# Building a duck boat-the maiden voyage!



## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Well, I finally got the new boat on the water this morning, and it was a blast! First off, once I was on the water I was really pleasantly surprised at how stable she ended up being- I can walk all around the edges of the ****pit and sit on the side deck and she'll barely tip at all, and I weigh about 210 pounds so that makes me think that she'll handle a hunting load with no problems at all. It took a bit of playing around with moving the battery to the front but I got her trimmed to run really well with the surface drive motor-my buddy lent me his GPS unit and I ended up averaging about 12mph on the open water and got up to 13-14 mph on average in the shallows-funny thing about surface drives is that they actually run a bit faster in water less than 1' deep. Not blazing fast but not bad for a 13hp motor, she'll get me where I need to go to hunt. I was also really surprised at how well she handled the mud and shallows- If I had a bit of forward momentum I had no trouble at all running through two inches of water on top of a foot of mud, she cut through it like jello. I did get stuck on an almost dry mudbar but I was able to get going again by burying the prop in the mud and tractoring my way out, lots of fun! I am learning that surface drive motors are really sensitive to how they are trimmed, a single turn on the trim knob could equal a 1-2mph difference in speed depending on the water depth and how fast I was going when I made the adjustment. I can't wait to for the duck seasons to start now, I'll have to break her in a bit on fishing and bowfishing trips until October.





































I enjoyed building this so much that I'm thinking of trying to build a few more boats and sell them. I have a design in mind that's slightly different than this one, and I'm going to try to get a prototype build before duck season that I can trial out throughout the season, and make improvements, etc. on before I build any to sell. I'll post some photos of the progress on that boat too, if you guys are interested.


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## Fowlmouth (Oct 4, 2008)

That looks **** nice! You should be proud of your accomplishment.


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## Gee LeDouche (Sep 21, 2007)

Looks like a hoot! Great job!


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## Mojo1 (Sep 8, 2007)

That's a sweet looking rig!!!


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## Donttreadonme (Sep 11, 2007)

Awesome Cody. Very nicely done!


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## RobK (Jul 3, 2008)

very nice !!!

I need to get mine out and get her ready 

. its' been s few months since i took mine up the bear from Benson , would love to find someone else and see how far up we can go . been up past Richmond , just didn't want to have motor problem and have to drift that far after dark so i turned around there .


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