Can I go to New Zealand and do some boat work apprenticing? Those people sure do it right. Needed some guidance on how to size this new outboard motor well, and here are the answers on outboardmarine.co.nz   And we could meet the good people at PredictWind, the amazing weather and wave forecasting software we use to guide Ravenswing’s travels.

Click to access transom-specs.pdf

So we took these figures, grabbed a level, tape measure, pencil & tape, and dove in.

Grabbed the hole saw and made the first cut; no turning back now!

 To plug the old outdrive hole, there was just enough of the cutoff to form the patch. Last night we started the wiring & rigging removal. Took the seats out and dove in to the dashboard. Kinda fun disassembling stuff that was properly installed 51 years ago. Except for finding the mouse turds and wasp nests up in the fore peak.

Thank you Todd, Tony & Rick for really questioning moving the engine weight out behind the boat with a new outboard motor bracket. The info I was reading showed some cuddy cabin boats where the outboard bracket worked well, but those small boats have a bunch of weight up forward to balance against the motor. RickWS asked the pros at Kitsap Marine in Washington, and they have seen the mistakes of 15-19′ boats not able to get up on plane with this new engine mount. Apparently it’s really tricky to get the balance back, and you’re adding trim tabs (expensive and complicated). We then spent an evening considering an old-school outboard well in front of the boat’s transom, sort of mimicking an inboard V-drive. But in the end, let’s just convert this boat as inexpensively as possible to a normal outboard back end. And we’ll try to make it look ‘factory’ like other late 60’s boats, re-using panels from the original motor box…