Dunedin-based Southern Boats, the makers of Southernsportz hulls, began life as MG Engineering back in 1997.
In 1998 the company moved to larger premises, but by 1999 further demand forced a second move to their current base in Mosgiel.
The company was reformed as Southern Boats Ltd by partners Alan Renfree and Mike Coombs. Alan has since retired, leaving Mike and wife Lois as owners.
Southern Boats now employs fourteen staff, who make a range of 5.5m to 9.2m semi-production aluminium hulls that can be customised to the owner’s requirements. Hull number 328 was being built as this review was being written – a pretty good effort when it is remembered that many of these are large, complex constructions.
A national network of dealers supplies boats in Northland, Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, and Wanaka, with the Otago region handled from the Dunedin factory.
Construction
The EHT (Enclosed Hard Top) design is a fine entry, deep-vee hull (deadrise is 20° at the transom) with no strakes and the downturned chines becoming pronounced towards the Portafino-style stern.
This aluminium hull is constructed with 5mm bottoms and transom, 4mm sides (5mm is an option) and a 4mm-chequerplate deck. Under the deck are four full-length bearers constructed from 5mm plate. The butted-plate keel join is made more rigid by welding a flat plate across the vee of the hull 50mm above the keel line, forming a triangle in section. This also allows for discreet drainage from the forward sections without compromising the buoyancy tanks. The deck is supported by frames at 300mm centres.
Chine construction has an ‘L’ shape rolled in the bottom of the side plates. The bottom plates are overlaid on the flat, allowing a double full-seam weld to be made.
The decks of this particular boat have been lowered, partly to make it easier to put into survey in the future, and to allow more storage space in the portafino section under the transom. In practical terms, this gives a higher transom and sides.
The other result of the deck lowering is a slight reduction in the five, discreet, buoyancy-tank dimensions. The tanks are pressure tested to 40psi, well above industry standard. Although not currently in survey, this hull was built to survey standard and designed to have reserve buoyancy for six persons.
Power and performance
The 865 EHT is rated for 250-450hp. Owner Daniel Millar had decided to go down the outboard path, both for economic and cockpit space reasons. Mounted on the back was a 250hp Mercury Verado, spinning a 13” pitch Mirage Plus prop. This may seem like a pretty modest pitch, but the Auckland Marine Centre has found that the high-revving Verados (6400 maximum rpm) actually require relatively low-pitched props to function effectively. The rumour is that there may be some changes in the gearing of these outboards in the near future, to avoid the need for developing a new range of props.
The big rig developed 32 knots (59.3kph) at 6180rpm and cruised comfortably at about 22 knots (40.7kph). Daniel has been fishing the boat hard over the summer and supplied me with some representative fuel-use figures: cruising at 22 knots, the Verado used 40 litres per hour, and trolling at seven knots, it used 10 litres per hour. Dan reckoned that a dawn-to-dusk trolling day, including an hour’s run to and from his fishing grounds at either end of the day, was costing about $200, or $50 each when split between a four-man crew. The underfloor tank takes 350 litres of fuel.
We launched the big rig at Omaha, an hour north of Auckland, and headed for the Mokohinau Islands, about 30 nautical miles distant. It was a bit of an ‘iffy’ day, blowing about 20 knots from the south west – a stern sea – but was forecast to drop back by the afternoon and turn around to the north, providing a nice quartering stern sea to go home with.
This didn’t happen of course. Although we had a great ‘downhill’ run out to the islands, after donating some tackle to the snake population, we had to face up to a long beat back into a head sea.
It was tight and nasty, rising to a couple of metres in higher current areas, but the big Southernsportz took this in its stride. Despite our speed being reduced to 10 knots (for our comfort) at times, the hull was stable and responsive in the rough stuff, taking the conditions a lot better than the crew did. A robust and solidly-built boat, conditions were warm and dry in the enclosed hardtop.
