Hickman Sea Sled Information

I now professionally drive a couple deep V water taxis.
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Compared to Serenity, she wallows like a pig, and steers like a cow. I did not know how good I had it. So comparisons:
The first boat is about 11m/3m, with twin volvo penta v6 340's, and SS doprops on twin legs.
The other is a 31'/9.4m loa 9.5'/2.9m vessel, with a D6 380 volvo penta, and duoprops on the leg.
The smaller wallows and rolls on lumpy water. Steering is poor: any helm briskly rolls her accordingly, but she only slowly and resentfully actually changes her heading, prefering to adopt the roll as a new stable angle of lol, but continuing to run straight. At 3000rpm against a 5k redline she does 24knots loaded or 27 empty.
Turning radius at idle is about a boat length.
The big girl handles better, but split sticks will do that. Can't really compare.

In comparison Serenity does not roll. At all. She lays flat on the water, and follows the water contour.
Serenity steers like driving a car. Slight roll into the turn with responsive and decisive steering. Infinitely preferable.
Turning radius at idle is about 15% of a boat length.

Comparing hp/rpm curves for the Volvo vs Evinrude, Serenity is a little faster at the same load- a ton, and 200hp, 29knots vs 24knots but that doesn't really mean much: she's also lighter, and burning about 30% more fuel per hour to get there. But a new perfectly maintained volvo should definitely have better fuel efficiency than a 12 year old 2-stroke.

The feel going over rough water at speed is pretty comparable with the smaller, but Serenity 83% as long, and far lighter, so I call that a win.
 
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12 pax SVOP boat.
 
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