Here's to hoping we're nearing the end of the winter weather. The sub zero doldrums have made this past winter never ending. Cabin fever has undoubtedly contributed to more than a few moments of tension, and we just need to get some sun! Let's take a moment to put all of the cold weather behind us, and imagine ourselves a few short months from now in a happy, warm place. Close your eyes, take three or four deep breaths and imagine yourself, family, and friends together on your favorite lake. The sun's beating down on you, the children or grandchildren are laughing and splashing while you relax on a new or used pontoon or boat from Family Marine. Ahhhhh.... isn't that nice?
Even though spring has continued to be colder than usual boat sales are warming up. Customers who decided to purchase early, took advantage of early season savings by ordering a pontoon or boat of their dreams while others who purchased early saved big with in stock specials.
Pontoons have been a hot ticket item again for us this year. The most notable Premier model so far has been the 260 Grandview. Customers love the styling and architecture, with the helm elevated 3 steps above the cabin; the Grandview impresses. The most popular model option has to be the RF designated boats. RF stands for rear facing, which is in reference to the port and starboard rear facing lounges at the rear of the boat. Many love the "U" shape lounging area at the bow and stern of the play pen. With an additional two-plus feet that extends out the back; the extended swim platform is standard in the RF designated models of Premier pontoons. The RF model designation is available in Sunsation and Solaris models.
Watch the video (Competitive Test 1) to see another a feature that keeps on gaining popularity, the PTX Performance center tube. This is the center tube that changed the way we think about pontoons. The PTX center tube has the performance characteristics of a classic v-hull style boat, without having to compromise for all the space and storage options available in a pontoon. Watch the "Competitive Test 1" video. That video says it all!
Centurion Tow Boats have been a very exciting product for us this year as well. The 2014 Minneapolis Boat Show confirmed our thoughts, and proved what we thought to be true; prospective inboard owners are very excited about the brand. Centurion has been and continues to be very well known to have set the bench mark when it comes to surf specific boat design; for 2014 they have released the Enzo FX44. The FX44 is Centurions new flag ship boat, taking the flag from still very formidable respected, and well known surf boat the Enzo SV244. Centurion added a number of new riders this year and most well known of the surfers added to the team was the winningest wake surf athlete of all time, Ashley Kidd. Not wanting to give up anything in the wakeskate and wakeboard end of the spectrum, Centurion released the Enzo FX22 as their wakeboard dialed model in 2013, and this year added a number of proven veteran winners to ride the FX22. Adam Fields, Aaron Reed(skate), and Melissa Marquardt are all stoked to be reppin' Centurions "smaller" hammerhead. New options for 2014 are the CATS (Centurion Articulating Tracking System) and RAMFILL ("29 second fill. No pumps. No sacs. No B.S.")available on all SV and FX model Centurions.
There are some very attractive Glastrons in stock both new and non current models. We recently took into inventory 2 brand new 2014 Glastron runabouts; a GTS185 and a GTS205. These are wonderful boats and both are I/O's with Mercruiser engines. The GTS205 is a hot rod. It's got all the performance upgrades you could ask for. This particularly sleek and sporty 20' runabout has the upgraded 350 Magnum MPI 300 hp inboard engine and is equipped with Mercury's Bravo One performance out drive to handle the extra torque delivered from the V8 engine. This boat will run in the mid to upper 50 mph range easy. Check out our "Wholesale Clearance" section for deals on remaining 2013 Glastron runabouts and deck boats.
High Performance Marine Audio & Custom Installation
Wet Sounds Rev 3-some tower speakers and LED lighting.
We get a kick out of building loud stereo systems. Shaun likes to help design them, by first finding out what our customers wants and needs are, then building the system that best fits that person. That's one reason why we do not stock all of our boats with tower speakers. It gives you more choices. We've been selling and installing Wet Sounds for 3 years. We've have installed speakers, amps, built systems, and learned along the way. Keith is the technician and does the installs here at Family Marine. He really does a great job for each and every person.
