hard-start-fix.1706299/?post_id=17082511#post-17082511

 

By any measure, for most that is a dream boat! 👍🏽👍🏽

 

2024 Season Recap

We Spent 40 nights on the boat and put 220 hours on the main. It was a great summer with a couple memorable trips.

Preseason we did have to do some repairs, the horn stopped working, 1 side marker light decided it was done with life, the fish box shock seized up, and the macerator pump switch wasn't allowing magic pixies to pass. Our dock lines had a rough life the previous summer when we get the boat in the harbor with 75 whale watching boats kicking up wake and got replaced with 5 new 5/8" lines. After some upgrades and repairs we were ready for a summer.

We started out the season with a 3 week trip in May, the first 10 days were with my parents. We left Juneau stopping in Tenakee springs for a couple nights, a stop at Baranof Warm Spring and continuing on to Petersburg for Little Norway Festival and a trip to LaConte Glacier. After we shipped the parents out the wife and I continued on to Ketchikan to explore Misty Fjords which we didn't really feel like was worth the fuel we burned to check it out. On the way back we stopped at Thorne bay, Coffman Cove, and Port protection. The boat is very comfortable for 4 adults to ride in. Not knowing any better my wife filled the diesel heater tank till it clicked off, the sender seal was dried out allowing fuel to leak into the bilge. We also had the windlass on the way out. We spent a day replacing the winch and resealing the heater tank in the Harbor in Petersburg, this is the only day we spent turning wrenches away from home all summer.

New Eddystone Rock in Misty Fijords

Baranof Warm Springs

Laconte Glacier Petersbur

Other trips included 2 trips to Elfin Cove 1 for Kings in June and 1 for Coho is September. Some friends of ours came up for 2 week again prooving the boat was a great layout for 4 adults to ride comfrotabley. We actually spent a night with 4 adults on the boat, my wife and I in the berth, the dog under the helm, my buddy's girfrend on the 1/2 dinette (the Table drops down and the yetti coushin fits on the table), and my buddy on the floor. It worked for a night though it's a bit tight for longer trips. We found one of the only mini golf courses in Southeast Alaska in Excursion inlet built with parts from the canrey maintenance shop. Fishing was decent, we were covering a lot of ground and fishing a lot of spots we hadn't fished much. The wife put 100 and 90 pound halibut in the box. The Smak fish box works great for our use keeping ice for days with enough room for 150-200 pound of whole fish. We started shrimping this year, it was a learning curve, I think we are at about $10 a shrimp after buying shrimping gear.

We also spending more nights on the hook. There's some great anchorages most of which are either empty or maybe have 1-2 other boats in them. Baja the boat dog hadn't been in the dinghy. The first time to shore she wasn't impressed, the wife had a great show of her jumping out of the dinghy, me chasing her down the beach and finally getting her back to the boat. After a bit baja realized when Dingus the dinghy gets pulled down it's time to go explore a random beach her tune changed. Now she'll jump in the dinghy while it's tied up to the boat before I'm ready to go to shore with a "let's go" look on her face. Usually she has a paw over the side and 0 concept of balancing out the dinghy, It's just a matter of time till we go for a swim.

The Smak box is 45" Long for size, one of the wife's big butts

Excursion inlet Mini Golf Course

Fresh Spot Prawns at Howard Bay

 

2025 Upgrades Part 1

We had never been impressed with the sonar on the boat, we would catch salmon though they would never show up on the fish finder no matter the settings or angle of the transducer. We also couldn't hold bottom at speed. We were at a crossroads with electronics most of the Raymarine stuff is 2016 vintage, we also wanted AIS, the VHF didn't work great, and the rv100 transducer wasn't working great. We thought about just putting a whole Garmin package in though have decided to keep with the Raymarine stuff and upgrade as it dies. After much deliberation I cut a 4" hole in the bottom of the boat installing an Airmar SS175HW and a CP470 sonar module to power it, our Raymarine Axiom 12 RV wouldn't power much for transducers. There wasn't much realestate for the CP470, it's mounted behind the side access pannel on some aluminum brackets, it's a bit hard to see the LED though was the best spot I could find for it.

