I had to wait for a decent weather window and was basically forced to take a Monday off work last week and chase  snapper out wide to make sure everything was hunky dory.

Firstly... The repair job. Looks amazing. Aside from the new shiny looking hull plates you would never know that the boat had been cut to bits. I have tried to upload pics but I just cant seem to be able to transfer them.... which is weird because I have done it plenty of times. To be fair... there really isn't much to look at, the quality of the welds are totally first class. I really had had to look really hard to see if I could see any difference to the original boat. To someone who didn't know what just happened you would never know

The paint around the cantilevered seat had been re-done and pretty much all the U-Dek had been replaced with new stuff.

I was bloody happy with the result. All I can to is commend Stabicraft on sorting the situation.

As above I was itching to get her back in the water to compare to previous hull. It certainly felt way way more solid. I traded down from a late model Surtees 610 Gamefisher on this thing and my first impression when I first took it out (No sea trial) was it felt like the whole boat was very flexy. There was a lot of juddering and reverberation at speed in the chop around the entire boat but especially the floor. As this was my first ever pontoon boat I just put this down to being normal pontoon behaviour.

The new 4mm hull version feels rock solid. It rides better and simply feels way more planted. 

The conditions we took it out in were pretty average indeed. Leaving Omaha it was out into a 2m swell in Jelico channel with wind chop on top. For a small open boat it simply just cruised through it. Happy Days.

Interesting to note... These boats have scuppers to allow water to drain underway. They can be  shut off from the inside with bungs supplied but I left them open... as this is what we normally do as most of the time the boat is used for diving and spearfishing.

But I noticed fishing a lot more water coming in... I guess this is to the extra weight of hull settling hull further into water at least.

Also lost about a kt of speed. But this is to be checked again under calm conditions.... There was no way I could take it to max speed in those conditions but it usually cruises at 22ks at 4600 rpm. It seemed to be doing 21kts at same revs on way back home in much calmer conditions. The chilly bin was weighing a bit though. Great work ups out there.

Finally would just like to say Thankyou to the guys at Gufland Marine.

They didn't sell me the boat, but they took it in and organised everything that need doing without any issues at all. None of this cost me a single cent. The Invoice that was being sent to Stabicraft though would be a different matter entirely.

All in all a fantastic result to what was a  slightly concerning situation especially this close to summer.

How viable would that be for those with kiwisaver investing a boat market today,not saying anything wrong with stabi or any other company but doesnt seem to be the time to invest in pleasure companies.