www.iFourWinns.com

Quick note on a nice discovery on my weekend of tinkering. There has been a lot of discussion about being able to view data displayed on the C or E80 elsewhere. Some of us have added multi-function displays to accomplish this. What I discovered this weekend, for those who may not know, is that a lot of Sea Talk information can also be displayed single-page style on the autopilot control head, if you have one. I have the E80 and ST6002 control head, so I can only speak to it working with this setup. You can assign quite a few pages with data, like SOG, depth, etc. It is quite nice to have depth reading in BIG numbers at times. And while my first thought was - this is only good if you're not using the autopilot, now that the autopilot can be controlled from the E80 with the new software (V 4.29), perhaps you can have it all - I haven't tried it out yet. And I'm guessing the functionality of the autopilot controls doesn't depend on your having the heading displayed.

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Bill, I took your advice and called customer service with the Hull ID # and they were able to bring up all the specs on my boat. They have no record of doing any custom wirering for my boat and don't show that they charged the dealer for any such wiring. The dealer is going to hear it from me tomorrow. He charged me $455 and said that he's just passing on what FourWinns charged him.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

Quick Delivery Recap...

At long last, the new V358 rolled into town a week ago on a beautiful, summer-like day. I'm happy to report that everything went smoothly from off-load to first docking at my home port (OK, I took a few passes and there were no other boats in yet, but it was still smooth). The majority of the punch-list items had been handled and the remaining few are being dealt with today now that the parts are in. Spent the weekend cruising close to home at idle, practicing docking with the twins & bow thruster (haven't touched the wheel once) and configuring electronics. Really looking forward to getting her up to cruising speed once the spring debris clears and I can get out on The River. But essentially, the long winter's journey has happily come to a close. Thanks for the advice and thumbs up along the way!

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Really hard to appreciate the mass of these beasts but the 2nd pic really gives an impression of size. Not going to bother saying how beatiful it looks - sure you already know that. Guess I should have stayed in school longer

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2008 Four Winns 210 5.7 GI/SX
2007 GMC Sierra 2500 Crew
1966 Fed-Up Wife

Hey Sierra, yours looks bigger than mine does and no I am not peaking!

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2008 Four Winns V358 (T 6.2L Merc Bravo III's with DTS and SeaCore)
2006 Sea Ray 340DA
2006 Sea Ray 320DA
2005 Maxum 3100 SE

Yup, put it next to a vehicle and you get a better idea of scale.

Love the two-tone color scheme, very nice!

You can also get the data on other brand screens over the SeaTalk2 network connection. ST2 is literally just NMEA2000 with a different connector. Splice a cable and you can use regular NMEA2k displays. I'm considering using a Lowrance LMF-400 for a display down in the cabin. Mainly to give the admiral a way to see water temp, depth and lat/long info.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Yea baby!!!!! Picked up my 358 yesterday!!! Man what a boat. Our Sea trial was from Red Bank NJ to Jersey City and back. Yup, under the Verrazano Bridge and into the Hudson River. Well aside from a minor punch list of things to correct the boat ran beautifully. As I expressed before my concern has been around the power of the 5.7 inboards. Well my fears were put to rest as the 5.7's pushed us through some real slop with no problem at all. Punched the throttles and came up out of the hole nicely. Plained off at around 3500 RPM with 3 overweight men and full gas and full fresh water tanks. Cruised at around 3700 RPM and she was running about 26-27mph. The ride was smooth as the deep V cuts through chop easily. Maxed out the throttles as per the captains instructions to make sure she held the RPM. cranked up to about 5300rpm and clocked 35.6MPH. (this was all done while inside the river before hitting open water). Once we hit the real slop, about 4' chop with a 20-25mph wind she handled exceptionally well. I throttled her up and down so as not to pound as we came off of some of the larger swells. The engine sync was a thing of beauty. I only needed to handle one throttle. In close quarters around the dock she handled nicely. The controls took a little getting used to. When in reverse there seems to be quite a bit of dead area in the throttle control before you get any RPM increase. Has anyone else noticed this. The captain that was with us told me that was normal for the electronic controls. Mechanically she checked out with an A+ no problems except for a loose strainer cap that we discovered when we got back to the dock from the noticeable water in the bilge. My home port is about 35 miles South and we need to run outside along the coast to the Manasquan inlet and the weather is not going to be favorable at all this weekend so she is going to sit at the dealers dock for the coming week. Gives them the time they need to correct the items we found. here a few of the issues.
* In cockpit we got an Ice maker instead of the refigerator we ordered. (you would think they
would check the order when the boat came in and called Fourwinns immediately)
* Engine hatch binds up when closing (you have to step on the portside front corner for it to
go down all the way. (you would think that the service tech that checked out the boat
would have noticed that. It's pretty obvious)
* Quite a few of the snaps on the enclosure don't line up.
* Portside side curtain on camper back has a tear in it.
* Corian top around sink has a large scratch
* Latch on Door from swim platform does not latch. (Magnet holds but mechanical latch does
not engage).
* Matress cover had several stains on it.

