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Perfect V-Drive ski boat for me - Sunscape 21 LSV??


Badger

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'04 to get the gorilla tracking fins

Just curious, is there something different between a "gorilla" fin and a normal fin? My '01 SS has tracking fins.

Gorilla fins are larger, deeper, and have a different shape. They don't really do a lot to help the tracking since it was already pretty good in the course, but the larger surface area increases the hold of the fins in hard turns. It makes for a grippier pivot point on the water and helps the V drives turn more like direct drives.

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It gets a bit dicey with vdrives built prior to '04. ;)

Since I have no experience driving inboard boats, I'm not sure what type of "dicey-ness" you're referring to. Spinouts in a sharp turn?

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On a small ski lake, the turns around the islands can be tight. A few years ago we had a get-together on such a lake & we had an '03 VLX there (regular fins, not Gorilla). At one point they were pulling me & we were making the turn around one of the islands. He had backed off of the power a bit & the boat just completely washed out of the turn. He hit reverse hard & everyone came bailing out of the boat to keep it off of the rocks (one of the scarier situations that I've seen personally happen). In those situations, Gorilla Fins make the difference - they would have held the turn regardless of power, speed or turn angle.

It scared the owner so bad that he looked into retrofitting Gorilla Fins to his boat the very next week.

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All that being said about Gorilla fins I've never had the boat wash out of a turn or not handle a sharp competition turn safely and fine at speed. The boat just wallows a bit when not on plane. It's still tons better than the I/O I came from though.

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Tracie, I'd imagine in your case it was just related to ballast and the speed taken into the turn. I'll bet the nose was high and the fins barely had a grip on the water.

That said, I had a similar experience driving a Response on a tourney lake once. It chine locked and went straight towards shore while going around the turn island. Scared the hell out of me. I managed to get it stopped about 6 inches from the rocky shore.

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He was actually running more ballast up front than anything else, but yeah, I'm sure that the nose being high coming around the corner & backing off of the throttle a bit pulled the fins out at the wrong time. I've never been able to get my boat to repeat the behavior though, even with the bowrise being much worse on the newer VLXs. The Gorilla Fins really do a great job of digging in on a corner.

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