Well we've had the Crownline 180BR for 2 weekends now and we've made full use of the time - the first weekend we took some good friends out for a ride, they're boat owners themselves and were able to share some great tips about handling the boat at speed which our close handling introductory course didn't cover. This weekend on Saturday I went out with the same friends, but just me and the husband, him in his boat and me in mine, we just took a few piccies of each others boats, then today we took another family out as it was a fantastic boating day, they loved the trip especially getting up on the plane.
I reckon the top speed of the 180BR with the 3.0 Mercruiser is 70kph, that was on Saturday with just me in the boat so very little load. Fuel consumption so far is about 10 - 12l/hour. The boat gets up on the plane very nicely and is fairly easy to trim.
We've named her "Stimulated" as we financed her partly from the GFC government stimulus package!
Any problems? A couple. On the first weekend the engine had a tendency to stall at idle which was rather annoying as when you're at idle you are often approaching something fairly solid so you really don't want to stall. However this has not happened this weekend at all so the problem may have just been to do with the brand newness of the engine.
The other problem is that the thumbscrews holding the Bimini up seem to work themselves undone as you're under way, I find I have to tighten them up every half hour or so otherwise they come undone completely and one or other side of the Bimini collapses. It's a minor annoyance but if anyone else has had this problem on any boat and fixed it I'd be interested to hear about it.
Here's a few photos -
M.V. Stimulated hooked up and ready to go -
Docked at Patterson River -
Me at the wheel -
Leaving my friend in my wake. Seconds later he was airborne....
In front of the wreck HMVS Cerberus ( http://www.cerberus.com.au/ ) -
My friend helpfully increasing the depth of Port Philip by using the onboard toilet -
And a very tight fit in the garage - we call this storeroom "the prop room"! -
JB