How Many Hours This Summer?

[Thegerman618]

72.3 on mine

[senator851]

90+ in 2 months. Wet suits ready to go through the winter


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[UNSTUCK]

I've been watching this thread pretty close and it baffles me how you guys can rack up the hours. This is our first full summer with our boat. I thought we did very well, getting out at least two saturdays each month and probably more like three. There were a few 3 day weekends as well. Yet we are at 47 hours right now with maybe 2 more outings to go. Just wondering what it takes to get over the 100 hour mark? You guys live on lakes, maybe you never shut the engine off?

[Bryan]

When I started this thread I also thought we were gonna be on the high side at 63. We live about 10 miles from our launch ramp and went every Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday.. that it didn't rain. Only thing I can figure is that most people are doing a lot of surfing, and that's piling on the hours. Our kids are five, seven, and fifteen and all the littles wanna do is drop anchor and swim, and the 15 yr old just wants to lay out and tan like her mother. I like wet sounds and cold beer though... so all is well

[dj2]

I live 3 1/2 hours from the lake we go to so we take advantage of our time there. A typical weekend is surfing from 8 am to dusk (6:00 - 8:00 depending on time of year) and then 8am to 2 pm on Sunday. Saturday's we shut down long enough to switch sides for riders, refuel when needed and then for about an hour for lunch. 3 day weekends add another 8am to dusk day.

[IDBoating]

I've been watching this thread pretty close and it baffles me how you guys can rack up the hours. This is our first full summer with our boat. I thought we did very well, getting out at least two saturdays each month and probably more like three. There were a few 3 day weekends as well. Yet we are at 47 hours right now with maybe 2 more outings to go. Just wondering what it takes to get over the 100 hour mark? You guys live on lakes, maybe you never shut the engine off?

In our case, we do live on a lake. During a normal season we easily top 100 engine hours. As noted above, though, this season was cool, rainy, and windy much of the time. This dropped the number of days/weeks that family and friends came to play. Just because we live on the lake doesn't mean we don't have the usual responsibilities, so often it's the arrival of family and friends that drives us out of the house and onto the water. It's really easy to become a lake bigot, where the slightest breath of wind or cloud on the distant horizon makes it easy to say "Let's just wait for better conditions". You can always tell the folks who have rented a place for a week - they're out in EVERYTHING!

[UNSTUCK]

Yeah, I guess now that I think more about it, kids swimming is the major activity followed my surfing. So the boat is shut off a lot. That's fine with we. Everyone is having fun and we're not using much fuel.

My goal next Sumer is to get my younger daughter surfing. That will really help increase the surf time and run time.

[talltigeguy]

I will have about 75 hours this year on my boat and at least another 30 on other people's boats. I live 15 minutes from the lake and keep the boat ready to go at all times. I try my best to make it easy to go. If it becomes a big orchestrated deal with snacks, friends and other frivolities, then you just never go. I have gone at 7 am and been to work by 9. Those small trips start to add up hours after a while, but they are very easy on the boat. Not pounding in heavy chop, no food in the boat. Get in, ride, get out.

[007]

We do shut the motor off when switching riders or giving instructions to newbies, lol. Took delivery of our Z3 mid September 2 years ago and surfed it until the last weekend in Oct. My wife drew the line when it started to sleet. Dry suits come out and we begin surfing in April.

The boat is pretty much ballasting while the motor warms and we run the whole time. Not much coving out or rafting up for our crew. It helps having a place on the lake, but we can't get there every weekend.

[jslayde1]

We do not shut the engine off when switching riders, but its not a long delay when we do switch. Its maybe a 2 minute ordeal - one board in, one board out, then push the next guy in.... Just kiddding, but it is a pretty hard "go" when we are surfing and we don't sit at all while switching riders. We only stop for lunch when the water is good.

My 7 yr old has really taken our hours up this year - he will literally surf for 30-45 minutes straight...without falling - he just doesn't get tired, lol. To the point that we now make him try a bunch of tricks so he will fall, then he gets upset when we make him get in the boat... Last year before the kids were surfing my wife and I could surf til we dropped. I can see the tides turning, and I'm becoming more of a "boat driver"!

[BCRider]

For me I try and go once during the week and once on weekends. I'm 20 minutes from the lake. Weekdays is usually the boys trip with my friends and we all pretty much surf. Weekends is for families/friends with their kids. I'm lucky being in sales and quite a few of my friends that we can meet at my house at 2:30pm on a weekday and take off up to the lake for the rest of the day. In the height of summer it's also light until about 10pm. I also racked up 35 hours on my two week holiday which helped.

It's always funny when people are looking at buying a used boat that the first thing everyone does is ask or look at how many hours a boat has. I laugh more at the boats that are 6-8 years old and have less than 200 hours. The boat was never used! Great for the purchaser but as the owner of the boat that's just pathetic. We buy these things to use them so they should all be relatively high. I've put on more hours in 2.5 seasons than the previous three owners did in 5 doubling the hours on my boat. I'm at 473 today. I will probably have a 1,000 hour boat by the time I upgrade again and can already roll my eyes thinking about how the sales process will go. Based on the last 11 years that I've kept track I only have 2 years that are low 50's with the one being the year my first son was born. The other was just a bad weather year.

[gwhite94]

It's been a very slow summer for us only got 55 hours due to work schedules and other priorities. Hopefully next summer we are back to our 125-150 hour mode.

[JohnnieMo]

I thought I used mine a ton this year. But when I checked it was around 29 hours.

I do wish boats were more like machines where the hour meter depended on the working load of the motor. I spend a lot of those measly 29 hours idling around the lake.

[Ditch Doctor]

We are at 160+ hrs since April. We should still get 2-3 more trips in before it gets to cold. Most of those hours are surfing. We trailer the boat about 30 miles to our lake and usual camp for 3 days at a time. So we hit the water at daylight and won't come in till after dark.

[Joehs]

Around 25 hours this summer. Bought the boat in February. Ran fine through May when it started giving me issues. Two starters, full tune up later and it still didn't work right. On my second mechanic now and they are troubleshooting a miss on one cylinder and fixing my drive shaft seal that was aparently leaking at a crazy rate. TAPs switch crapped out on me too. Live in OK so if it gets fixed this week I might have one or two more good weeks before it starts to drop off temp wise. If not, It'll get winterized and then I'll try again next year.

Hoenstly, I'm not sure ite ver ran right when I got it, but it's my first boat and I didn't know any better. Expensive lesson to learn.