All this stuff is pretty minor as far as i am concered as long as my dealer corrects it all this week I will be a very happy owner come next friday night. Sorry I don't have any pics posted yet. My camera broke the night before so I used my dads and he took it home with him. Should be getting pics from him during the week. I got the Blue stripe with white hull. She really looks magnificent. Fourwinns did a great job with the fit and finish.
Oh, in another thread there was discussion about storage of the cockpit table and I suggested making some mounts under the engine compartment hatch. I looked at this yesterday and there does not seem to be enough space between the bottom side of the hatch and the top of the risers. I didn't seem to find any other logical place for it.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

Didn't you read the specs? With the Mercs the boat is 2' shorter

Rberm - love your delivery report! Can't wait to open mine up again. I'm a little surprised he had you crank it to WOT so soon, but hopefully he knows more than I do. As I'm sure you know - it is really important that during break-in you don't hang at one RPM level for too long - try to shake it up by even a few hundred every couple of minutes. Some of your minor items were on my list too:
- My transom door also did not latch - they did a very nice job shimming out the latch to meet the bolt. Love the magnets!
- I also have misaligned snaps on one piece of canvas (port-side aft as well). We're going to start with a fresh piece and put the snaps in to match their counterparts on the hull.

Also, my engine hatch closed without assistance, but it's a little tight in one area as it sets. The alignment will certainly shift as the boat settles into its own weight.

I'm really impressed with the fit and finish, the quality of the materials, the comfort of the cockpit and cabin and the ergonomics in general. It really is an elegant boat with performance to match.

I'm curious to hear feedback on the amount of water to expect in the bilge with the inboards. My 260DA i/o bilge was bone-dry, but I've been told that will no longer be the case due to the shafts.

Can't wait to get back to her tomorrow!!

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Glad to hear the trial went well! Also glad to hear you're not rushing the outside trip until it's all sorted out (boat and weather).

My transom door lost it's pin last year. The magnet does a heckuva job keeping it shut. You'll want to check that release pin now and then to make sure it hasn't worked loose. Mine did and when the the handle release pin unscrews it will let the latch pin pop out. I watched the latter roll right off the swim platform. Ordering a new set is on that To Do list... I seem to recall mine not lining up exactly right either, but loosening the hinge mounting screws allows realigning enough to correct it. You do need to be careful to remember to make sure the door is OPEN before raising the hatch. Otherwise it'll bind against the hatch while it gets raised. No biggie as there's not enough sudden motion of the hatch to do any real damage if you make this mistake. That's how I learned about the hinge realignment...

I'd imagine the engine hatch alignment is similarly adjustable. But it'd take a forklift to move it properly. The dealer should've indeed addressed that. But given the 'start of the season' crush of activity it's unfortunately not a surprise to hear of a dealer screwing it up.

Are you talking snaps on the windshield rail or in the gelcoat. There are slightly different snap positions between the front and side panels and the cockpit cover. That and when cold the canvas is very tight. You may want to wait until the panels have been out in direct sunlight before worrying 'too much' about the snap positioning. The ones in the rail move easily, just loosen the screw. But if you're talking about snaps in the gelcoat, that's a different matter. Perhaps someone at the dealer mixed up the panels after they had been configured for that specific boat?

We have the icemaker and it is useful but like you, if we were custom ordering we'd probably go with the fridge instead. It came that way on ours, which was left-over stock from someone else's deal that fell through. It had everything else we wanted though so we went with it.

Mattress cover or the mattress itself? Ours did not come with a mattress pad if that's what you're talking about. We just used a regular queen sized one, stretched a bit here, tucked a lot there... Last Fall we ordered custom sheets and a fitted pad, hopefully we'll try them this weekend.

Yep, I concur regarding table storage. I'm thinking about having a foam-lined bag made for it. Both to make it easier to pass below and to cushion it against getting the edge dinged, or it's base gouging something. One... more... To Do... item...

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Sierra, Regarding water in the bilge with the inboards, you should not have any. These boats are now equiped with dripless shafts. There is no more packing and stuffing box. It just so happens that I saw a program on cable called "Ship Shape" with John Graviskis last weekend and he had on the program the inventor of the dripless shaft device. It was pretty neat to see a cuttaway of the actual unit that is used on our boats. He has a web site called shipshapetv.com.

