TI outboard mount

Probably lots of ways to make things work. How you use the boat may be different than I do but I like being able to add the motor mount and motor easily - but also be able to remove the mount plus motor easily. Probably 80% of the time I use the TI, I dont have the motor back there plus if you are trailering for long distance, also nice to be able to remove all of that. When I have everything removed, I just have the two small angle brackets on the back of the boat.. almost the same as nothing at all there.

Long shaft.. why not.. if you ever sell or move on to a small sailboat, the long shaft will come in handy. I never have any issue at all with the short shaft and the prop coming out of the water at all so the short shaft is good and it puts a little less torque on the mount - but that may also not be that important. Height of the motor head.. Ive been using this for a while now and cant really see rasing the head higher solving any problem I have had.. but it shouldnt hurt.

Hezi,
The motor needs to be easily reached for starting, stopping, throttle/ steering adjust, fuel cap breather, refuelling, raising and lowering. Whilst an extension pole for the throttle/ tiller will work it will be very difficult to do anything else with a motor mounted aft of the rudder.
Re the shaft length, I agree with Walt. The short shaft works fine. Before I raised the mount, our first few trips resulted in the motor getting drenched from waves hitting the mount and splashing the motor from all angles. It didn't miss a beat!

You raise some interesting issues.
I do not believe adding 5" on shaft length would really offer any advantages. I have had spray go three feet aver my head (true!) so raising the motor a few inches will do little to help, given that you only need the prop to be a few inches under water (we are not talking about a water skiing application here!)and even a short shaft motor raises the head high enough as stringy mentions. However, most outboards have a cowling which will protect the motor unless it is virtually submerged, so airborne spray will not be a problem. While I also agree that a longer motor will have little effect on stability, frankly, I reckon it would look a bit dorky sticking up higher

Given the beam of the Island, positioning the motor on one side creates zero noticeable asymmetric thrust. Furthermore, hanging the motor way out back is going to tend to make the ride worse (ideally any sailboat works best with all weight located in the centre), while greatly increasing the possibility of the motor getting dunked in big waves, or else, in the same conditions, waving the prop in the air.I have noticed that the long and flat shape of the Island can mean that either end can be well submerged in waves (luckily only very temporarily), and anything which further increases the length is going to magnify this trend.

As for noise, my motor is a cheap and loud 2 stroke, and I have it mounted almost literally under my elbow. The exhaust leaves the motor at prop level, and the noise is quite bearable. Remember also that it is a sailboat, so running the motor will be an exception, rather than the rule. To be honest, I do not think that moving a motor a few feet is going to make that much difference to "nuisance" level.

Lastly, I would never modify the Island in a way that puts hull openings under water, and then rely on a bilge pump to avoid the consequences... far better to avoid the problem in the first place.

In summary, I would suggest a short shaft motor, and mount it anywhere which is convenient (remember that these small motors use a starting cord and manual tilt - and might need refueling while at sea). My "centre-mount" is unconventional, but necessitated due to my being a fat bastard whose weight in the rear seat was not ever going to work,. but access to the motor meant that a (more) rear mount was impractical.

Hope these thoughts help!

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

So nice to have the opinions of experienced and knowledgeable people on this. I'm going to keep it short and simple.
Thanks a bunch!

Whether you go with a short shaft or a long shaft is entirely your discression. I'm not sure if mounting the motor a few inches higher above the water will halp at all or not. The TI sits so low in the water, any motor (short or long shaft) goes under the water completely in as little as 2-3 ft surf, nothin you can do about it that I know of. If I had to guess, I've buried my motors a couple hundred times in waves, surf, and boat wakes. I have twin engines and have never had both quit at the same time, but one or the other has quit (oxygen starved) maybe 5-6 times in 3-4 yrs. It's a minor annoyance, but the motor typically restarts with one or two pulls. I sometimes attach extentions to my pull starters so I can start the engines from the front seat. I made the extensions up a long time ago and store them in the mesh pockets in the back seat when not using them. However I hardly ever bother to get them out and hook the extensions up, I've had them 3yrs and only bothered to hook them up twice so far, (wasted effort lol).
It's so uncommon for the motors to die, I typically just start them when I launch and just let them run all day, turning them off when I come in. Each tank holds a quart of fuel and gives around 2-3hrs of run time, thus no need to ever restart the engines once I launch. I'm seldom out more than 2hrs, and seldom go more than 20 miles.

