Hopefully you had a great season! How many hours or boating days did you get in?
How do you like your boat? There was a some discussion a while back about people wondering if the TR-1 engines would be powerful enough for this boat? Your thoughts?
K so, when you say you use a scotch brite pad on your hull, there are some of us that cringe a bit thinking that would scratch the gel coat for sure, but, you mention using the softer blue brush with the submersible powered brush to keep from scratching the gel coat… could you enlighten us a bit about which scotch brite pad you are using?
Sadly, not too many. My daughter graduated HS this year, so between all her friends grad party's on the weekends and her Senior trip to Banff Canadian Rockies trip, we might have put 8 hours on the engines. Most of the hours were spent towing the kids on tubes. We have a 10 min ride from our cottage to the sand bar where we tie up with the our other family members (1 has a 2008 SX 230, 1 has a 2024 AR 250 (just sold his 2007 SX210 for the AR250), and 1 has a 27 foot tri toon). I bought my AR 220 last year and traded in a 24 foot Bennington pontoon boat I owned since new in 2011. So the motors aren't running long except for tubing.
The economy of the TR-1's is ok. Last I looked on the connext screen, it was about 2.3mpg. Which isn't bad for a twin engine boat. I never did check what was best cruising speed was vs towing a tube, but I know when towing a tube, I can watch my fuel gauge drop significantly after a few runs. My Bennington was over 3mpg at best cruise of 30mph and top end of 45mph. And before the Bennington, I had a 25 foot wellcraft Center Console tournament fishing boat. The Wellcraft was just at 2mpg a best cruise at 35mph burning just over 17 gph and had a 150 gallon fuel tank but topped out over 50mph.
I think the TR-1 are decent motors but its no speed demon. Lots of torque. Its a 36-38-40mph boat whether you have 2, 4 or 8-10 people in the boat and how much fuel / gear you have and if the bimini top is deployed or stored. My previous boats were faster in the top end. But I knew this going into buying it and top speed isn't my concern anymore. The Bennington was great, but dropping lake levels where we boat (Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron) was one of the reason we went to the jet boat.
Plus the fact that the kids wanted to do more watersports and the Bennington was ok, but it couldn't toss around a tube like the Yamaha can. It slid into turns where the Yamaha carves the turn and can throw them outside the wake instantly.
My cousins 230SX with his twin 1.8L at 160hp each will blow me away as he hits over 50mph. My other family member who had the SX210 was slightly faster as well but couldn't handle the rough water like the AR220 and of course his new AR250 is faster too and a beast of a boat. in rough water. Do I wish they put the 1.8L or the 1.9L engines in this size of a hull, hell yes, but then again, the price point goes up substantially.
Its my 2nd year with the boat. While we enjoyed the Bennington and the Wellcraft, we absolutely love this boat. The layout is great. The storage is plentiful. The optional swim up seats are great as is the rear swim deck. It just suits our needs now then before when we were doing more fishing then hanging out on the sandbar or water sports. I do have fishing rod holders on the tower, but It also requires sea bags out on the side to slow the boat down enough to troll for Walleye etc. I didn't trust the factory depth finder, so I opted to have a Garmin 7" side scanning sonar, GPS, chartplotter installed. Which also helps out while we are fishing.
My biggest fear buying this boat in 2024 was the steering concerns. I've only had single and twin outboards in my 40+ years of boating. My family who owns the older jet boats, all had put aftermarket steering enhancement features on their boats and swore by them.. With the new design of the central rudder or fin, I was still skeptical about how this boat would handle at low speeds in the canal or docking. But the first time I launched the boat and brought it over to our dock, I found using the throttles was easy peasy. Put 1 in fwd, 1 in reverse, and you can spin these boats on a dime and use the throttles in fwd, neutral, reverse, to walk it right into the dock. Just like a twin engine outboard. I will say these jet boats probably get a bad name if you own a 190, 195 one that has a single engine. I could see how it would wonder like a drunken monkey going down the sidewalk if it doesn't have steering enhancements.
As far as the scotch brite pads go, its the yellow on one side and green on the other. I only use the yellow which is the soft sponge side. The green side is a bit abrasive in my opinion but I will say there were probably 4 or 5 spots the size of a nickel or quarter where the yellow side pad or the Ryobi wouldn't remove the algae on the hull, so I did use the green side for those couple of spots. Didn't look like it did any scratching of the gelcoat though.
On a side note, I didn't want the blue we got. I liked the black. But my family veto'd me on getting the blue hull color. It has grown on me and we get so many compliments on the hull color and it stands out on the lake vs any other boat. I'm glad they talked me into it
Any other questions, let me know
Thanks
Todd
