posted 11-18-2003 09:16 AM ET (US)            

It is a great near shore boat. I regularly keep pace with many local bass boats on Lake Erie and Ontario. The GPS speed clocks it at 65+. The best part is that I can ski and use the boat as a fun boat for my daughter and her friends. My wife loves the head and the front cushion areas.

The only problem is that I fell in love with offshore fishing and now I want to trade up.

If your going to stay inshore, look for one of these.

posted 11-18-2003 09:21 PM ET (US)            

I suspect that Moe has it right and that John H is reporting speed in KPH not MPH. 65+ KPH is 40+ MPH. Any 250 HP outboard, whether it be Mercury, Evinrude, Yamaha or Suzuki should be able to push a 220 Dauntless with a T-top to 40+ MPH with relative ease.

posted 11-19-2003 08:19 AM ET (US)            

2 complaints:
It doesn't go way offshore in a comfortable manner. In Lake Erie and Ontario the waves can get furious fast (even when you monitor the weather bands) with steep faces, 3' - 5'high and short separation. The ride can be rough and wet, but I never felt unsafe with family aboard when we were only trying to get back. Many other boats were in way worse shape. But it's not something you would enjoy going out into for fishing. When my wife and I were in the ocean around Block Island the combination of wind and tides produced the same feelings out around 5 miles, so she was not comfortable and we stayed inshore to fish.

The other problem is the weight factor of the motor on the back end and the fact that all storage is in the back. The boat will not go under 10 (knots/MPH??? - I don't know) except by moving it in and out of gear. The boat bow has a tendency to drift and be more difficult to control around the dock at slow speeds. It just requires a soft touch and very patient approach. The easy solution I use is a sea anchor over the front to create drag.

Again, this is a great boat and lots of fun and I like it even more than my first boat, the Classic Montauk.

John H.

posted 11-19-2003 12:41 PM ET (US)            

Once was anchored between Mazurik Access and Kelleys Island, perchin'. My wife had taken Dramamine and just zonked out across the helm seat while I fished off the stern, sittin' on a cooler, with my feet braced on the transom. Every now and then we'd take a little splash over the bow when the anchor rode tightened up, but the main issue was rockin' and rollin'. The bigger deep V boats (none Whaler) were rockin' and rollin' just as badly, probably even more so side to side, with their occupants holdin' a rod in one hand and the side rail in the other. The smoothest boats out there seemed to be the semi-V Lunds. If this is what you want to do, or troll slowly, in 3-5' foot chop, you may be better off, or at least as well off, with the Dauntless. That side to side roll is what really brings on naseua.

The other time, the day JAZZ came back in it from Kelleys to Cedar Point in his 17 Classic, we'd been out all day. We passed what I believe was a single-engine 240 Outrage Coast Guard boat heading in to Marblehead with a rescued family of four-five people in the stern, as we were heading to Cedar Point. Jim Biro (Dive1) here would probably know for sure if it was a 240 Outrage. At any rate, seas had built to 3-4' at that point. While we were jumping from wave to wave going in the same direction, he was cutting right through it, with his bow barely moving up and down at all! However, there was considerable spray and it was my impression that with the strong, shifting crosswinds, his occupants in the stern were probably getting wet.

We were staying pretty dry, until we headed out from Cedar Point back out to Kelleys, when it had gotten up to 3-5' and we stopped and donned the rainsuits. The 150 handles oncoming waves a lot better at an angle, so we had to do a lot of tacking to get there, go around the island,and return to Mazurik. The big deep Vs were just cuttin' straight through it.

It was that day that we decided that even though we felt perfectly safe, 3-5' was more like work than play in 2-4' and it just wasn't worth going out in, unless the fish are really hittin' heavy. I don't know if that would be any different in a 240 or 255, but from your comments, it doesn't sound like it is with a 220. Two thing's are for sure... that big Outrage was as straight as an arrow cutting through the waves, and a dry cabin on that steady deep-V hull, would go a long, long way toward a wife being more tolerant of it. That, more than anything, would probably be what it would take to sway her.

As far as docking, we experience the same things. At low speeds and light throttle, the sideways thrust of the prop is more influential than the steering, and the bow seems to be going wherever it wants. Even though it's a harder with the big prop really walking the stern to port in reverse, I intentionally dock to the starboard side to practice and try to get better at it. It's a little scary around the dock, but goosing the throttle hard and short seems to be what it takes.

We're also out there with some of those big, near flat-bottomed bass boats. They may be going 30-40 mph while we're probably at 20-30, but they sure weren't doing 65+ mph on any day we've seen on Lake Erie. The big cigarettes are a different story.

posted 11-21-2003 08:56 AM ET (US)            

Having grown up on 20 to 23 foot boats, I have found the maneuverability to be very comparable to boats of that size. My setup has no trouble idling very low, and I can get headway speeds of around 3 mph.

When I purchased this boat the hardest decision for me was the engine configuration. Clearly I like the four-stroke, but it does come with some baggage. First, despite mercury's claim that it is "smartcraft" compatible, it is only marginally so, since the 225 four-stroke is really a Yamaha with Black cowlings. Most of the sensors on the motor are analog and not compatible with the smartcraft system, so Whaler has a very chinzy four-gauge package they use with the four-stroke option. (Removing the $1000 standard smartcraft gauge package is helping Whaler to slightly reduce the cost of the four-stroke, but your not getting all of that value.) Fortunately I had the foresight to have the dealer add an hour meter and trim gauge just to make the setup usable. I do miss not having the detailed engine/fuel consumption readouts. Of course with the optimax the smartcraft is standard. Also, I have seen drawings for the 225 Optimax DTS option, and they use the very cool high-end smartcraft digital display as the only "gauge". That would have been my second choice.

posted 12-05-2003 09:13 AM ET (US)            

I have the Yamaha F225 which was recectly involved in a worldwide recall. The throttle mechanism was not allowing owners to back the motor down. We experienced this and have since had the recall work performed. The peices that were changed are in the throttle linkage.

posted 12-05-2003 02:00 PM ET (US)            

Knots per hour X 1.15 = MPH

posted 12-29-2003 11:11 PM ET (US)            

They also admitted that they haven't been installing the straps to hold the pedestal seats in the center console, but were willing to have the dealer install them in my boat. (Yes, I am wondering if they are not very good at holding the seats, so someone in the factory made a call to leave them out....)

The first time I setup and tried to test my porta-potty it didn't work. The Dometic folks admitted that a batch of toilets left their factory with a missing part in the bellows. Whaler again stepped up and offered to fix the problem.

As far as the four-stroke motor, my Mercury is affected by the same recall as the Yamahas. I would note that the Mercury website still claims that these are smartcraft compatible. When I brought the boat I tried to track all this down, and someone at some point claimed that you could hook up the smartcraft guages to this motor but you just wouldn't get much, only some engine computer read outs. The critical sensor data, like the water pressure would not be available and would still require the analog guages, and the whaler dash could fit both the smart craft and the analog guages. What I have been meaning to do is look more closely at my motor and see if I can figure out if the smartcraft cable can actually be plugged in somewhere. At least on my boat Whaler has gone and put all the harnessing you can think of in, including the unused smartcraft cable. (I am not complaining about the extra wiring, since I intend to make use of the presently unused speaker wiring and power harnessing for the radio option. I am leaning towards the poly-planar, and I have seen it for $289 on the web with no sales tax and free shipping... I may get some of the whaler parts for the speaker covers.)