Yamaha All-Terrain Outboard for Mapping Service
A new Yamaha F20B outboard has just been fitted to a Hydrographic Survey Amphibious vessel for a specialised mapping company- Redborough Mapping Service.
Supplied and installed by the team at Geelong Boating Centre, the new 20hp 4-stroke Yamaha has been custom mounted to handle the specific requirements of shallow water surveying.
A range of engine options had been trialled on the transom of the amphibious vessel Arnie since its purchase back in 2005. Beginning with an older 4hp 2stroke, Arnies engine was upgraded to an 8hp 2-stroke which also struggled to power the vessel and proved strenuous to operate with a tiller steer and no power tilt operation.
After all the on-water trialling in our first year, we became clear on all the features that we needed in an outboard, said Redborough Mapping Service Director Peter Bailey.
8 Palmer Street, South Melbourne, Victoria 3205 T (03) F (03) E bca@connexionpr.com.au W www.connexionpr.com.au
Bob Carter + Associates Ltd ABN 435 785
It had to have more power, yet still light enough for Arnie to carry, needed forward hydraulic steering, electric start, power tilt, and ideally a 4-stroke because Arnies engine is a 16hp 4-stroke lawn mower engine and I only wanted to carry one type of fuel onboard.
The Yamaha F20 4-stroke met our needs.
The Hydrographic mapping vessel is a Canadian-built Argo 6x6 Amphibious ATV that has been specifically fitted out with a dual frequency echo sounder and DGPS equipment. Side buoyancy tubes have been added for extra stability, hydraulic steering has been specially rigged for single handed steering and easy to reach forward controls have been mounted on a custom control box.
Arnie is set up specifically to survey cross sections of rivers, estuaries and dams plus profile beaches, said Peter Bailey.
Its very stable and capable of carrying 2 people plus all the equipment onboard. Its also very light needing only 2psi of ground resistance to drive which is less pressure than a human foot, so it can be driven on areas that cannot be walked.
Our digital survey methods allow us to take 3D measurements in the same place every month, quarter or year so that an accurate picture can be developed to see how a beach or river bank is eroding or how a marina or dredge area is filling, providing quantitative data to design engineers.
Based in Bacchus Marsh in North-West Victoria, Redborough Mapping Service is a complete survey and mapping business specialising in
Hydrographic surveys of marinas, rivers and dams plus additional services including GIS & GPS analysis, remote measuring, whole farm planning and computer drafting.
The lightweight F20B 4-stroke outboard is a recent release from the Yamaha stable and offers electric start, exceptional power to weight performance and outstanding fuel efficiency. Built on the new 362cc 2 cylinder engine, the F20 delivers whisper quiet operation, a sleek design and offers the convenience of power tilt operation.
The guys at Geelong Boating Centre have been with me on this project from the beginning right through to fitting up my new Yamaha F20B outboard, said Peter Bailey
Ive only tested the new Yamaha for a short time but it certainly has no problems powering a fully loaded Arnie. The extra power will give me confidence during my beach surveys when I need to drive into the surf to measure beach profiles.
Arnie is now the third Yamaha powered vessel at Redborough Mapping Service. Also supplied and fitted by Geelong Boating Centre, a 40hp Yamaha 4-stroke powered Polycraft boat and an 8hp Yamaha 2-stroke powered rigid folding boat make up the Redborough Mapping Service fleet.
Yamaha outboards are available through an Australia-wide network of authorised Yamaha outboard dealers.
For further information contact;
Peter Bailey Director Redborough Mapping Service Ph: (03) peter@redmapping.com.au www.redmapping.com.au

Brett Hampson National Sales & Marketing Manager Marine Products Yamaha Motor Australia Ph: (07) Fax: (07) 3906 7099

www.yamaha-motor.com.au

Fisherman & Boatowner FIELD TEST

Yamahas

4-Stroke Outboard
Continuing our program of independent hands-on tests of F&Bs hard working Stacer 429 Nomad, the mule were using as the basic, standard platform to test a wide variety of engines between 20-40hp. By using the one boat constantly throughout the program, with identical crews and equipment, we are producing a growing file of statistics and data that makes very interesting reading. This month, the Yamaha 20hp went under the spotlight.
. Its a beautiful engine, superbly engineered, as fuel efficient as technology can make it at the moment, and thats saying something! It is also importantly an absolute delight to use in every sense of the word.
26 Fisherman & Boatowner
Copyright SEA Media Pty Ltd (F&B#146 - 10/2008) from www.seamedia.com.au
he all new F20B and its sister engine, the F15C, are Yamahas small sized and compact 4-strokes outboards designed for high reliability and excellent performance. As things transpired, our F20B didnt have much luck, between Boat Shows, rain, test schedules, being bolting on and off the Stacer, we ended up on the death knock and needed the Stacer/Yamaha 20 to work perfectly on a lovely sunny day in order to make the cut for this October issue of F&B. Needless to say, Murphys Law immediately prevailed and everything started to go pear shaped. The root cause of the problem was having what turned out to be the wrong prop. Pure and simple. This is a beautiful little engine, but with the 12 x 9.5 prop, it was pushing the proverbial uphill, and although it wound up finally if we gave it a long enough run (and I stood on the bowsprit with my 105kg delicately poised in the Titanic position!) it would finally get up on plane two miles later.
Then, once that big prop started to work, it would push the loaded Stacer up to an astonishing 17.1 knots. Full marks for this gutsy little engine it was almost impossibly over-geared for this boat, but did we have time or the prop to change and find out what would have happened if wed put on a smaller prop? Obviously not hence,
this month we decided that the performance trials and figures that we recorded were not really a fair representation of anything it certainly didnt reflect fairly on the F20B, nor did it bode well for the test program, because as the base point, which we were trying to achieve, we need to ensure that weve got everything running to its optimum performance. And in truth, bluntly, we didnt have another week to sit down and sort it out, as the next phase of this program was almost on top of us, and the pre-programmed engines already starting to arrive. Sometimes it isnt easy being just the two of us and this was one of them. So what we have this month, is a Claytons engine test report weve used the engine, logged the data, studied the build, ran the rig for several hours, but were not publishing the full performance data because the rig simple didnt work well enough to warrant such detail.

Engine Specs

This is a beautiful little engine, make Fisherman & Boatowner 27