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Potent, Not Pretty
COL BUCKLEY quickly moves past the boxy appearance of the Webster 5.2 cat and finds a rugged, spacious, comfortable fishing machine
Col Buckley
So you’ve decided to invest in a boat. Some hard decisions have already been made. Aluminium instead of fibreglass, multihull instead of single hull. Now it’s just a question of looking around to see what’s on the market.
If you are right into fishing, want a boat with enough room for a dining table, not fussed about ‘prettiness’, want something that can be flogged hard – have a close gander at the Twinfisher range from Webster’s Marine.
Let me say right from the start, Webster boats are designed and built as workhorses. They are not sleek, luxurious, sexy or aerodynamic. However, they are made tough, stable as a rock and will get you home when conditions get rough.
Around 15 years ago, Ron Webster decided he would weld together an aluminium catamaran that ran on a single donk for his own use. In those days, practically all cats were designed for twin motors so it was a fairly new concept that Ron embarked on. The small 3.8-metre plate boat attracted a lot of attention – so much in fact that Ron left a secure job at whitegoods manufacturer Email and started building cats full-time at Orange, in Central Western NSW. The rest is history, with Webster Twinfishers now known all over Australia by recreational fishos, local governments, charter operators and universities. They are renowned as a soft-riding, no-nonsense platform that will outlive most who invest in one.
I took the new Webster 5.2m Runabout for a test spin recently and, being a big fella that likes a bit of elbow room when fishing, I couldn’t help but be gobsmacked by the amount of space in the cockpit. Having the outboard on an extension pod takes away that space-eating transom pocket, leaving a huge square of useable room. Four hefty blokes could get hooked into rampaging fish and all would have room to manoeuvre.
The basic boat comes with only a smattering of extras. This gives a foundation to custom-rig, dependant on your own mode of fishing. This can be done by you, the dealer or the manufacturer. Everyone has his or her own ideas on how to set up a boat and the Webster offers a great starting platform.
We launched at Wharf Road boat ramp, West Ryde, and slowly motored east up the Parramatta River towards the harbour. It was a bright, sunny day with a moderate blow from the west. My companions were Charlie Sultana, co-owner of Independent Outboards, and mechanic Adrian Luppino. At a gurgling 3500rpm, the boat did a very comfortable 28 knots as we sailed past all the new foreshore developments. Under the Harbour Bridge there is always plenty of wave action from traffic on this busy waterway and the test day was no exception. I took over the controls and put the cat through a few hoops.
The test boat was amply powered by an extra-long shaft 130hp Saltwater Series Yamaha sporting a 19” propeller and was mounted on a full floating pod. This power plant was more than adequate. Being an aluminium boat, I’m sure you’d get away with a 90hp if range, not torque, is high on the agenda. When seated, the top of the windscreen created a slight restriction to my vision. However, standing up on the raised helm deck, my preferred way to drive, gave a fantastic 360° vista – comforting with all the harbour traffic around me. The short, stubby nose, including an open well to hold anchor, chain and warp, sports a chequerplate floor – ideal as a fly or lure-casting platform. Standard bow rails split in the centre to accommodate a large anchor roller.
The lockable glovebox gives a touch of security for personal items and the swivel seats lift to give more covered storage in the seat boxes. It would be nice to have a drawer or cupboard set up in the boxes instead of having to lift the seats every time. There is plenty of room on the dash to add any marine electronics that turn you on and I secretly smiled at the plastic wood-grain finish on the dash and glovebox.
The boat comes with a 100-litre removable tank, a nice touch. You can take it out, drain it, get all the water/gunk build-up out and then reinstall it. However, it’s not enough fuel for sorties out wide with the big engine. Due to the ‘V’ design of the tank to allow it to fit upright in the transom, it is nigh impossible to fit a fuel gauge. Fuel consumption can be roughly calculated by entering details into a GPS or a sounder with a log, but this is not totally reliable. Ron Webster can install an extra tank of up to 70 litres that lies comfortably up the front, giving offshore fishos plenty of reserve and it shouldn’t affect boat trim. The chequerplate landing platforms either side of the pod make for easy access for divers, although a short boarding ladder will help those who are not so agile.
The side pockets or shelves just above the floor are narrow and will hold only small hand lines and tackle boxes. I would have a rocket-launcher across the windscreen for rod storage and a big centre fish box – split with a cutting board and drawer system on one side and a deep live bait tank on the other. Underneath the cutting board, the drawers would store all the regular knick-knacks that are necessary when out fishing. With such a vast area of cockpit room, how you would set this baby up is limited only by your imagination.
Back on the harbour, I picked a big wake and aimed the boat right at it, pushing down the throttle. The boat leapt forward, hit the first wave and, as it was about to land, the next pressure wave forced the boat back into the air. I bent my knees, waiting for the bang, but all that happened was a big WHOOOSH as air was captured between the two big sponsons, cushioning our landing. This was softness with a capital ‘S’. With half-throttle, the boat got on top of the half-metre chop and stayed there with little down-trim, ideal for that persistent sloppiness we tend to get on the East Coast.
The boat ran downwind well and with the weather and sea on the beam, had no inclination to deviate one iota from the set track. There was no sign of spray entry, due to the large forefeet and strakes on the sponsons directing water well away from the cockpit. In the old days cats had a reputation of being a touch wet, with a constant mist sucked back into the cockpit. Let me assure you, this is no more and the Twinfisher was as dry as any monohull.
I tried to get the boat to cavitate by pulling hard down on the wheel while under power – but to no avail. The boat stuck like glue to the water and although cats tend to tilt outwards in turns, there was no feeling of anxiety by the crew. The combination of a pod, high transom and tunnel also let me back the boat up hard without any sign of water intrusion into the cockpit.
At rest, with the three of us leaning over the same gunwale, the list was hardly perceptible, an important safety feature exclusive to cats. With the cockpit floor above the waterline, the Twinfisher can be left on a mooring with a bung out to drain collected rainwater. Also, because of the high sides, the boat can be adapted to accommodate a self-draining deck.
Getting the Twinfisher back on the trailer was a breeze, with a sturdy walkway down the centre of the trailer and rear upright rollers to guide the sponsons onto the teflon slip pads. There is also a roller on either side of the trailer that just kisses the clinker sides, making sure all is square when winching up. With the boat out of the water, I noticed brackets on the bottom of each sponson, raise-welded for attaching transducers, bilge pumps, paddle wheels for logs and speed, etc. This means you don’t have to puncture the airtight flotation chambers with mounting screws. Each sponson has a bung and there are two large bungs to drain the cockpit.
With an all-up, fully-fuelled weight of around 1200kg, including trailer, this boat can be easily towed behind a Commodore or Falcon.
As an out-and-out fisho, this boat really appealed to me and during the test my mind kept thinking of different ways to fit her out. Ride and handling is excellent and the boat revels in the rough. Sure, there are welded seams visible through the powder coating that look as though they need grinding down but, to my mind, it’s all part of this gorgeous ugly duckling’s personality that makes it such a ‘blokey’, must-have fishing boat.
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