Thanks for the review
@bobbie !
So... Here's my un(biased) review of this boat.
For months I've been receiving emails and texts with pictures of this new Forward drive system. All of the pictures, predictably, showed amazing surf waves and looked gorgeous! The keptic in me said "no way, these are all pics from sales reps and manufacturers tryong to sell me more product." I wanted to believe that the pics were all real and this wouldn't be the disappointment of the decade... But the skeptic in me held firm.
Flash "forward" to today when my Regal Rep was able to bring his demo 2100 Surf down. My expectations were pretty low and I figured we'd see a small wave that passed as surfable and call it a day, boy was I wrong.
The boat itself is very nice and has the usual for and finish that you'd expect out of Regal, most notably though is the new upholstery that really looks fantastic!
On to the drive... Because it hangs from the transom in a different manner it requires a custom trailer. The trailer looked great and fit the boat well, no disappointments there.
Once off the trailer I immediately noticed a difference in handling. The boat seemed more responsive and you could literally feel that the props were forward of where they normally are. It made the boat feel much more responsive around the dock.
Take off and high speed handling were largely the same with the only exception being tight cornering. The boat simply handles fantastically well in corners and turns sharper than any other sterndrive I've ever driven and is not far from turning like a Yamaha.
Once I got a feel for the boat it was time to setup the surf wave. It was incredibly easy and all it required was filling all of the ballast. There are three bags in this boat which consist of 250 lbs on each aft corner and one 500 lBs sack in the ski locker. Fill time was about 3 minutes.
With the ballast full we set the Zero Off speed control to 11mph and took off. Once the boat passes 3 mph there are two button that light up in the touch screen, one for surf left and one for surf right. Simply hit the side you want and the Trim tabs almost instantly deploy and the surf wave appears. We played with tons of different settings and found that the boat evenly weighted with speeds between 11 and 12 mph performed best.
Interestingly, the wave shape is lost my controlled by the trim of the outdrive. As you trim the drive up it pulls the back end of th boat down and creates a bigger wave.
The wave. While it was not the biggest wave I've ever seen (g25) it was very large and had loads of push. It was also very, very clean! I enjoyed surfing it with little effort and it was steep enough to pull entry of tricks on. I'd say the average to above average surfer would not tire of this wave and will have no complaints!!!
TL;DR: The 2100 or 2300 surf should really be on your short list to consider for a surf boat!
