Canadian Yachting April 2022 - 50

You can try different settings to determine the optimum for your boat and load
TEST RUN
It was early November and I drove
through my first snow of the season to get
to the Thousand Islands for an opportunity
to go for a ride with boat owner Sandy
MacKenzie and Don Hood from IMTRA.
Sandy's boat is a 2003 Grady-White 232
Gulfstream model and it is very much the
same deep-vee hull design that GradyWhite
still uses. It was originally created
by the noted firm of Raymond Hunt
Associates.
The Grady-White has an excellent deep
hull design, ideally suited to life in the
Thousand Islands and Sandy's boat was
equipped with twin four-stroke Mercury
150s that performed admirably. It's by no
means a new rig, but it ran beautifully for
our test ride and Sandy stated that it runs
a lot better since the Zipwake system was
installed.
SETTING UP THE ZIPWAKE
SYSTEM
It was a bit awkward taking photographs
through the steering wheel to capture
the control panels as we were driving,
but it's an interesting display with a lot
of information and some good features.
For example, the system integrates GPS
and that gives you a GPS speed read-out.
Especially in a smaller boat that might
not otherwise have accurate speed measurement,
this is important and appreciated.
Sandy's Grady-White was equipped
with Mercury engine instrumentation so
we were able to run the boat at particular
RPM settings to develop a comparison
of how it works with and without the
Zipwake system turned on.
I asked Sandy what he liked best about
the system. Right away, he mentioned
that the boat turns flatter and no longer
experiences cavitation on turns. That was
important to Sandy as an islander since
he makes his way through groups of
islands and narrow passages to get home.
Turning at speed is important. His second
point was how the boat now will hold the
plane down to 3000 RPM where it did not
before installing the Zipwake system. The
third big benefit was that it automatically
keeps the boat level even when passengers
move around onboard, or when side
winds affect the roll angle.
USER FRIENDLY
Although Sandy had it all set up to run
50 CANADIAN YACHTING | APRIL 2022
the way he wanted, to give me a demonstration,
he very kindly undid everything,
changed the settings in a few ways and
gave me an opportunity to drive the boat
myself.
We drove the boat the way the owner
drives it and part of that is that he accelerates
by easing the throttles ahead rather
than flooring it. That was an interesting
exercise. As the boat accelerated, we
could see from the Zipwake screen that
the interceptors were deploying to a different
extent on either side and were varying
with the boat speed.
As background, the Grady-White originally
had trim tabs and one had broken,
so rather than repair that, Sandy went to
the Zipwake system and the boat was also
upgraded to a pair of Enertia stainless
steel props replacing the Mercury OEM
aluminum propellers.
As we accelerated under light throttle,
we could see that at six knots the Zipwake
interceptors were deployed at 20% while
the speed increased and the boat planed
off.
An owner can adjust the settings for this
to optimize the performance for their boat
although it should also be mentioned that
Canadian Yachting April 2022

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