As far as mounting your motors really high on the boat vs boat balance. For a while I had surface props on my TI and had both the motors mounted way high so only half the props were underwater. Made for great rooster tails behind the boat but didn't seem to affect the balance or sailing ability of the boat at all, though I never tried any of that crap in heavy seas or really adverse conditions.
If it was me I wouldn't bother with the long shaft, but that's just me.
FE

Already ordered the short shaft. Tony Scott advice to keep weight centered and that the ends of the boat are more likely to go in and out of waves as opposed to the center made perfect sense. going to keep it simple like most of the installs here. Thanks again!

You'll be happy with your decision.

(Having run aground somewhat repeatedly lately in the swamps of the everglades, I can attest to FE and Mr. Stott's wisdom. SHort shaft works well with or boats.)

BobAgain, soon to be MudCrawler

Pictures from an outing yesterday Feb 3 on Lake Havasu Arizona. This particular water hike didnt really need the outboards and we actually pedal sailed most of the route but one guy wanted to try out a new mount.. so everyone brought theirs.

This trek starts at Cattail cove state park (Lake Havasu) and heads down to "Jackass Cove", then back to Black Meadow landing for a late lunch. These pictures are all hosted on facebook here https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater What I am finding is that everyone will be able to see this but after a few months, the pictures will disappear.

A unique set of photos, with outboards fitted to all off the TIs! This trend is catching on big time.

Walt, I am a bit confused about your comment about photos disappearing after a while. Do you mean here in the forum, or on Facebook.

It is my belief that photos posted here in the forum will be permanent until they are removed from the original location. In contrast, FB is like a toilet roll (!!), and it can be difficult to find anything posted a time ago..

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

Unfortunately Hobie does NOT host pictures. I cant remember the reason they dont.. other sailboat forums that have stores do and it seems to work very well for them. Cant beat the marketing enthusiasm of users posting pictures. You have to go through all the hassle of posting the picture to one of those picture sites, then link to it here. Someone might say its easy.. OK..

I had sort of "discovered" that if you have a picture hosted on face book (very easy to do except you get all the other crap that comes along with fb), that you can save the address. Then on this site, use the Img button and put the address in the correct spot.

If you go back and look at page 9 of this thread, you can see some of my post where I had used FB to host pictures. The pictures are now missing.. I didnt delete them.. The ones I just posted will probably be no longer viewable in a couple months or so and it wont be because of anything I did.

one more "temporary" picture from yesterday hosted on FB - linked to here

All of my pics goin back to 2008 are still on the forum, all stored on photobucket. And all my videos dating back to 2010 are hosted on youtube. I'm sure there are other free hosting sites out there.
FE

The problem is the very nature of Facebook. To bett understand FB, think toilet roll. Stuff on GB goes down the crapper, and is only there temporarily.

If you don't believe me, try and look up your own timeline three months ago.

I would love to be proven wrong, but won't hold my breath.

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

Hello all, so I got the Suzuki DF2.5. I am in the process of designing a mount which hopefully would be light, simple, and will not present much interference with the cargo area in general and the scupper holes to stow the cart in particular. I am going to fabricate it from 6061 T6 aluminum and going to have it welded. This is a measure twice cut once type of deal and I was hoping I can get some help from the Suzuki owners here and save me the trial and errors. I was hoping to get help with the following:

1 How tall is the top of the motor mount plate from the top side of your TI?
2 How far out the mount is from the edge?
3 Is there a reason everybody is installing the motor on the right of the boat? I get it the rudder control is on the left, but all the sail ropes are on the right and if you want to use the motor to steer, the handle will interfere with your body (if the motor is mounted close to the hull which is the ideal position I think).
4 Last, just to be on the safe side, I ordered the short shaft, but the seller also stock long shaft. Suzuki doesn't provide much info about the difference. I measured my motor from the underside of the motor housing to the lowest point under the prop and came up with 27" in length. It seems very tall and I want to make sure I didn't get the long shaft by mistake. I will appreciate your take on it.

Thank you much!

Hezi,
These specs apply to my mount which is located as far aft as possible. I used the open rear hatch lid as a guide for placement of the square tube, leaving just enough room for the hatch to work. The motor sits on a thin poly board 16.5 cm tall x 15cm wide attached to the alloy tube sections.

Poly board height above gunwale = 22.5cm
Centre of poly board to gunwale edge = 15cm.
It is important that the cantilevered section of the bracket sits above the gunwale to avoid getting hit by waves. Mine sits 5cm above the gunwale.
I was going to move the poly board in closer to the hull a bit but I found that the raised motor would then foul the mainsheet when sailing.
I mounted the motor on the right side because the tiller/throttle are on the left side of the motor and would have been difficult to reach so far out on the left side of the hull.