Maiden voyage with my Wavewalk S4 and an 8 HP Mercury outboard motor

By Paul Partridge

Rhode Island

It has a 3.5 gallon tank that fits perfectly in the 9 inches wide gunnel, and a hand bilge pump.
The maiden voyage was extremely lot of fun. Took it out by myself.
The outboard had a 9 inch prop, and it went way too fast. I’m going to calm it down. I’ll put a smaller diameter propeller on it, so it doesn’t go as fast. I think it was going between 5 and 6 miles an hour at idle.
It was pretty choppy but the boat handled it really well. A little scary at first, then I fine tuned it and brought the trim down.
I just ordered a handle extension.

 

 

Wavewalk S4 with DIY mounting plate and an 8 HP Mercury outboard motor

 

8 HP Mercury outboard with a 9″ propeller

One thought on “Maiden voyage with my Wavewalk S4 and an 8 HP Mercury outboard motor”

  1. Thank you Paul,

    Beautiful boat!
    And it seems to work well in the Ocean State 🙂

    I like your DIY mounting plate that you painted white. Looks better than the original 😉

    An 8 HP outboard and a 9″ propeller… wow! Such setup could propel a boat up to 4,000 lbs.

    Looks like it’s going to be some time before we can state that 8 HP motors are compatible with the S4, but it’s possible to see a day when this happens.

    3.5 gallons of fuel can take you very far. Last year, on my W700 15 mile offshore round trip to the Elizabeth islands, my 6 HP consumed less than half a gallon.

    Yoav

Leave a Reply