Yesterday I had the first hour of SeaKeeper RIDE on my 2020 C-24., tested it with the installing tech who also has the SKR on his personal boat and has installed a good many of them. The conditions were a little benign to really give it a go, but the first hour or so was quite enlightening. This C24 has the Yammy 250 engine and I switched to a 15P 4-blade prop about 18 months ago, from the SWS 3 blade 16P. That was a big improvement, so we kept the 4 blade on the boat with the SKR.
The initial impression: in calm waters: the list and overly strong steering torque were mostly gone, and the habit of veering was also gone. This made it more pleasurable to operate right off the bat. We ran the boat with the "even par" setting on the SKR to start, and trimmed the engine as we normally would.
After some playing around, we set the nose down a bit more than the standard setting and trimmed the engine up a bit. That seemed to be the happy spot....which was good info. The tech who ran with me did indeed agree with me that the C24 wants to run. I had told him it was happier at 5100 rpm than it was at 42-44....and more efficient. He believes me now. This is still true with the SKR though I am convinced I can tinker with rpm and SKR and engine trim and find more efficiency at lower RPM...just gonna take some tinkering.
The mind blowing part was crossing wakes, which using this boat in the ICW is something we do constantly. Crossing incoming wakes this boat tends to slam and land hard unless you slow down a good bit. The SKR allowed us to cross faster with no slam. Pretty impressive. The following sea wake crossing was even more interesting. My worst moment on the C24 was crossing some wakes while passing a boat in some narrow channels on maybe my second trip on it. The boat had totally become disconnected form the water on one side of the steps and almost turned sideways. Scared the ever livin F out of me......I have generally avoided passing boats unless they were very small since then.
With the SKR, it took the following sea wakes no problem. So the ability to handle those wakes tells me a lot about how this system will work to improve the boat significantly. Very anxious to get it back out of the shop - and run her with the SKR in some of the tougher conditions we face. Also exciting is that there is a learning curve on these....so they tend to just work better as the AI part of their system learns your boat, and as you learn the SKR system too.
I cannot recommend these highly enough....
The initial impression: in calm waters: the list and overly strong steering torque were mostly gone, and the habit of veering was also gone. This made it more pleasurable to operate right off the bat. We ran the boat with the "even par" setting on the SKR to start, and trimmed the engine as we normally would.
After some playing around, we set the nose down a bit more than the standard setting and trimmed the engine up a bit. That seemed to be the happy spot....which was good info. The tech who ran with me did indeed agree with me that the C24 wants to run. I had told him it was happier at 5100 rpm than it was at 42-44....and more efficient. He believes me now. This is still true with the SKR though I am convinced I can tinker with rpm and SKR and engine trim and find more efficiency at lower RPM...just gonna take some tinkering.
The mind blowing part was crossing wakes, which using this boat in the ICW is something we do constantly. Crossing incoming wakes this boat tends to slam and land hard unless you slow down a good bit. The SKR allowed us to cross faster with no slam. Pretty impressive. The following sea wake crossing was even more interesting. My worst moment on the C24 was crossing some wakes while passing a boat in some narrow channels on maybe my second trip on it. The boat had totally become disconnected form the water on one side of the steps and almost turned sideways. Scared the ever livin F out of me......I have generally avoided passing boats unless they were very small since then.
With the SKR, it took the following sea wakes no problem. So the ability to handle those wakes tells me a lot about how this system will work to improve the boat significantly. Very anxious to get it back out of the shop - and run her with the SKR in some of the tougher conditions we face. Also exciting is that there is a learning curve on these....so they tend to just work better as the AI part of their system learns your boat, and as you learn the SKR system too.
I cannot recommend these highly enough....
