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Water Depth Limitations

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ChiBenny

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What are the lowest comfortable water depths you have taken your Benny into? Coming into my slip, I see my water depths go to 1ft in places, when the drought conditions kick in at the normal times in august, because of the buildup of sludge/sand at the end of the piers. With my old I/O ski boat, this would lead to some sketchy close calls with bottoming out. Iam just wondering if the pontoon iam getting with the outboard will lead to the same issues? Any thoughts from owners with water depth issues would be greatly appreciated.
 
I take mine into water 12-18" deep max. I have a 20hp yamaha that can be tilted up almost out of the water. As long as the water intakes in, I'm good.
 
SEMPERFI8387 said:
I take mine into water 12-18" deep max. I have a 20hp yamaha that can be tilted up almost out of the water. As long as the water intakes in, I'm good.
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Thanks Semper.  I figured I would be fine in that depth with the extra buoyancy and Outboard of the Benny.  It's really only in a small section coming in, but it can become uncomfortable with hitting something.  Here's to lots of rain heading into Spring and no drought conditions in the summer.  I envy all you deep lake boaters.  
 
We are on an irragation lake and by end of july /Aug the lake is really low I have got hung up in 12" but soft sand bottom so not a big deal to hit kinda hard on the shark hide though.
 
The center Express tube stops at the motor pod, which makes it about 5 feet shorter than the outer two tubes.  This causes the bow to ride high (by design) and makes the back end sit pretty low in the water, especially with a ~500 lb motor hanging way off the back, plus gas, batteries, etc.  When at rest, I would say the back end of my two outer toons are only exposed (out of the water) about 6 inches or so.  That means the prop is more than 2 feet below the surface (I'd have to measure this though).

Fortunately the depth transducer is at the bottom of the tube, so you really only need to measure from the bottom of the tube where the transducer is to the bottom of the motor skeg, to get your minimum depth. 

To get true water depth, I add about 1.5 feet to my depth reading.

Any time I see 2 feet on the depth finder, I trim up as far as I can so the prop and intakes are just below the surface and I go idle speed until I get to deeper water.  It's that shallow at the mouth of our marina, so I have to deal with it every time we go out.
 
Be very careful in shallow water.  Tube damage aside, you can snap off your depth finder transducer pretty easily, as it hangs down below the tube an inch or two.

I hit something with mine once (probably a dead fish) and fortunately the bolt was loose enough the transducer just swung back and up out of the way and didn't break off.
 
We take ours in pretty shallow.  I'd say a foot or so.  Not sure if the twin elips give a little more bouancy then the other tube designs but as most people have said, trim it up so the intakes are still in the water and keep the throttle to a in gear idle speed.  Any more then that, and you'll actually force the rear of the boat down with prop force / wash.  Then again, if i had a 250/300hp motor, Im sure I couldn't get in as shallow without walking it in
 
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