Continuing on with Electronics we could never hear our Raymare VHF and we wanted an AIS reciever to be able to see cruise ships. We also wanted a VHF at the rear helm, we often times fish with the rear door closed and could never hear the VHF. I installed a Standard Horizon GX2400 at the helm, it barely fit in place of the old Ray53 VHF, a Standard Horizon Ram 4 remote station, MSL-410PA powered speaker at the rear helm and Shakespeare 8' Galaxy VHF antenna along wth adding a USB port to the rear helm. The GX2400 VHF networked seamlessly into the Raymarine stuff via NEMA2000 saving some money over a Raymarine VHF with AIS. The rear speaker is plenty loud and the second station allows you to do everything you can do on the main VHF on the remote station.

AIS is cool

Continuing on with the electrical stuff I finally ran the right size wire from the battery to the contactor at the helm, installed the lone star contactor which was about double the size of the Lewmar, and mounted the winch breaker below the binicale for easy resets if necessary. We popped the 50 amp Lewmar breaker once using it on the winch, hopefully we aren't popping the 120 amp breaker much.

The boat had a 30" rigid LED light bar mounted on the roof. All it did was reflect off the bow rails and deck, even at the dock you were better off without it. I installed 2 40 watt Amazon spot pattern cubes and some $16 chinesum tube light mounts on the bow rail. If these lights work better we'll upgrade to some decent lights and have some tabs welded on. Driveway testing show very little to no glare off the boat, we'll see what they do on the water. While I had everything torn apart I pulled the bar off the roof.

 

2025 Upgrades Part 2

The wiring on the boat was decent though every time I had to open up the dash I'd try to ignore the chaos. I knew at some point I needed to give it a once over. You could tell when all the electronics were installed they were installed quickly. Wires were balled up instead of shortened, things that should have been screwed down were zip tied into balls, the shortest path for wires were taken, there were inline fuses buried in the harness also going to the fuse boxes. The factory stuff was pretty decent though I did find a couple random wires buried in the harness and an unused light wire wired to a switch and just buried. I was this far in wiring in the lights, VHF, sonar, and the winch so I went after it. It's not perfect though everything is now tamed the best I could. I had installed an ACR when we frist bought the boat and it needed some cleanup as well. If a wire couldn't get shortened it got balled up in single ball or coil of wire, it it could get shortened it did. Things like the NEMA network and fuse holders got screwed down. Everything got labeled. It was a ton of work and not that much looks like it's really changed much. Now I have a pretty good idea of how the boat is wired, what fed from where, and don't dread opening up the dash. While I was in there the Raymarine got it's yearly updates along with the Navionics charts. The 2021 vintage lead acid batteries got replaced with new AGM's. I added 150 amp Marine rated battery fuses (MRBF) to both batteries.

Before

Mid

After

One thing we wanted was a salt water sink for hand washing and dishes. On the alumaweld you could just put your hand over the water, on the duckworth you had to go on the swim deck to scrub your hands or do dishes with the wash down hose. We also don't use the factory transom fish box for fish. It's hard to get into with the fillet table over the top, the drain is always on the wrong side, and it doesn't keep ice. We've been keeping our plano tackle boxes in it though they get pretty nasty from waashing down the fillet table.

I started with a new piece of starboard and 2 tempress hatches to seal the fish box. Next to the new fish box cover was just enough room the squeeze an Ambasador sink in, if it was 1/2" wider it would have gotten into the gunnel structure. The boat had a wash down hose hatch with a drain hose going out a through hull. This wash down hose holder had been a source of profanity, it was almost impossible to remove and install the wash down hose. I relocated the wash down hose to the gunnel tray and used the through hull for the sink drain. I used a cold water only ambasador folding faucet. It's Teed off of the wash down pump. The wash down pump was from 2016, it got replaced and kept as a spare along with all hoses. I think we can set it up with a double female garden hose adapter in place of the wash down hose and close the wash down hose pickup valve to tie into potable water when in port.

Bungee cord on the fillet table to keep the hatch lids up, full of tackle. The down down rigger balls also got relocated to the fish box.

 

Wow! What a great writeup on what you have done and your experiences! Pretty cool! You are living a dream life in Alaska!

 

2025 Upgrades Part 3

I was still wanting better fuel mileage, we had put 100 gallons in the 120 gallon tank too many times. I was going to try a Mercury enertia prop though the deal fell through. My Yamaha dealer ordered me a Yamaha 14 1/2" x 15 Pitch Turbo 1 Offshore 4 blade and was willing to take it back if it didn't work. The 4 blade woke the boat up, mileage improved, we wished we had tried a decent 4 blade a long time ago. I'm seeing 2.2-2.4 consistently with the occasional 2.5mpg cruising in the 28-28mph at 4,100-4,200 RPM. We are going to see how the 4 blade works this summer, I've put about 60 miles on it outside making performance bulletins. If we can average 2.3 in good weather and around 2 in bad weather that's a heck of an improvement from when we bought the boat getting 1.8mpg.

