METAL THUNDER

IT TAKES AN EXTREMELY DEDICATED EFFORT (NOT TO MENTION PILES OF MONEY) TO BREAK 100 MPH, LET ALONE HIT THE WORLD-RECORD 114.

Watching a 27-plus-foot pontoon rise up on its sponsons and rocket down the lake at 60plus mph is, well, surreal. It’s like watching a Boeing 777 lift off. Your first thought is, “How does it fly?” In the case of the pontoon (and the 777, for that matter), it’s a matter of meticulous engineering, testing and plain-old brute power. A big ’toon is long, wide and heavy, and blows through the air and over the water like a brick — so it needs big engines, and years of setup savvy, to get it flying.

Much of the initial groundwork accolades for fast pontoons must certainly go to one man: Jim Dorris, founder and owner of PlayCraft Boats. Dorris has built, set up, won races and set records in just about every kind of vessel imaginable. He started Charger Bass Boats in 1974, and it followed, later in his life, that he began to apply his high-performance boatbuilding knowledge and experience to the pontoon boats he built and sold out of his Missouri factory. This was a personal thing for Dorris; as he got older, he sought the comfort and relaxation of pontooning but didn’t want to give up running fast with the “big boys.”

At the now-famous LOTO Shootout back in 1995, Dorris showed up with what he called a Hydro-Toon powered by a small-block 350 Chevy and MerCruiser sterndrive. That was the beginning. Though the 46 mph recorded top speed he attained was unheard of then, it’s positively staid now. Power, design and, of course, speeds accelerated on a steep curve; by 2001, Dorris’ crew logged 81 mph speeds

at Mercury’s Lake X with twin Merc 300x outboards. In 2010, PlayCraft was the first to break 100 mph with a pontoon boat.

Dorris and PlayCraft may have been the first to the pontoon speed party, but today the field has become packed with power players. Notables include South Bay and Manitou Pontoons; both companies routinely outfit their highly engineered craft with dual and triple outboards, capable of speeds well into the 60s, 70s and beyond.

TOONING UP

While 100 mph sure is a sexy number, it’s way beyond the capability of 99 percent of the rigs out there. It takes an extremely dedicated effort (not to mention piles of money) to break 100 mph, let alone hit the world-record 114. However, it’s not uncommon to idle up to the sandbar today and see singleengine pontoons capable of 50-plus-mph speeds, and twin-engine rigs capable of 60-plus mph. So, what does it take to build a pontoon capable of achieving these speeds, all the while remaining a factory-warrantable boat that’s easy to operate and doesn’t fall apart after a year or two? To find out, we corralled Dorris, as well as South Bay (Forest River) marketing director John Sweeney and his chief applications engineer, Greg Barsoda. We also spent some time with Manitou’s Greg Van Wagenen, who heads up its marketing and communications department.

South Bay was the first to offer triple-log pontoon configurations on every package, back in 2005. For 2018, the company’s new thing is the V-Lite honeycombcore decking, which combines light weight and torsional strength. South Bay boats all use 25-inch-diameter tubes with full-length radiused underdeck (“belly”) skinning. This feature cleans up the air traveling under the decks, adding streamlining to an otherwise “dirty” surface. Extruded, radiused lifting strakes are applied to the center tube (on 2.5 series models) and also on the outer tubes, both on the inside (3.0 models) and outside as spray rails (3.0+ models). The inner strakes work together to form a “pad” running surface, much like a performance pleasure V-hull. The strake placement and shape is patterned after racing-tunnel hull and offshore-catamaran designs, so the hulls lift clean from the water with less power, and turn sharply without bobbling or excessive banking. The strakes on the outside also keep spray out and away from the hull. South Bay’s pontoons are pressurized at the factory at 3.5 psi, to keep them from “oil canning” and deforming under extreme loads.

Of course, performance rigging in the form of jack plates and highperformance propellers and gear cases is available on single- and twin-engine pontoons. High-performance assisted hydraulic steering is also a must to keep the larger engines’ torque in check at high speeds.