CONTINUOUSWAVE

Hello there. My location is The Netherlands. I am looking at possibly buying a Montauk 170, new or second hand. The boat is for fishing, and I will use my Ulterra Riptide 80-lbs thrust trolling motor that I also use on my other boat.

I can imagine that when I buy second hand there will be no trolling motor panel available. The best place to put the two batteries (probably two Zenith 105-Ampere-hour AGM batteries with no battery box) is in the console. I don't want to have a power cable laying around in the bow.

Is it possible to take off the bow navigation lamp and put the wiring for the trolling motor though the channel for the lamp?

The power cable will be a lot thicker. I assume there will be two cables of 10-mm (7-AWG] or maybe even 16-mm [5-AWG] cross section.

Also, putting batteries in the anchor locker might be a way, but I don't know if they will fit. How much room is in there?

Any info would be great and or examples of any other ways of installing a motor and wiring.

--Floris van den Berg

I can't offer any first hand advice. However, I suspect that the 170 MONTAUK boats that come from the factory with the electric trolling motor option must conceal the power cables in some manner. I looked at the engineering drawings for the 170 MONTAUK that are available from

https://www.bostonwhaler.com/boat-ownership/resources/

I found this drawing:

http://bostonwhaler.com.s3.amazonaws.com/resources/170-Montauk-Harness-Installation-and-Parts-List-2010.pdf

The drawing seems to show that the power cables for the trolling motor are routed to the bow from the console through the same conduit as the circuit for the navigation lamp. See the notes on the drawing regarding the two cables.

On that basis, I would infer that the power cables for an electric trolling motor could be re-fit to a 170 MONTAUK using that same conduit path.

There are several active participants here who have 170 MONTAUK boats, and perhaps they can confirm this for you.