Hi, John Eichelsheim from Boating NZ
magazine. Today we're aboard the Dickey 800 Custom.
It's another fine example of the Dickey
Aluminium boat, 8 m long,
biggest trailer boat in the Dickey range.
It's headed into Auckland where I'm sure it's owners are going
to be extremely happy.
Very much a family fishing boat this one. It's got the option of
sleeping aboard should you wish to.
Quite interesting - it actually uses diesel
instead of gas which is safer obviously.
There's a diesel heater on this boat as well.
And all the things you'd expect from a
Dickey vessel, beautifully finished,
it rides very smoothly, 20 kts feels the same as 30 kts.
It's quite surprising.
So yes, a very high quality vessel from an
exceptionally builder - here in Napier (NZ).
This is a great feature - open this up ...
... and it opens the whole space up between the saloon and the
cockpit. The galley is here, again its a really
nice social layout, and also great if
someone's out of the cockpit ... some people inside the boat
they can talk to each other, see each other,
hear each other. So, there's very fishing
friendly cockpit. We've got all sorts
of features here that are quite
exclusive to Dickey Boats. This bait station
top swivels away so that you've got
great access to the live bait tank.
Nicely designed work top, underneath
there's a space for the icebox, again you
can pull it out, it's easy to access ... if you
don't need just slide it away.
A rather nice touch.
Little boarding step makes it that much
easier to get in and out of the boat.
Up on the hard topit's impossible to miss the
huge Garmin HD Radome up there, and also
the FLIR camera which is on the highest
point on the hardtop, and that can be
adjusted to look ahead of the boat
or to either side.
So, three of us on one side of the boat
there's hardly any heel at all, a very stable
hull - fantastic for fishing from.
300 horsepower four-stroke, plenty of power
for this boat, in fact its a really nice match.
That provides some pretty
respectable performance, 35 knots plus
top end, and a comfortable cruising
speed anywhere between 25 and 30 knots.
And also reasonable economy, around about
two nautical miles per litre at around 21 knots,
So you could go out to the Great Barrier Island
for instance from Auckland,
you're probably only going to spend 50 or 60 dollars.
That's pretty reasonable.
On today's boat review we've got quite a few experienced boaties,
and it's interesting they've all commented
on this boat's ride, and it really is quite
exceptional, it's very very smooth, and it's
a very easy back to drive as well.
I can't emphasize that enough.
Once it's set up and the trim
has been set correctly, it
pretty much drives itself. So if you
were traveling any kind of distance
this would be a particularly powerful boat.
So if you were to take this boat aware for
the weekend you've got a few options in
terms of sleeping. There's a full length berth in the
forard cabin, and room for a child there
as well, so you could conceivably sleep
two people there, obviously you've got a
separate toilet, its a manual flush toilet in a
separate compartment, so there's no need to
share your sleeping space with the toilet.
Here in saloon we can drop the saloon
table, that forms another berth that would
sleep two people quite comfortably.
So quite a few options as far as sleeping overnight goes.
This boat is fitted with the
latest Garmin electronics suite, we've got
dual screens two MFD's, GPS map 7412s.
It's perfectly customizable, whatever you want
to see you can watch on the screens.
[Jason Dickey] This is a Garmin System, twin screens.
I've got it set up so that they work basically
as a single screen with these smart modes.
So yeah, I'm finding the gear really
easy to use.
[John Eichelsheim] The Garmin's communicate with the Fusion entertainment system by
Fusion link, Fusion's also owned by
Garmin so it's a seamless interface which
works perfectly. You can also direct the
pictures on the screen to the TV, which
swings out so that you can see it from
the cockpit, alternatively you could look
at whatever's on these MFD's on a
device like a phone or tablet, so you
know any number of ways of seeing the
information that's being displayed.
Dickey Boats supply this boat on a
custom aluminum trailer. They build the trailers
themselves, like the rest of the boat they're a
high quality product. It's a dual axle
trailer, braked on both axles.
Electrohydraulic braking system - a sensor brake system.
The trailer's also equipped with a stone guard protector,
which is a handy thing to have, it just
protects the lovely paint work of the boat.
All up the rig weighs 3.1 tons on
the trailer, that's dry without any fuel.
So if you fill it up with fuel you're still going
to come inside the 3.5 ton limit.
According to Jason Dickey this is about as
big a boat as he can build, which is
still legal on New Zealand roads.
So, we've really enjoyed our time on the
Dickey 800 Custom. Obviously today the weather's
not quite as nice as it was yesterday when we did
all the running shots but nonetheless, it's been good to
take the boat in some somewhat
different conditions, and see how it goes with
a bit more slop on the water.
Thanks for watching this Boat Review on the Dickey 800 Custom.
For more boat reviews like this - go to our website
www.boatingnz.co.nz
John Eichelsheim again from Boating New Zealand Magazine.
Thanks for watching, if you'd like to see
more of these videos please subscribe to our Channel!
Subtitles by BBGroup NZ