Re: 26 ft cr251 Members First Post
Be careful lightening it up to much, that weight helps the boat handle to a certain degree. Rolling it over will be very possible with what your talking about doing (the perfect storm would be almost empty fuel tanks no passengers, and some wind, with 2' waves, I believe you could easy put it on its side. Mine has scared me a few times, as these boats really handle and will turn sharp. There is a fine balance, I know that light weight is speed and low gas consumption, but it will ride high, very high. All that hight has to be figured into the width, they are not wide boats. I have a normal 350 260 hp in mine and the 1/2 inch plywood with vinyl floors, and lots of fishing gear, with a hard top full of heavy glass, so this hard top is a big wind block. In other words its heavy for this boat, not to heavy but when loaded with 4 to 6 people is within 800 to 600 pounds of its max over all weight capacity. The boat will still go 40 to 42 with real bad bottom paint, and with the bottom paint fixed with Ultralux Teflon stuff they recommended i expect almost 10mph more out of it. Now there is such a thing as a beer can with a motor effect you get with light boats and big horse power, its cool one time, neat twice then sucks after that. In any water other than flat, light weight is bad. I was going to replace my floor with alum (I even am a alum welder) but have changed my mind after using it a season. To lighten it 600 pound may be to much 300 would not be a big deal or even 400 but once you start to get over that, I would hope you put allot of people in it or the ride will be unpleasant. An alum stern is a bad idea for what you will get for your trouble, if you do built it make it much heavier than you think should, these motors torque hard on the stern believe it or not, if you have to put anything on it it will be a pain finding a solid spot to mount it, as much as i like alum I do like a good wood stern.
If you build it right with Marina plywood and paint and seal everything, you will never have to worry about it, so give your kids something to do in 40 years. Wood really soaks up allot of noise and vibrations that appear if its not there as well. I bet the difference between a wood floor and aluminum (I never figured it out, but if you have let me know) is less than 50 pounds for the whole boat. That's equal to the weight of 7 gal of fuel, so is it worth it? It will be a cool experiment but costly if it doesn't work out.
Have fun but be very safe the first few trip out.
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