Bill, the snaps I refer to are in both locations. some are on the windshield frame and some are on the fiberglass. with respect to the matress cover I mean the actual quilt that comes with the forward birth, I got the Ocean Sand fabric. That is what has stains on it.

Like I said in my earlier post these items are minor to me. The most important thing was that mechanically evrything checked out great.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

One other Item I checked while at the dealer dock was Radar height clearance. I come up with 12' from water line to the top of the RayMarine radar unit. That is with the boat unloaded (no one on board) If anyone else can measure this to confirm I would appreciate it.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

That's a bummer regarding the quilt. The dealer should certainly be able to exchange it.

Generally with the inboards we never have any water in the engine room bilge. Only water that's in there got there during cleaning. I picked up a small DeWalt cordless wet/dry vac to help get the last bit out.

Shipshape TV, now there's a program that treads a fine line between being blatant product advertising and informative. He's gotten better in the last two seasons, but it's still guaranteed to be pretty heavily tilted toward a given vendor's products. Still, among the few boating shows out there it does an admirable job. I'd just like if it they put the correct program guide info for it. The Tivo keeps recording it twice. No biggie.

The antenna is just a bit more that average clearance under the Spa Creek bridge in Annapolis. As in "ting, ting, ting" uh oh, forgot to put the antenna down.... They list the bridge clearance as being 17' when closed. That'd make the antenna about 17'6" gauging from the crack I've got in mine. The whip is probably 7' tall so the top of radome may well be 12' off the waterline. That's higher than I would've expected.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Well, we finally have the 358 in the water and now pretty much moved our junk in.

First thing yesterday morning we took two dock mates out for a spin before getting down to the details of moving our junk from the dock to the boat and stowing all of it.

What we found... The merc 6.2's move the boat along nicely. Easy to plane, does not require full throttleto plane. once on plane there is a ton more power to get you going to about 42 MPH on calm waters. Looks like we burn about 24 GPH at or close to 30 MPH in a following sea. this all was observed with 3/4 fuel full water no alocohol! DTS is wonderful, will take a minor learning curve to adjust to. Handling is amazing, I thought I was driving a ski boat instead of a 16 thousand pound cruiser. Engines are only slightly louder than our SR was, certainly managable. Horn is loud and sounds very aggressive compared to the buzzer we had. Seating position was good. I sat down and had a commanding view of the "road" ahead.

At first glance, we thought we were going to be challenged for space to stow our gear when compared to our SR which had lots of space. This was not the case at all. We found a home for everything from our toaster oven to our pots and pans and everything in
between.

We found the water tank needed to be drained and filled about 4 times to get decent water taste. The pressure in all the faucets was extremely good. Head sink very slow to drain though. All others seemed normal.

Teak and holly floor turned out great after the redo.

Having two fridges compared to an ice maker and 1 fridge is going to be great as the season progresses. We can keep a cooler with ice in the cabin and it will last the whole weekend instead of having to run the generator to keep our ice cold and making more.

Loved the night mode on the lights. It really makes the cabin very intimate and inviting. The a/c nlows cold and the Head vent had some real flow compared to our SR. And the unit was quiet.

Anybody see the tags that say "Dryclean only" on the sheets? What did you do with them? Well, I washed and dried them and they don't fit the V-berth at all. Not sure what we are going to do about that.

Under way, we noticed the carpet runner leading to the cabin door flapped in the breeze when under way, I guess that is why snap in might be a better way to go.

Now for the punch list:
Transom door does not latch. The pin doesn't reach the hole.
Squeak in the engine room hatch when you step on it.
Shower door had a crack in the section closest to the door right near the middle hinge, yall may wanna check yours out.
Sink in head slow to drain as I mentioned above.
Mattress had a stain on the actual mattress and a small tear in it.
Chip in the gelcoat on the bow
Vaccuum hose connection did not always make contact to keep the thing running.
Sirius Radio would not detect antenna.

Not too many issues on the initial shakedown. Will keep you posted.

Steven

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2008 Four Winns V358 (T 6.2L Merc Bravo III's with DTS and SeaCore)
2006 Sea Ray 340DA
2006 Sea Ray 320DA
2005 Maxum 3100 SE

Can anyone tell me where the Sirius Weather receiver (SR100) is located?

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Don't know the 'factory' location for it but I installed mine down in the cabinet under the breaker panel. That's where the clarion interface is located, along with the autopilot controller. I used a splitter from shakespeare that allowed sharing the same antenna between the clarion and the raymarine interfaces. One less bump on the radar arch.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista