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.

Here's to having a great summer on the water

Tom @ FamilyMarineBoats.com