I want to thank everyone for the advice I received prior to making the purchase of our new Bennington. We got the boat Friday and used the heck out of it Labor Day weekend. We took morning coffee rides, afternoon trips to the sandbar, and evening rides just because we have the LED light kit LOL. In all we put over 13 hours on the engine and yes I broke the engine in per the instructions
ENGINE - 1st let me say all of the advice regarding the 200 verado was spot on, i cant imagine what i was thinking when considering the 115. The 200 power is amazing, and acceleration is instant. The engine takes quiet to a different level, I have to look at the tach sometimes when i start it to see if its running. Top speed is about 42 on the gps. Far more then I need, we find cruising between 10-15 comfortable but when the water is rougher it help to go around 20.
THE BOAT - The tri hull ride is quite an improvement from our two tube Bennington. Much more boyant, and the front end sit higher no matter what speed we go. The boat eats the 2-3’ waves on our lake. My wife was very comfortable and confident in the boat after a few trips out. Prior to this she couldn’t stand riding to the sand bar when the lake was busy.
Let’s talk about some options we got
LED LIGHTS - our boat came with the mood lighting, underwater lights and the toon leds. I would have not ordered these if i had the choice as they seemed like a gimmick. Honestly I love them, the mood lighting consist of lighted speakers and cup holders and in our case 2 small led’s in the arch that light up the “cabin”. They really do create a nice ambiance on evening cruises. The underwater lights are also a winner, we went out night swimming and they really do light up the rear of the boat pretty well. I could do without the toon lights outside since you cant really see them from inside the boat but they are nice if you go to the sandbar at night to swim like we did. RGB controller is super nice. I seen some older boats that got the first series of blue leds that cant change color and I enjoyed flipping thru different colors.
We honestly used the boat a lot more just because we had the lights, and more time on the boat for any reason is a win in my book.
ROSWELL UPGRADE- Again this is something i would not have ordered but is really enjoyable. The only bad thing is the subwoofer will hit so hard that it will rattle the helm pretty bad, especially the latch mechanism for the small compartment directly under the steering wheel. Other than that is great.
I still probably wouldn’t order it if we ordered a new boat again. I think I can buy much better for much less $$$.
KMC10 STEREO - Overall its a nice unit, easy to connect to Bluetooth. Controls are cumbersome and at night its very bright. It does have an out dimming feature but I don’t think bennington connected that wire to the boats lighting system to trigger this function. It can be dimmed manually but scrolling thru the functions to find it has proved to be a bit of a PITA 3 night in a row. Sound quality if good and great if connected to Bluetooth.
4 STEP STAINLESS LADDER - very nice compared to the ladder on our old boat where we had to snap the cloth strap to hold it in the stowed position. This ladder telescopes and then you slide it into place where it fits snuggly into a notched and locked position. Very nice.
DUAL BATTERIES & SWITCH - Love it, especially with the high powered stereo, I never have to worry about running down a battery at the sandbar. I Love being able to switch the battery selector to OFF at the end of the days use.
SPORT ARCH - Honestly for us this is purely for looks, but we love it. It’s super attractive and a head turner at the sand bar. When getting the arch you bennington forces twin captains chairs on you reguardless of the floorplan you choose. We didn’t think we would like the captains chairs but it seemed to be the chair people fought for on the boat. Very comfortable.
MERCURY SMARTCRAFT GAUGES - I like being able to see things like water psi, voltage and a myriad of other readings about the engine but the main problem is the speedometer is (from what i can tell) a typical outboard speedometer that is as useful as a turnip in a tornado. Sometime it works sometimes it doesn’t. The Stryker 4 Garmin has GPS for accurate speed readings so that’s fine. The problem comes when you use the gallons per hour function on the smartcraft gauge, it must be using boat speed to convert rpms and fuel load to GPH because this reading was all over the place. Sometimes I could get .5 gph and very low cruise speeds (5mph) and sometimes I got 1.5 gph at the same speed. BUt I could drive 15 mph on the gps, the speedometer would read about 7 mph and I was reading less gph then at idle.. not impressed with this system.
Not getting the third toon storage locker bothered us, but we are getting by fine. We have all 13 life jackets and a throwable under the seats, along with a couple small inflatables we keep aired up all of the time, and we still have room under the front seat backrest for the garbage can. Having the subwoofer and amp under the helm also eats up storage. Overall we are fine tho, maybe we just don’t need as much STUFF on the boat as we thought we did.
We carry 2 long T shaped augers for use when tiring up at the sandbar, I need to try and mount the someplace. I am thinking I can come up with a space under the boat maybe. We had planned to put these in the 3rd toon locker.
