Central American taxis

[BWD]

Recently, down south, I had some nice rides on Belizean "taxis."
Apparently a go fast (or splash of) with 2-3 big outboards and jump cabin.
Nice enough ride, maybe 20kts with oh, 30+/- pax, much faster with fewer aboard. Curious if anyone here has experience with these....

[kerosene]

ha - I visited Belize a month or so ago and found the boats quite peculiar. Often 3 x 200hp 2-stroke outboard Yamahas. Same with dive boats - 3x 200hp was very common. I became friends with some diving entrepreneurs and talked boats for a while.

He said that 4-stroke ends up using the same amount of fuel for much higher weight and price. 2-strokes are also extremely simple to fix and maintain the guys can fix them themselves on the islands.

Boats don't generally go out on very rough conditions so flat bottom (or very wide V) towards transom. They also prefer this as on deeper V the center motor would hang too low and would be likely to hit the bottom too often.

I'll post some pics later.

H

[BWD]

Yes, we took a taxi out as a dive boat to snorkel hol chan and I would guesstimate the v aft at 12 deg. And still I saw a few similar triple OBs running with the center motor trimmed up...
Ride in 2ft chop was "almost" comfortable with 20 or so people, actually more comfortable when overloaded like in first pic....
Only saw 4strokes as singles on Japanese style pangas...

Love to see more pics of any Belizean boats, sail or power, did not have time for a lot of pictures...