Coming soon to Family Marine is a Wet Sounds demonstration display featuring all kinds of different speakers, LED's Amps, Equalizer w/ PA Microphone, Bluetooth, Sub, it's gonna be great if you want to hear the difference in person you can now do it all in one place then have it ordered and installed. If you aren't needing help with the install we would be happy to have a consultation and design the system that best suits your listening environments.
One of the coolest things you can do to really look great on the water is some LED lighting! We love how it looks at night and in so many colors. The lights are definitely a head turner. Get it in basic colors or RGBcolor change LED's. They're also available as underwater LED lights to add a glow of color to the water.
NEW Wake Surf boat technology offerings from Centurion Tow Boats.
I'll be honest, I am so excited to get on the water as soon as absolutely possible to do all the pre-delivery inspections on our 2014 Centurion Tow Boats. I plan to document most of, if not everything that I can in the process of testing and delivering a new boat to a customer, and what that requires of our team at Family Marine, and then we will a keep everyone in the know, via social media posts or a blog entry about all the great new features the boats have and how they affect performance. So you'll definitely want to stay tuned for that!
CATS is a new system Centurion developed to help "Roll" the boat to port or starboard to create larger surf wakes. The center rudder turns left or right to assist this.
What I can tell you now is that the CATS(Centurion Articulating Tracking System) is safeguarded to reset itself back to center when the MPH reach 27 and also when below 7. Above 27 could cause damage to the boat and below 7 the CATS fin is rendered nonfunctional. The RAMFILL ballast is SUPER fast (3600 lbs. in 29 sec), and has a plethora of great features! Both of those are discussed in our CATS and RAMFILL videos.
Youth for Christ and Family Marine are proud to announce their inaugural “Centurion World Championship Wake Surf Expo and Silent Auction”. This is a FREE event for the entire family and crew! Family Marine will have their 2014 Centurion Towboats on display for instruction and demo including professional athletes from Centurion with factory support. The entire line will be available including the all-new Enzo FX44, the ultimate wake surf machine and the reigning king of waves in the industry.
Youth, Amateurs, Intermediate and families of all ages are welcome to come out and join us in the spectacular event. If you already own a boat, feel free to bring it out, Family Marine sales staff will be happy to help facilitate the sale and service as well provide estimates, inspection and guidance on maintaining your boat and maximizing value with your boat ownership. We will have new wake surf boards from Liquid Force and Phase 5 Boards for demo and purchase. Wet Sounds High-Performance Marine audio will be on display and we will host a silent auction of new wake equipment and swag for all! You don’t want to miss this event!
For registration please RSVP online or call us at 866-977-BOAT.
We decided to bring in 2 new wake surf manufacturers this year. We like what both have to offer to the. Phase 5 is a proven winner and we had a nice conversation with Drew at Surf Expo. From there I looked around and just kept coming back to Phase 5. We hope our customers like them too! I think you'll find we have a nice selection to choose from. We chose Brigade for a number of reasons, one of which is that Shawn seems like a genuine guy. He thinks out side of the box and wants to see everybody be successful with his product. We appreciate that approach. We also chose Brigade because we had a great reference on each and every model from one family. The Sorensons really liked the Brigade boards and the company over all. Customer feedback is so important to our business and we really appreciate that they took the time to talk with us about their experiences. We look forward to 2014 with both of those manufacturers and of course we still carry Liquid Force, H.O., Hyperlite, and Byerly.
Thanks to Phase 5 for reaching out and donating a board for the charity auction in June. We really appreciate that as well.
Brigade Wakesurf Co.
The "Radical" Surf Style "sKM Custom" Skim Tamarindo Skim
Brigade Wakesurfing Co. really specializes in one off, custom wake surf boards. They are built to best fit each riders taste in artwork and ability. Brigade has just come out with a line of boards that are built with every body in mind. The beauty of it is you can stop in and pick up a Brigade board, fall in love with it then down the road, order to match your specifications. We're excited to be involved with the new dealer program and look forward to you giving them a surf too.