Overall we are very happy with the boat, the ride is great, the engine is fantastic.
I don’t have a photo hosting account but I will have to fix that for all of the people that want pics.
Thanks again for all the helpful advice.
ENGINE - 1st let me say all of the advice regarding the 200 verado was spot on, i cant imagine what i was thinking when considering the 115. The 200 power is amazing, and acceleration is instant. The engine takes quiet to a different level, I have to look at the tach sometimes when i start it to see if its running. Top speed is about 42 on the gps. Far more then I need, we find cruising between 10-15 comfortable but when the water is rougher it help to go around 20.
THE BOAT - The tri hull ride is quite an improvement from our two tube Bennington. Much more boyant, and the front end sit higher no matter what speed we go. The boat eats the 2-3’ waves on our lake. My wife was very comfortable and confident in the boat after a few trips out. Prior to this she couldn’t stand riding to the sand bar when the lake was busy.
Let’s talk about some options we got
LED LIGHTS - our boat came with the mood lighting, underwater lights and the toon leds. I would have not ordered these if i had the choice as they seemed like a gimmick. Honestly I love them, the mood lighting consist of lighted speakers and cup holders and in our case 2 small led’s in the arch that light up the “cabin”. They really do create a nice ambiance on evening cruises. The underwater lights are also a winner, we went out night swimming and they really do light up the rear of the boat pretty well. I could do without the toon lights outside since you cant really see them from inside the boat but they are nice if you go to the sandbar at night to swim like we did. RGB controller is super nice. I seen some older boats that got the first series of blue leds that cant change color and I enjoyed flipping thru different colors.
We honestly used the boat a lot more just because we had the lights, and more time on the boat for any reason is a win in my book.
ROSWELL UPGRADE- Again this is something i would not have ordered but is really enjoyable. The only bad thing is the subwoofer will hit so hard that it will rattle the helm pretty bad, especially the latch mechanism for the small compartment directly under the steering wheel. Other than that is great.
I still probably wouldn’t order it if we ordered a new boat again. I think I can buy much better for much less $$$.
KMC10 STEREO - Overall its a nice unit, easy to connect to Bluetooth. Controls are cumbersome and at night its very bright. It does have an out dimming feature but I don’t think bennington connected that wire to the boats lighting system to trigger this function. It can be dimmed manually but scrolling thru the functions to find it has proved to be a bit of a PITA 3 night in a row. Sound quality if good and great if connected to Bluetooth.
4 STEP STAINLESS LADDER - very nice compared to the ladder on our old boat where we had to snap the cloth strap to hold it in the stowed position. This ladder telescopes and then you slide it into place where it fits snuggly into a notched and locked position. Very nice.
DUAL BATTERIES & SWITCH - Love it, especially with the high powered stereo, I never have to worry about running down a battery at the sandbar. I Love being able to switch the battery selector to OFF at the end of the days use.
SPORT ARCH - Honestly for us this is purely for looks, but we love it. It’s super attractive and a head turner at the sand bar. When getting the arch you bennington forces twin captains chairs on you reguardless of the floorplan you choose. We didn’t think we would like the captains chairs but it seemed to be the chair people fought for on the boat. Very comfortable.
MERCURY SMARTCRAFT GAUGES - I like being able to see things like water psi, voltage and a myriad of other readings about the engine but the main problem is the speedometer is (from what i can tell) a typical outboard speedometer that is as useful as a turnip in a tornado. Sometime it works sometimes it doesn’t. The Stryker 4 Garmin has GPS for accurate speed readings so that’s fine. The problem comes when you use the gallons per hour function on the smartcraft gauge, it must be using boat speed to convert rpms and fuel load to GPH because this reading was all over the place. Sometimes I could get .5 gph and very low cruise speeds (5mph) and sometimes I got 1.5 gph at the same speed. BUt I could drive 15 mph on the gps, the speedometer would read about 7 mph and I was reading less gph then at idle.. not impressed with this system.
Not getting the third toon storage locker bothered us, but we are getting by fine. We have all 13 life jackets and a throwable under the seats, along with a couple small inflatables we keep aired up all of the time, and we still have room under the front seat backrest for the garbage can. Having the subwoofer and amp under the helm also eats up storage. Overall we are fine tho, maybe we just don’t need as much STUFF on the boat as we thought we did.
We carry 2 long T shaped augers for use when tiring up at the sandbar, I need to try and mount the someplace. I am thinking I can come up with a space under the boat maybe. We had planned to put these in the 3rd toon locker.
Overall we are very happy with the boat, the ride is great, the engine is fantastic.
I don’t have a photo hosting account but I will have to fix that for all of the people that want pics.
Thanks again for all the helpful advice.
