Repowering a 54' Donzi Sportfish

Christmas in February! Engines arrived CAT dealer. Gears are mounted up and being plumbed. Everything gets loaded on the truck and sent to barge terminal tomorrow. Should arrive Ketchikan early next week and then the fun really begins.

PacBlue you’re such a tease

That Hat is as close to same boat as mine as you can likely get. Even similar gen sets. Although I suspect the HAT is quite a bit heavier. Hard to take advertised speeds at face value as most exaggerate somewhat. Interesting how they list cruise speed at 74% load.

I’ll be happy with 24 kn cruise. Would be great to get 25-26 but 24 would be acceptable. I don’t really care about WOT as long as I get to full rpm. But I would guess 30 to 31 top end.

I originally ordered including the mounting pads on the PTO’s to drive the original hydraulic steering pumps. The Hynautic system had a pump on each of the original Detroit’s. I wanted to keep the two pump set up so I would have power steering when trolling with only one engine running regardless of which engine. Since placing the original order I made a change and have now installed the DC electric powered SeaStar hydraulic system. This will give me power steering regardless of which engine is running and reduces the number of hoses and equipment around the engines.

The PTO mountings pads (red mounts in picture) will be removed and blanking plates put in place. No sense having unnecessary appendages just sitting there. We will save the mounts in case future needs ever require something to be PTO driven.

Whereas I do consider myself a real driver and don’t “need” thrusters; I’m long enough in the tooth to set my pride aside and embrace the convenience of a thruster. Installed mine about 5 years ago as seen in my thread for that installation back then.

Thanks PB. What weight did you use? How much weight can be added before noticeable effect? I'm not planning to add a bunch of weight or anything but I was surprised when the prop selection was made how wide the weight range was from Veem. They seemed less concerned about weight and more focused on hull type, length, HP and ratio. If memory serves, I'm about middle of the range they use for boats like mine. I recall their range went something like 6k - 7k lbs above my full loaded weight.