Aussie made 39' Ocean Trek with Levi Surface Drives

Just for semantics, a surface drive, how does it perform in the rough stuff? The notion it drives at the surface has me wondering what happens if the hull of the cat lifts on one stern corner. My cat was in some really bad weather today and even my props came out a few times briefly..nothing seriously bad.

So what is the upside or downside to surface drives?

 

please see my new thread. You can help me.

 

Hi there
Did you have a better photo of your allycat, I have purchased the sister boat to the 39ft oceantrek exactly the same, only ive got yanmar diesels and qspd surface drives, I am looking at repowering the boat, however unsure of what hp outboards to go, boat is weighing in at around 12 tonne and 40ft long with duck board, only drawing 700mm to 800mm, before making the decision, thought I would jump on here and ask if anyone has successfully repowered one of these ocean treks, bridge deck on these girls seem to sit in the water unlike other cats, she's currently got 2 400hp yanmars 24valve, married up to style 1 qspd drive units with composite boxing around I will upload a photo for better reference.

 

G'day BB - welcome to the Forum!

Re your Oceantrek, what has made you decide to change from your Yanmar diesels and surface drives in favour of going to outboard engines?
I am sure that the Yanmars will have a lot more torque than outboard engines of similar power, so you will probably have to install O/B engines of much greater power in order to try to achieve the same speed as before?

Re the ally cat that we built here, here are a few photos of her. She was initially designed for doing kayak tours, with 20 kayaks stowed on the aft deck, and 40 punters further forward.
But they later found that the average punter (usually overweight, and visiting our island for a day on a cruise ship) was too unfit for even a modest amount of kayaking, and all they really wanted to do was to go snorkelling with the turtles (who are real rock stars here) and have a rum punch (or two) afterwards.
So they got rid of the kayaks, installed some seating on the aft deck, and they now carry up to 50 punters on snorkelling tours instead.

Almost 20 years later, I saw a mention of the Kayak Express in the USA which also does kayaking tours.
Kayak Express https://dlba-inc.com/kayak-express/
https://www.moraniron.com/marine-pp





The 70 hp engines were later replaced with a pair of 115 hp motors, and when these were due to be replaced she was fitted with a pair of 150 hp Yamahas - the photo below is rather old, and she now has 150 hp Suzukis.



She initially had a bow ramp for easy beach landings - it has a 'kink' in it, due to being dropped one day accidentally while underway, and it acted like a massive anchor, stopping the boat immediately



After they cancelled the kayak tours, we did some mods at the front and installed a dedicated swimming ladder for the snorkellers instead of the ramp.