Coming Summer 2014
Some of the exciting things to look forward to
Check our "Events Calendar" frequently for any exciting events that pop up as we get closer to, and through out the summer. We will be on the lake often doing Centurion boat demos. If you'd like to schedule a time to demo a particular boat or Premier PTX Pontoon please email me shaun@familymarinboats.com.
June 28th Wakesurf Expo and Silent Auction for Youth For Christ w/ Centurion Boats and Demos
July 4th Fourth of July!!!
July 18 - 19th MN Wake Surf Championships
August 15 - 16th 10K Wakesurf Open: World Wake Surf Championship Qualifying event
Bookmark this blog and come back for different specials and new product announcements.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Everything you need to know about Propellers but were afraid to ask!!!
PROPELLERS - Now here is a difficult topic to discuss.
So often people come in asking for a new prop but few understand how important it is to get the correct prop for the particular application in order to obtain peak performance. Not all props are created equal. There are many factors that go into a propeller - Pitch, Cup, Rake, Diameter, Number of Blades and of course Material.
A proper pitch prop MUST be used in order to allow the engine to turn the proper RPM at Wide Open Throttle. Most, (but not all) engines today are made to run at an operating range of 5000 to 6000 RPM WOT. Manufactures of 4 stroke engines that we carry, tell us that they want their engines to rev 6000 RPM with a light load in the boat. That way when there is a heavy load, it still runs in the operating range.
Pitch is what allows us to achieve the correct RPM.
So what is pitch?
The easiest way to explain pitch is to think that pitch is how many inches a prop would travel in one revolution through a solid object. A 20 Inch prop would travel 20 inches, right? Not always.
If a 20 pitch prop is made of Aluminum, there is a loss of approximately 25% due to slip and flex going through water. Water is not a solid object. Because of the material aluminum is soft and flexible. Aluminum blades need to be thicker than stainless and therefore are not as efficient. So a 20 Pitch prop actually moves about 15 inches per revolution. That's a significant loss.
Stainless Props are thinner and stronger. They do not slip and flex like a aluminum prop does. They say that a stainless prop only has 10% loss to slip and flex. So that same 20 pitch prop moves 18 inches per revolution. Much lore efficient but of course more expensive.
Because a stainless prop is more efficient, that 20 pitch prop will lug the engine down, not allowing it to achieve the RPM that an aluminum would. Therefore when going from aluminum to stainless, you must drop down a pitch to maintain that 6000 RPM at WOT. Of course stainless being so much stronger, there is more of a likely-hood you could do damage to the gears and bearing inside the lower unit when hitting submerged objects.
Cup, Rake, Number of Blades and Diameter also play an important part of propeller selection, but to keep things simple I'll leave those topics for another day.
Happy Boating and see you on the water
Tom Rieschl
Family Marine
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
PONTOON PERFORMANCE
Good Day Everyone.
Often we get asked about how fast a pontoon will go with a particular horse power engine so I thought I'd give you some rough examples.
Let's take a 22 ft pontoon that weighs 1850 LBS dry and through a 50 HP High Thrust Yamaha on it. With an average load in the boat, it'll go about 15 MPH depending on the water conditions. Now lets put a 60 HP on it. Guess what - about 17 MPH. How about a 70 HP. Now we're up to 19 MPH. 90 HP ='s 22 MPH and a 115 HP is right around 25 MPH. (All these are rough numbers and vary with different conditions)
As you can see, it takes a lot of HP to get a pontoon to perform well. Why is that.
Well if you think about the hydrodynamic design of the round tubes, they are kind of a water plow. There is a lot of wetted surface on the bottom of the tubes creating drag, unlike that of a mono-hull like a runabout or fishing boat has.
