Tested | Arvor 705 Sportfish with Mercury 225HP V-6
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- čas přidán 4. 12. 2021
- Matt arrived at the ramp at Manly on Brisbane’s Moreton Bay with a brand new Arvor 705 Sportsfish. Powered by a V6 Mercury 225HP outboard and carried on a Redco aluminium I Beam trailer, it sure looked the part behind his Landcruiser.
This hull has been built especially for fishing and features self draining decks, high gunwales and some neat, underfloor, plumbed tanks that keep your catch from messing up the deck.
The hero of this boat, though, is the lockable cabin with three doors - one at the rear and one on each side. Apart from the security advantages of being fully lockable, the three doors allow you to manage airflow in the cabin.
And having enclosed cabin is important because of the hull design. The Arvors feature a blunt bow and do throw spray in any sort of a sea. Best place to be when you're quartering it? Inside the cabin.
In the video of this boat test, Matt explains the advantages of this hull design.
“The design team from Arvor make absolutely no excuses about the design …. There’s no way that we have the softest riding hull. What we do have is a hull that at rest has superior stability, which is what you need when you’re fishing, jigging or having lunch,” he said.
“The fully enclosed wheelhouse has dual windscreen wipers and can deal with any spray the blunt hull throws up. But the beam that carries forward which gives us more volume. And what that means is that the toilet can have a holding tank and we can take some environmental responsibility rather than pumping it out,” he continued.
Indeed, there’s lot of boat for its length. Although called a 705, the actual hull length is 6.45m. We haven’t seen many boats with more crammed into them than this Arvor.
The rig is powered by the maximum horsepower, 225 Mercury V6 4-stroke. Spinning a 15” Enertia, three blade stainless steel propeller, it got to 63km/h at 5,500rpm achieving 0.89km/L. Best cruising speed was at 4,000rpm where it delivered 1.37km/L at 41km/h.Couple that with a 200L fuel tank and you have a theoretical range of around 250km at economical cruising speeds. Is this enough for your purposes?
Driving the rig was a breeze - especially with Mercury’s Active Trim engaged. This takes over boat trimming for you and although most experienced boaties’ first impressions would be that they don’t need the motor to do that for them, the fact is that it’s like an automatic car. Once you stop reaching for the trim button, you can appreciate that it makes driving easier.
You do need to be careful of the side sliding doors and to latch them in place - whether closed or open. They can slam shut if you forget to do this and they are built solidly.
The Aussie-built bait station is mounted in top of the live bait well and folds forward on the centre section when the motor needs to be trimmed all of the way up.
The cockpit boasts a couple of folding seats that are mounted in delightfully strong and easy to deploy stainless steel frames. Under the cockpit floor, there’s a large centre hatch that holds the table and leg underfloor as well as giving access to the bilge.
Alongside this is a pair of kill boxes - one of which is plumbed and drains directly to the ocean. This would be great for bleeding fish and packing your catch. It pumps water in with the switches mounted near it.
These hatches are all heavy and thankfully supported by gas struts.
The cabin is slightly offset to give more space on the starboard side, where you’ll do most of your berthing. I didn’t notice this until I did the full walk around and had to squeeze around on the port side. Both sides have rails on the hard top to let you move easily between the bow and stern.
The cabin itself is designed to maximise utility. The test boat features a fridge and area for food preparation. Small luxuries like this make this fishing boat very family friendly.
The helm features great visibility, which never seems to be a problem in the hard topped boats I have tested and the layout means everything is visible and accessible.
We thought that the solid cabin door was a little bit of an overkill - it never really needs to be locked with the outside doors. The toilet was offset and well located. It gives you a little more privacy than sitting facing the stern.
It’s definitely not a two berth cabin where you and your mate can stretch out for a good night’s sleep. It is too short for that. It’s more a place to get out of the bustle or give the kids a nap.
As tested, you can expect to pay $174,000 for this rig as tested on the Redco trailer, although make the motor 150HP and ditch the trailer and you can start at around $120,000.
Give Matt and the team at John Crawford Marine a call for more details and scan the QR at the start of this article st see the 705 Arvor in action.
PERFORMANCE
RPM Speed (km/h) Economy (km/L)
600 4 1.75
1000 7 1.84
2000 12 1.18
3000 20 1.10
3500 31 1.35
4000 41 1.37
4500 48 1.29
5000 55 1.06
5500 63 0.89 - Auta a dopravní prostředky
Dream fishing rig!
the wheelhouse is a huge win for me.
Perfect set up, the two things I don't like about this boat is the small fuel tank and the low cruise speed. An extra 100 litres and 10km/h would be perfect.
Great boat for camping, family days on comfortable water but I would'nt want to be in it in a bigger following sea, I don't see that hull designed for offshore heavy work.
Hi. Wondering why you think that? Looks very robust to me but I don’t know much about these things. Cheers
@@jimreeves6377 hard to find deadrise in any spec but it looks to be about 16 degrees at transom. Wide beam for the lengh and a wide bow I think it would get pushed around in a following sea. It has some great accomodation for a family boat and thats defanitly it's strength.
that's exactly what the arvor was built for, the north Atlantic sea i think, not sure about outboard version though, the the shaft drive is a weapon.
What's the cost of that boat including the trailer?
$175,000
That has to be the ugliest boat I have ever seen.