I talked with the owner/ VP of powertech, he was pretty happy with my numbers and didn't have anything he really thought would be that much better. He did have a 5 blade that works good on ranger tugs he was thinking might be an option.

Here's some performance numbers. The boat was slightly lighter with the SWS 2 on it, the 4 blade numbers are within 50 pounds of our usual 2 person and a dog summer load.

The Wallas heater has been a battle since we pulled out of Anacortes up the inside passage the second day we owned the boat. The duckworth has a closeable vent in the berth hooked to 1 port and 2 always open defrost vents on the dash hooked to another port on the heater. Underway It would alarm out and shut down though wouldn't alarm out when running it over night sleeping on the boat. I finally looked at the Wallas chart, it was alarming on high temp. We were closing the berth vent thinking we were forcing more air to the dash. In reality we were deadheading one of the 2 circuits causing the high temp. Running home yesterday in rough seas with the berth vent open it didn't alarm. The other thing we learned from reading the Wallas manual is the top port on the heater is hotter than the lower port. The dash was connected to the lower port and never got hot just slightly warm. The berth would cook you out with the heater set on 1 with the doors closed. I flipped the hoses, we'll see if this helps making the pilot house hotter. I'm crossing my fingers we finally figured this thing out. We really don't want to have to put a new heater in or send it out for service though it's been very unimpressive.

We spent the first night of the 2025 Sunday. it was a little chilly in the mid 30's and rainy though it was nice to get out on the boat. All upgrades work well. Next month we push off for a 10-14 day trip down to Petersburg for little Norway Festival and hopefully some shrimping, fishing, hot springs, and nights on the hook. We still really like the boat. It works well for our uses. It currently has 560 hours on the main without any major problems. As far as major upgrades we'd like to do the only 2 left on the list are an auto pilot and possibly trying an auto trim tab system like seakeeper ride. It's taken a while to get the boat dialed in though the list of things we want to upgrade or change has shrunk.

 

You are an amazing boat owner! I now feel like a heel.

 

I've really enjoyed reading this writeup!

 

Thank you for the continued write up, it’s interesting how much a difference a prop made on MPG.

 

Sheesh what a write-up. You're living the dream for sure.

 

Ditto, great write up and love the boat!

 

We’ve been enjoying the boat this summer. Our first trip of the year was in May. It was 40 degrees and raining for most of the 2 weeks. We spent a couple nights tied up to the dock in Baranof warm springs running the heater and fans non stop occasionally running the motor for a bit. I was informed the boat was cold by the wife when the heater shut down on low voltage. What the heck, we have new batteries. We threw some shrimp pots though mainly idled out to throw and retrieve them, low voltage to the point the davit wasn’t happy. What the heck is going on? We have a new fancy AGM house battery. Run the boat down to Petersburg, voltage is happy. Plug in the 2016 vintage battery charger, we should be good to go. Yet again the wife is cold and the heater is shut down on low voltage after we’ve been plugged in for 24 hours.

It’s 8pm and raining, I’ll grab the multimeter and figure out what’s going on. Pull the $20 home depot special multimeter out. Come to find out it doesn’t read amps and only displays whole numbers, that’s not helpfull. In the morning I walked up the dock to Homeport Electronics and talked with Devrin. He loaned me a multimeter with a DC amp clamp. Actually check things, the boat is pulling about 5 amps sitting at the dock with the heater and fans running and things charging. 105 amp AGM you can run down to roughly 50%. Battery charger is only putting out 50 miliamps in maintain. It maths out, battery is working as it should, we are just draining it. Charger is questionable at best and I’ve been unsuccessful finding a manual for it so far to figure out if it’s doing what it should.

We ordered a Vectron smart shunt from home port for less than $100. I got it installed before our next trip. Install was pretty easy, modify some battery cables, run some wires, swear a little bit cutting up my just cleaned up wiring, 2 screws, and it’s in. It reports battery health to your phone via blue tooth. No more guessing how much power we are using or if we are draining the house battery trolling. When on the hook we’ll check the battery before we go to bed, run the motor till it’s in the 90-95% range and usually fire it up in the morning in the 70-80% range when we fire up the 12 volt kettle. I highly recommend one.


