Rain, rain, go away. Well it's OK, you can stay

Summer and the boating season are about 18 weeks long in Northern New England. May 15th through mid-September is about as good as it gets. We all try to stretch it earlier or later but let's call it 18 weeks for my purposes here. (In fact I tell all of the boaters from out-of-state that September and October get really cold so they leave and I have the ocean to myself on those spectacular fall days)

So here we are in mid-June and Tiger Woods is slogging around Bethpage Black trying to find his golf ball and I am looking out the office window at a never ending rain. I am discouraged until my phone rings and it's a call I have been expecting. On the line is Jed Elderkin. Jed is the owner of E Marine Australia and he's a very successful importer of Back Cove boats down under. Jed has placed Back Coves all over  Australia and recently delivered one to Tasmania and another to the city of my birth, Adelaide, South Australia.

Jed (Jedediah actually) and his wife Evie are from Maine and have returned home for a visit with family. Now you would think that if we are going to get together we would not go boating. But quite the contrary. On Saturday I am heading for Robinhood, Maine and will meet them for dinner there. Rain you say? To heck with the weather, I have a Back Cove 33 with an enclosed helm deck and days like this are why we keep boating while all those sporty white things are tied to the dock. They would get wet if they went out and we don't care. In fact having a few less boats on the water is OK with me.

But getting out on the water and meeting our good friends for dinner will make it a sunny day. Let it rain and hopefully Tiger will make some putts.

Happy Father's Day to all you Dads

Stern Thrusters and Avoiding being the Laughing Stock

Leaving the marina and returning to the dock are the two most anxious moments in a boaters day. After all if you mess up it is a little embarrassing. I for one will admit to one very embarrassing departure on board my Back Cove 29. Luckily for me there were only a couple of dock boys who witnessed my stupidity and a kind word to them ensured that the story would go no further. IN truth I bet they are still laughing about it in the dock boats office at the marina.

My error was to leave the dock with the powercord still attached. OK there I said it OK? I was truly surprised at how that tether controlled my desire to turn port and go ahead until I finally realized what was happening.

Not that a stern thruster has anything at all to do with power cords but one sure way to look like a pro both coming and going is to use a stern thruster installed. I was not a huge fan until I tried one after all is it really manly to have people know that you have one? One day I was discussing this with a very experienced professional captain and his advice was "use whatever tools you have available to make all of your maneuvers as smooth and as safe as you can".  I can tell you that now I impress even the real;ly experienced guys with by comings and goings, in any wind and tide conditions.

 

In this image you can see the thruster body and on either side a downward facing cowl which prevents to thruster from sucking air down and into the tube and increases efficiency. One you try one you won't want to be without it.

Back Coves are selling and grass is growing

As you might imagine I get asked by lots of people, "how are you guys doing in this economy?"

Perhaps not the best blog topic but what the heck I'll write about it and let the readers decide if it's interesting or not.

Well, the plain and simple truth is that it's tough but we Mainiacs are used to tough. A lot of our dealers were well stocked when the financial meltdown beganand they have had to hold boats in inventory for longer than they would like. But I am really pleased to say that a lot of stock boats have sold to new owners over the last few months and things are looking quite bright as we enter the month of May. Our annualized boat sales are down from 2008 but nowhere near the drops that have been seen by the "white plastic boat guys" as we call them around here. 

We're here for the long run. Boaters will always enjoy boating and that is not going to change. Sure boating will take a hit just like every other outdoor activity that has a cost associated with it. We are doing fine thank you very much and will continue to work our way through the downturn. After all, the snow is gone now and the grass is growing again.

In Maine that's cause for optimism !

Great weather weekend for a new boating season

A lot of you have great boating weather year round but here in Maine, boating weather starts late and ends early, so when it does come, enthusiasts get very excited. This weekend looks really great but most boats are still in the parking lot with their shrink wrap cocoons over them. My wife and I on the other hand launched our Back Cove 33 Paper Moon last week and ran her down to Boothbay Harbor on Friday and then to her home port of South Freeport, Maine on Saturday.

One of my favorite things about our home port of South Freeport is something that only boaters can see  As you approach past the tiny island named "Pound of Tea", a castle turret appears on the top of the hill overlooking the Harraseeket River. The history of this turret is that it was once part of the Casco Castle. "In 1903, the castle and an amusement park were built here by Amos Gerald to encourage travel by trolley cars, although the hotel would burn in 1914."

 

The turret remains in place to this day and as our summer season begins I look forward to seeing it each time I return to port with the sun glinting through it's windows.

Back Cove 37 Virtual Tour available now

By far the most popular features of our web site are the video footage and the virtual tours of our boat models. I just received a link to the Back Cove 37 tour and thought you might enjoy seeing it. 

I love technology and the company that produces these for me are top shelf.