Anchoring
The boat we trialed, Southern Extreme, was fitted with a permanently mounted Sarca anchor, handled by a Maxwell Freedom 500 warp and chain capstan. Access to the chain locker was through a hatch in the forward bulkhead, and the controls (with thermal overload) are at the helm position. Access to the bow is best through the large hatch in the cabin roof, an easy spot to switch the capstan to freespool from, should you wish to drop the anchor faster than allowed by the wind-down system.
Good wide bulwarks allow a simple walk around the side of the cabin to get to the bow, complemented by substantial bow rails and grabrails on the cabin top – although a few more non-skid-finish panels towards the bow would be good. A good functional anchoring set-up.
Layout
The fully-lined cabin sleeps three adults full length when a berth infill is added. A toilet with macerator is fitted behind the console bulkhead. A locking, hinged hatch allows access to the wiring and steering behind the console. There is stowage space under the berths, and also in large side shelves. For stay-away trips, a dining table can be fitted between the fore-cabin berths. A cabin light is fitted, and a wide entry makes it easy to move from the wheelhouse to the fore cabin.
As mentioned, the wheelhouse deck, like the cockpit, has been lowered over the standard model. In the wheelhouse this means plenty of headroom and also necessitated a platform at the helm position to give the helmsman good visibility through the 6mm toughened glass windows (sliders of the same material are fitted at the sides).
A good-sized dash is fitted with a back lip, and is carpet covered as an aid to stopping items bouncing or sliding off, as well as to reduce internal glare on the windows. A Furuno Navnet unit was fitted at the helm, the large screen allowing good-sized readouts of both chartplotter and sounder on split screen. It also displays the image from the 24nm Furuno radar mounted outside on the rocket launcher.
Other instruments include the Mercury Smartcraft display (which posts a whole raft of engine functions), a sound system and Uniden Solara VHF, both mounted in a roof console. I was quite taken by the Lenco trim-tab controls, which showed clearly the position of each tab.
The Merc Smartcraft power-assisted throttle/shift was smooth and a pleasure to use, except that it was mounted in such a position that I kept bumping it with my knee in the rough conditions, altering the setting. Quite possibly it was custom fitted for the owner and suits his build better.
The helm seat is a swivelling, upholstered bucket style with a footrest fitted. Behind is the galley unit, with bench-top sink (hot and cold water) and two-burner gas cooker. A squab is fitted over the top for extra seating, and underneath is locker stowage.
A cleverly designed bench seat provides seating on the passenger side. By means of raising and lowering sections it can be converted from two single forward-facing seats into a full-length bench seat, and then, by lifting out the hinged backrest (which is stayed to the roof with cables), into two single berths. Underneath are a stowage locker, stowage space, side shelf (matched by one on the helm side) and a Vitrifrigo marine fridge.
There is a hold under the wheelhouse deck, and plenty of grabrails are fitted, including a central one under the wheelhouse roof – particularly useful for moving about when underway at speed. The wheelhouse/forecabin is enclosed by a sliding, lockable, cabin door, and one of the rear windows has an opening slider to help with the ventilation.
Immediately aft of the wheelhouse bulkhead are a couple of units with squab tops that double as seats. One is a kill-tank/stowage unit, while the other contains a gas bottle, Rinnai gas califont and pull-out nozzle for the cockpit shower (this also supplies hot water to the galley).
The decking is chequerplate with a tubemat top, providing good footing. As mentioned, the lowered deck makes for (effectively) high sides and allows for two levels of side shelves approximately three metres long.
The transom has a swing-door walkthrough on the helm side, and a well-protected battery locker, housing the twin batteries with selective charging system. A locker underneath the batteries provides more stowage space and serves to protect the fuel lines running from the transom-mounted port to the underfloor tank. Two good-sized aluminium cleats are screwed to the stern corners.
Over the transom is the boarding platform, with fold-down boarding ladder on one side and auxiliary bracket on the other. On the stern, under the waterline, are mounting brackets that allow (in this case) trimtabs and transducers, without drilling holes through the hull.
Overall, a good level of finish and construction.