If we built a flat bottom tube would it perform better? You bet it would. That's what a lot of manufacturers call "Lifting Strakes". These Lifting Strakes are long aluminum channels that
run the length of the tube and create lift to push the pontoon up and out of the water, which creates less drag for better performance. The thing is you have to have a large enough motor to get the boat to lift. We suggest at least a 90 HP. Above is a sample of lifting strakes (not including the center tube). These lifting strakes generally add about 5 MPH. When you add Sea Legs to a pontoon, you generally loose about 5 MPH so lifting strakes can be an added benefit.
As the popularity of pontoons continues to grow leaps and bounds, more manufacturers and coming out with different interior designs to meet the demands of our customers. Premier Pontoons are one of these Manufacturers.
Premier has for a long time been one of the leaders of the industry when it comes to creative interior designs. Take a look at the 27', to 31' Boundary Waters, Grand Entertainer, Grand View models and you'll see what I'm talking about. Here's a link to their web site; http://www.pontoons.com/
Premier has recently announced a new model for 2014. The Sunsation 220 & 240 RF (Rear Facing Lounges). This seating arrangement has been available in the more expensive "Solaris" models for some time. Now it's available in the Sunsation models at a more affordable priced. Family Marine currently has one in stock and 2 more on order. Below are diagrams of 2 boats we have on order. The boat we have in stock does not have the 2 captains chairs in the port bow area.
Soon we'll have the in stock boat assembled so we can take photo's of it and put it on our web site. As many of you know, we'll also do a video description of it for our site.
I am amazed at the popularity of this model so far this year. We have received countless calls inquiring about them. My estimation is that all three of these boats will be sold soon.
In talking with our sales representative from Premier, he is stating that if we ordered a boat today, we would not see it by Memorial Day. WOW!!! He is also anticipating that if they receive as many boat orders this March as they did last year, they could be sold out until late July. DOUBLE WOW!!!
If anyone is interested in one of these boats, I hope you'll check give us a call and we can set up an appointment of you to come as view them.
Average Ice out is only 5-6 weeks away! Possibly less if we are lucky!......? One of my favorite area lakes is Green. Here is a link to the ice-out and ice-in dates from as far back as 1897!!!! Over the years i have looked at the link below quite a few times. Enjoy. & Think spring. Daylights savings this weekend (Spring ahead) March 9th 2014 Official first day of spring is two weeks away March 20th 2014 Green Lake Ice Out History Happy Spring Tom Family Marine
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Good Day to Everyone and Happy March (Although the weather doesn't seem like it).
Boating season is nearly upon us. Think about it this way, Ice Out is usually around April 15th - That's only 6 weeks away. We're getting closer!!!
Today I would like to talk about a question we get asked from every boat buyer.
"What is the carrying capacity of this boat"
The Coast Guard requires every boat to have a Capacity Sticker telling you how many people the boat can carry. However this capacity can be somewhat misleading.
The capacity sticker on one of our most popular pontoons (Premier 220 Sunsation) say's 11 Persons OR 1560 LBS OR 2245 LBS Persons Motor and Gear. What exactly does that mean.
Well if you divide 1560 LBS by 11 persons that would equal 142 LBS per person. Now we all know that your not going to have 11 persons that weigh 142 LBS each on board the boat, so what they are saying is that you might have some people that weigh more and some that weigh less. As long as you Average 142 LBS. Could you have 15 person if they all weighed 100 LBS - YES, but that's not likely.
It also say's 2245 Persons, Motor and Gear. What does that mean?
The boat is rated at Maximum 115 HP and a 115 HP motor weighs approximately 400 LBS. So that's the weight they use in calculating the 11 Persons. If you had a 40 HP motor that weighs 215 LBS could you carry more People - The answer is YES.
Lets say you have a 40 HP motor that weighs 215 LBS, a battery that weighs 75 LBS, Full tank of Gas that weighs 135 LBS and 100 LBS of gear. That totals 525 LBS. Now take 2245 LBS and subtract 525 LBS and that leaves you with 1720 LBS. Now Divide 1720 LBS by 142 LBS per person equals 12 Persons.
There you have it. The thing is that most Water Patrol Officers don't understand this and will probably ticket you if you have more than 11 Persons.
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