BTW the "rustic" building in which this was shot is not the clean modern Back Cove facility spoken of last week on the blog. This is Portland Yacht Services where the annual Maine Boat Builders Show is held each March.

Back Cove Plant Tours

I am often asked "if it would be OK to come for a plant tour?" Are you kidding me? We are so proud of what we do and how we do it that we welcome all plant tours at Back Cove Yachts. In fact the "yard" (as we call them in Maine) is our best selling tool so be forewarned that if you come to the yard you may end up buying a boat whether that was what you started out to do or not.

 

The Back Cove yard is the large building in the center right and in the lower left corner of this image is  the old shop where the first Back Cove 29's and 26's were built. By chance, as the popularity of the Back Cove began to grow, the building across the street where Nautica once made and warehoused their clothing line, became available and we decided to purchase this magnificent facility. The conversion to boat building was accomplished and today we have one of the best boat building facilities in the country.

If your spring and summer travels call for a trip to Maine, be sure to call and set up a tour. You won't be disappointed and you'll enjoy what you see. We would welcome your visit Monday through Thursday.

Back Cove 37 Yanmar test data is in.

As promised here is the test data for the Yanmar 6CX CR engine at 530 horsepower. I have been anxious to see these results myself because so many of our potential buyers are sailors looking to move to powerboats and Yanmar has been their engine of choice for a lot of their sailing life. I also have been keen to see it because Yanmar had this engine available in the past as a 465 and then 500 horsepower non common rail GTE series engine. It was a real workhorse for us in many of our Sabre applications and I always loved the torque curves and the feeling that a larger displacement engine like this has.

It's another great choice for powering the Back Cove 37

Download BC37_Yanmar_6CXM-GTE_530mHp

Testing Before You Buy

A quick thirty minute sea-trial is never enough to really get the feel of a boat prior to buying one. I can tell you a lot of funny stories from "our side of the table" about sea trials. My favorite is the fellow who made sea trial appointments with a whole series of dealers and showed up with the picnic basket and the entire family at the appointed hour each time. Only when a group of dealers were telling client stories at the bar one evening did they all come to realize that they had shared the same "prospect" and had given this family a whole series of days on the water at no cost whatsoever.

A better way to approach the need for more than just 30 minutes away from the dock is to charter. When we first launched the Back Cove 33 we were invited by our dealer in Bellingham, Washington to bring Motorboating Magazine to their location and use one of their stock boats to do the test for the magazine. As funny as this may seem, this three day adventure in the San Juan Islands actually sold me on getting a Back Cove 33. You can read about that charter on our web site and find contact information for our dealer there as well.

Horses

The most common question we get with our single engine boats is "should I buy the larger engine?" The (rough) answer is quite simple. If you want to cruise all day at 20 knots, take the standard engine. If you want to cruise at 24 knots buy the upgrade. There is a fairly direct relationship between fuel consumption and horsepower. And for any given hull design and weight there is a "crouch factor" that determines how much drag that hull creates. In other words, it takes the same amount of horsepower to go the same speed, regardless of engine size. Larger engines do however permit the user to cruise faster and top out at a higher speeds. They also help the owner to adjust for boat loading and bottom cleanliness.

Here's the performance data for the Cummins 600 QSC8.3. As soon as we have tested the Yanmar 530 and the Cummins 480 we'll show you those too.

Download BC37_Cummins_QSC8.3_600mHp_D001  

(Quiet) Power when you need it

I don't rave about specific brands as a rule. If you do that someone who sells another brand is likely to ask why you haven't given them this same amount of publicity. Of course when it comes to gen sets and engines everyone has an opinion. I have mine and this is my blog so here goes.

Gen sets are fantastic tools to have on board a boat. They allow you to run every electrical appliance you have without the "umbilical cord" being attached to the grid. On our Back Cove 37 the standard equipment includes the Onan EQD gen set which in my view is the best gen set available today. About five years or so ago Onan made up it's corporate mind to create the best gen sets and staffed an engineering group to create it. Technically they are superior as you can read on their web site. System diagnostics are easy so that technicians can readily detect and correct problems should they occur. In our history with Onan we have had few issues and a couple of operator errors, but little to speak of. Everything from control panels to sound shields, just works.

But let's face it there are a lot of places where powerboat generators are not welcomed because of noise. Gen sets have gotten a bad wrap. High speed (3600 rpm) gen sets that were popular in smaller sizes and installed on less expensive boats, created a poor image in many a quiet anchorage. Today's gen sets that are slower turning and are fully enclosed not only in a sound shield but also within a well sound-proofed engine compartment. They are barely audible from the next boat in the anchorage.

I like to tell the story about one client who was very concerned about gen set noise and who asked that we start the gen set so he could hear how loud it was from within the cabin of the boat. I then told him that the set was already running and watched as his jaw dropped.