44 • SKI-BOAT May/June 2017
by Heirich Kleyn
I
T had been quite a while since I
last had the opportunity to test a
new boat so I was pleased when
Shaun Lavery from Yamaha contact-
ed me to say they were launching a
new Explorer Evo 19ft monohull boat
and he wanted me to put it to the test.
Needless to say I grab any opportunity
to test a new boat and also to spend
some time with good people and
friends on the water.
The Explorer Evo is built by
Grantley Read and I was not surprised
to find him waiting with his new baby
when I arrived at the Durban Ski-Boat
Club. This is the first time I’d laid eyes
on the Evo and, to my surprise, it was
fitted with two 70hp Yamaha four-
strokes. To my mind the motors looked
a little too small for the boat, but I
decided to reserve judgement until I
saw her on-water performance out at
sea.
Ryan Hansen from Durban Yamaha,
someone you can always rely on when
you need a helping hand, was also wait-
ing on the beach with the camera boat
to assist Erwin Bursik while I put the
new Evo through its paces. We hooked
the trailer on the front of the tractor
and, with Grantley Read and Shaun
Lavery onboard, we were pushed into
the water in front of Durban Ski-Boat
Club.
Shaun took the steering first while I
chatted to Grantley about the new
design. He informed me that this was
the first time the Explorer Evo had
been put on the water and tested. Talk
about confidence! This just shows how
gutsy Grant is and how much belief he
has in his product; not many people
will put the boat in the water for the
first time on the day it gets tested by a
lot of different people. This was going
to be a very interesting test.
The sea was fairly calm and we
headed out towards Blue Lagoon.
Shaun was running both engines at
about 4 500rpm and she was flying
over the water. Eventually I had to
remind Shaun that I needed to have a
chance to steer her because I was sup-
posed to test the boat and write this
review. When I got control of the Evo I
could understand Shaun’s reluctance tohand her over to me because she’s very
exciting to skipper.
As I mentioned, the sea was fairly
calm and I thought I would have to
make her work hard to get her to per-
form in the calm sea. Much to my sur-
prise she was very lively and the out-
the-hole power with the two 70hp
Yamaha four-strokes was amazing. Even
though they haven’t played with her to
ascertain the correct propping and tran-
som heights that are needed to make
her perform at her best, her perfor-
mance was still very good. In fact, it’s
so good that you would be able to do
surf launches with her set up as is. The
performance of the two 70hp Yamaha
four-strokes was surprisingly good; I
had obviously underestimated the
power that these engines put out.
The throttles were very smooth into
gear and out of gear. I made my usual
figure-of-eight move to get a feel for the
turning circle and to test for cavitation
of the engines. I felt no cavitation even
when I accelerated in the turns. The
turning circle was very small to the left
and to the right, and I managed to make
a perfect figure of eight which is a clearBOAT TEST