Smart shunt is the little blue box hiding behind some wires in the upper left

Random screen shots from the Vectron app. The 93% was on the hook halibut fishing with 2 chart plotters, 1k sonar, heater, and fans going, I can't remember what we were doing in the 99% picture. The smart shunt connects via blue tooth to my phone and give us this Data about the house battery and voltage of the start battery. You can see the ACR has disconnected the 2 batteries and is keeping a full charge on the start battery while we drain the house battery. The ACR is stupid simple, no remembering to flip the battery switch to charge the house battery or keep from killing the start battery when on the hook. The smart shunt gets rid of the guess work about what's going on with the battery and how many magic pixies the boat is using.

 

We are up to 25 nights on the boat this season with a 14+ night trip planned next round of days off leaving Juneau, picking up friends at the Ketchikan airport, and working our way home via Prince of Whales. Only other work we’ve really had to do is a 100 hour service on the main and a 300 hour service on the 89 hour kicker. Now that we are keeping an eye on battery health we’ve been idling the main a lot which is adding 1-2 hours a day to the motor, not great for it.


We’ve been happy with the yeti though 3-5 days is about the max to keep ice and some broccoli swimming in cooler water stunk us out of the boat.Ice isn’t always easy to come by in BFE and we’d like to get away from it. With our king salmon limits up were we are allowed 1 per day 1 in possession, everything else it’s 2 limits in possession. We also aren’t allowed to behead or fillet most fish till we tie up at a dock with a fish checker unless it’s preserved at sea (frozen and vacuum packed). If it’s preserved at sea it doesn’t count towards your possession limit and can be filleted before we get home. A 12 volt freezer fridge and cordless vacuum packer would allow us to preserve at sea and also eliminate concerns about keeping ice. The only problem is we are already pushing the limits of our house battery. When I bought the smart shunt Devrins at Home Port put the bug in my ear about lithium batteries. Well I pulled the trigger on a 300ah Epoch lithium house battery, a vectron Orion dc to dc charger, and a blue smart ac charger and ordered an ARB 73 quart dual zone freezer fridge. We’ll see when it gets here, if the battery arrives in Petersburg before we head down to Ketchikan the plan is to install the lithium system in the Petersburg harbor walking distance to Home Port. If it doesn't get here in time it'll probably turn into a winter project.


The other thing the wife has wanted is a shower, something about more than 3 days without a shower after a couple good days of fishing or cutting fish and thinking she needs a shower. She tried a cheapie solar shower as a proof of concept showering on the deck and was happy enough with it. We ordered a rinse kit 4 gallon cube, their propane hot water, and an amazon special shower tent. We’ll see how it works after a couple times using it and how long/ many showers 4 gallons of water last for.

Random photo dump from this summer.

 

Did a quick upgrade the other night. We've been keeping the dinghy motor on the roof. It's been the source of several "it smells like gas" conversations after someone forgets to shut off the fuel. I had been ratchet strapping it to the roof. I'd also like to move some weight to the starboard side in anticipation of the fridge and battery upgrade.

It's a piece of 4x3x3/8" angle with some marine plywood to make it the same thickness as the dinghy transom.

The arb freezer fridge got here in time for our trip, the lithium battery didn't. After a quick test monitoring draw with the smart shunt we've decided to bring it on the trip. It fits, it's just tall, good thing we have some short passengers.

After running the fridge on 38, freezer on 20 degrees, wallas heater on low, and a fan for 13-14 hours while at the dock we were at 59% on the 100 amp hours agm. We like to not get below 50% on the agm. Running the boat for a little over an hour at 4,500 rpm changed the house battery

It was really nice to be able to pack meat in the freezer for a 2 week trip. We usually end up having to eat The meat we bring even though we have fresh fish because we are worried about the meat going bad in the cooler. It's a dual zone with the ability to have a freezer and a fridge in 1 unit. The lift out wire baskets made packing in the kitchen easy, it's too heavy to pack around full.

Tonight we used the rinse kit portable water tank, tank less hot water heater, and Amazon special shower tent. So far the wife approves. 4 gallons wasn't enough for 2 showers though it was plenty hot with almost too much pressure and flow for a "camping" shower. The hot water heater will run off a garden hose though didn't come with an adapter to connect to one, I think that will be the ticket when at a dock with water. With a couple modifications the shower setup will be dialed.