"Mudfish(Co30)" wrote

I have an 18.5 Reedcraft shallow draft all welded
aluminum fish and ski with a Merc 80 Jet
I use for mostly guiding rocky rivers here in Maine.

then described a few options he's considering...

"Steve Alexanderson"
Idon'tlikegreeneggsandspamIdon'tlikethemsamIamsal
wrote

All the commercial aux brackets I looked at say to remove motor for
trailering, which they seem to think is more stressful than bouncing off
the
waves. I ended up having my local weld shop reinforce my transom and weld
a
custom bracket to it. Very solid, and no possibility of vibrating loose
either on the road or the water. To this I bolted a Bracket Pro
http://www.hnet.net/~bracketpro/ to take the stress off the motor's latch
when tilted up.

I also have a welded hull shalow draft boat with a large jet outboard and a
kicker bracket. I have a ~ 75 lb 10 hp short shaft kicker with a fairly
substantial "skeg guard" on the kicker. The bracket (which came with the
used boat) is rated to something like 140 lbs and/or 35 hp? Anyway, it's
definitely oversized for my motor. The original owner, I believe, had a
kicker in that (larger) range because he had it set up with electric start
and remote controls. A couple of comments

First, like Steve said, the bracket says don't trailer with the motor
attached. I''v ignored that from time to time, havimg decided that the
light weight motor on the heavy duty braket would be OK. And it has been.
My opinion was that the travel I've done over the waves is as bad or similar
to the stresses over the road, so far so good, but YMMV. Also, I had my
transom reinforced because there were appearing some superficial stress
cracking (not structural) from the main motor without kicker - or maybe it
was from original owner's larger kicker? I don't know because I don't know
if original owner trailered with kicker on bracket. Anyway, when I had the
reinforcement done, I told the boat builder that I wanted it to be strong
enough to be worry-proof - to handle the main engine, the kicker and be
strong enough in the future to accomodate the big 4 stroke I dream about
converting to 8-).

My kicker bracket is Garelick brand. I won't describe it in detail, but you
can raise the bracket enough so the kicker is out of the water without
tilting the kicker. This is handy because I don't have to worry about the
tilt-lock jarring loose like the original poster worried about. I can
safely trailer with kicker in locked down position. On the water, I just
raise the bracket and lock the motor in the down position to prevent
bouncing around when I'm underway with the main engine. For trailering, I
bungee it in the down position

The Garelick isn't the easiest to use - as far as it's up and down
mechanism, but once I got the hang of it, it works fine. I have to "teach"
partners how to do it because it's not totally idiot proof. The bracket
itself is very well made of appropriate materials. Structurally, I have
total faith in it. But, if I had it to do over, I'd look at other brands.
It would be a good idea to "test" them with a kicker in place because the
weight of the kicker affects how it works. For example, my bracket is
actually quite difficult to move up and down without weight on it. It's
pretty easy with weight. Think in terms of how easy it would be for an
inexperienced friend to make it work - because that's one thing an
inexperienced friend could do for you on board (as opposed to starting and
running the main motor).

The only down side is that kicker operation would be better if it were long
shaft, I think (just a guess - haven't tried a long shaft yet). I don't
know if the bracket would raise a long shaft kicker far enough out of the
water to avoid tilting it.

One final note - I use an "EZ Steer" linkage to my main motor to steer it.
I don't have remote conttols for the kicker, but just having the steering
mechanism is a great feature. I tried using the tiller and a tiller
extention, but I found it better for my purposes to have the steering away
from the fishing area. I'm working on hooking up a remote control to make
it even better. Again, YMMV.

Hope this helps.
Cam