"Shaun Van Poecke" wrote in message
...
Hi all,
I have a 16' cobra cat that i would like to add an outboard to. This is
the same as a mosquito. The outboard itself is a honda BF2D, two
horsepower 4 stroke. We mainly sail on a lake, and the outboard would be
handy to get back when our finnicky winds die out, but the real reason for
adding it is because of an upcoming holiday to the whitsundays. I will
need an outboard for both convenience and safety.

I've had a look at various ways of mounting it to the back of the cat,
possibly in the same way as it is on a caper cat. I had a caper cat last
year and had a lot of trouble with this arrangement though; hanging off
the back there, it gets pretty wet and is hard to manage. It is nice
being able to steer and fiddle with the outboard at the same time though.

I had considered briefly mounting it off to one side, or even right off
the side of the cat. Would this work? It has a lot of downsides though,
will unballance the boat etc... What I really want to do is et it away
from the stern.... It's always going to be in the way of the
traveller/mainsheet arrangement and causes problems with the rudder setup.

One thing I had considered was adding it to the center of the boat. I
would make a hole in the tramp just behind the mast, just large to fit the
prop through. I would fabricate a bracket of sorts that would allow me to
raise/lower the outboard at will. There are many benefits to having it
here; it is in the center of the boat where it will disturb ballance
least, I can work on it easily if need be, earier to add gas etc... This
outboard has no reverse gear, it spins 360 degrees. It is possible to
have it facing forwards and locked in this direction, with the controls
facing backwards. One downside to this setup is there will be no allowance
for 'kickback' should I strike something. I'm not too concerned about
steerage from the outboard, or about reverse, but will I get as good of a
'drive' with the outboard here as if it were stern mounted?

Any other suggestions? I have aluminum and wood fabrication available, as
well as good access to machining services.

Thanks,
Shaun

Hi Shaun,
I have had an outboard mounted amidships on my Hobie cat. It powered the
boat fine and the balance was good too. I used a 3.3 outboard (tohatsu) and
could cruise all day on 5 bucks of gas - back when 5 bucks could still get
you gas. You might like to consider mounting it infront of the mast and
have a swivelling bracket such that the motor is stowed horizontally and
athwartships. Apart from that, there are not many critical issues with
off-sided mounting.

Arnold