Motor Boat & Yachting – May 2018

Boatasy GHOOK

Avoid dirty digits with Boatsy’s new bowline hook

The GHOOK

allows you to

walk the slime

line to the bow

without getting

your hands or

boat dirty

Boating in the Mediterranean is

almost perfect. You’ve got your

warmth, your uninterrupted sunshine,

your deep turquoise waters and

brochure-quality scenery. In fact,

there’s only one real downside,

and that is the way boats are

moored in the Med.

In the UK it’s easy, you mostly berth

alongside a conveniently floating

finger pontoon. Pull in, lash yourself

to it, job done. In the Med it’s a little

more tricky. With a tidal deficit but

a boat surfeit, floating pontoons are

unnecessary whereas cramming as

many boats as possible is essential.

As a result, boats have to squeeze in

stern to the quay with a line from the

bow to an underwater anchor point.

When you leave, you drop the

bowline (the other end of which is

connected to the quay) and when you

return you reverse in, pick up the line

from the quay, walk

it forward along

your side deck

and make it fast

back on the bow.

So what’s the

problem? Well, whilst

you’ve been away,

your bowline has

been lying on the

bottom of the

harbour cultivating

a rich, smelly crop of

slime, weed and crustaceans just

waiting to transfer itself to your hands.

Happily, there is now an answer

so simple that it will have every Med-

based boater smiting their brow and

questioning why they didn’t think of

it first, and it’s called the GHOOK.

It is, as the name suggests, a big

yellow G-shaped hook with a free-

running pulley on it. Simply thread

your bowline over the pulley at the dry

dock end and walk forward, letting the

line run over the pulley. You can even

tie a rope on it to hold it at a lower level

if you have a particularly high boat.

It keeps the slime off your hands and

the crustaceans from slicing your

fingers whilst significantly speeding

up the trip to the bow. Price from

€69.95. Contact http://www.boatasy.com

Lowrance sonars

Double Stack

freshwater pump

New range of easy-to-use sonar scanners

Working tirelessly behind the scenes

Lowrance has introduced a new

range of fishfinders and fishfinder/

plotter combis. The new Hook2

series includes 12 different models

at prices that range from £99.99

for a 4in display with a single sonar

mode to up to £1316.66 for a 12in

display.

The unique selling point common

to all 12 Hook2 models is ‘easy to

use’ – a claim that Lowrance justifies

by pointing to its automated sonar

tuning function, which constantly

monitors and adjusts the sonar.

There are manual options, but

Lowrance don’t encourage users

to use them: the ethos of the Hook2

series is ‘just turn it on and go.’

Continuing the easy-to-use

theme, another feature shared by

the entire range is that the standard

transducers give the 200kHz chirp

sonar a beam width of 40º. That

doesn’t just mean that each ‘ping’

of the Hook2 covers twice as much

seabed as Lowrance’s ‘standard’

sonars, it also means that the arches

produced by echoes returning from

mid-water fish are much bigger.

The 4in baby of the Hook2

range is available only with the

single-mode wide-beam sonar or

as a sonar-plotter combination unit.

But as soon as you move further

up the range, more sonar options

become available: the 5, 7 and

9in SplitShot versions all offer

high-definition DownScan sonar

alongside the wide-beam Chirp.

Or you can go for the full works

with the TripleShot versions,

which incorporate SideScan sonar

as well as DownScan and wide beam.

Contact http://www.lowrance.com

Freshwater pumps are one of those

items hidden deep within the bowels

of our boats that we don’t tend to

think about. We turn the tap on,

water comes out, we turn the tap

off and it stops. But actually there’s

a fair amount of science in the art

of the perfect water pressure pump,

and this new model from Whale is

a great example of that.

For a start, it’s a twin-pump design

(both with individual inline filters),

with one fitted above the other

to keep the installation footprint to

a minimum (and hence its Double

Stack nomenclature).

The unit is designed

for boats with up to

eight outlets so demand

for freshwater can vary

enormously from

someone running a tap

for a kettle to everyone

diving for the showers

in their ensuites after an

afternoon of swimming.

The Whale Double

Stack is designed to

just use a single pump

during low demand use,

but then kick in the

second pump during

times of high demand.

That way it’s not overpowered for one

tap, but has the capacity when further

faucets are in use. An accumulator

tank helps regulate water flow,

keeping it smooth and helping

to prevent pump cycling (when

a pressure drop results in instant

repressurisation). Vibration-reducing

mounting feet also help prevent pump

noise resonating through the boat.

It comes in two sizes with the

largest able to pump up to 32 litres a

minute and is available for 12V or 24V

power supplies. Price from £617.99.

Contact http://www.whalepumps.com

NEWTECH BOAT MASTER

There’s a

model to suit

every size

and budget

Stacking one

pump on top

of another

helps keep the

footprint small

A clip holds the line

in place while a roller

allows it to run freely