Fishability
This hull is a stable work platform. It has a big cockpit, with good footing provided by chequerplate decks covered with tube mat, and can easily fish four anglers. There are six aluminium through-gunwale rodholders, with gimbal pins at the appropriate angles. A large baitstation mounted on the transom provides a further two rodholders.
On the hardtop is a six-position rocket launcher, best reached with a foot on the gunwale or bench seat. There are two under-deck kill tanks that look as if they could take a decent kingie full length, and room under the transom for a fish bin on one side, or a reasonable chilly bin on the other. A ‘fish TV’ livebait tank is built into the transom, allowing instant checks on livebait health – and a bit of entertainment, too.
The owner, Daniel Millar, is a super-keen fisherman. He put 300 hours on the boat this year, resulting, amongst other things, in a couple of striped marlin, one of which weighed 155kg. I would have thought that the high cockpit sides would have been a bit of a handicap for stand-up fishing, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem. Dan doesn’t neglect the basics either, and along with outrigger mounts, he has a fitting that will take a davit for lifting craypots.
Divers are catered for with under-deck stowage, a transom walk-through, boarding ladder and freshwater deck shower.
Trailering
This is a big rig, coming up to full legal-width and length. Fully laden with water, fuel, tackle and supplies for a three-day stay-away, the rig hit 3.4 tonnes on the weighbridge. We towed it to Omaha, an hour north of Auckland, and Dan’s Landcruiser seemed to handle it without difficulty.
Southern makes its own trailers from aluminium, keeping the weight down. The 865 EHT is carried on a tandem-axle A-frame design. There are nine side rollers per side, and 10 keel rollers. A boardwalk is fitted down the middle to aid hooking the winch on. A manual winch is fitted with both 5:1 and 10:1 reductions.
The brake system is an interesting one. It is a Carlisle Hyrdrastar XL supplied by CM Trailer Equipment of Ashburton. The trailer-brake system is hooked up through the trailer lights’ plug, and is activated as soon as the vehicle brakes are applied. A battery operates an electric-hydraulic pump, which in turn operates the brakes on the trailer. The battery charges through the lights plug, and driving with the park lights on keeps it charged.
There are six pressure ranges that the trailer brakes can be set to. A laser beam decelerometer controls the degree of brake pressure – the harder the vehicle brakes, the harder the trailer brakes are applied. The beauty of this system is that it will work with any vehicle that has a lights plug – a dedicated tow vehicle with a special fit-up is not required.
Other trailer fittings include stainless callipers and treated discs on the brakes, steps on the wheel guards (although the boarding ladder is an easier entry to the hull), submersible lights, a spare wheel and a wind-down jockey wheel.
This is a big rig, but is still well towable. The owner takes it down to Mayor Island, and has beach-launched it at Ahipara in the Far North.
All-in-all
This maxi-trailer boat is well set up for comfortable multi-day stay-away trips, and is dedicated to hard-core fishing. The construction and finish seems pretty good (a three-year warranty is offered), and the 865 EHT is not even the largest hull of the range – a 9.2m is available. Those looking for a big rig should not ignore Southernsportz.
Specifications
Overall length 8.4mBeam 2.8m
Bottoms 5mm
Sides 4mm (5mm option)
Transom 4mm and 5mm
Deck 4mm
Topsides 4mm
Rec. HP 250-450hp
Deadrise 20°
Base hull only $67, 000
As tested $168,000
A permanently mounted Sarca anchor and Maxwell capstan handle the anchoring chores.
With an infill, the spacious fore-cabin sleeps three adults – or all your fishing rods.
The galley provides basic cooking and cleaning facilities for stay-away trips.
The sliding, lockable, enclosed hardtop provides shelter and comfort for the crew.
A cleverly designed bench seat offers multiple seating and sleeping options.
Furuno’s Navnet unit displays chartplotter, sounder and radar.
The high-sided cockpit provides plenty of workspace and fishes four with ease.
Full Article: Fishingnetnz
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