News — Boating

Boating in the Winter Months | Pontoon-Depot

By: My Boat Life

If you are lucky enough to live in a warmer climate, boating in the winter is a common practice. But in more northern areas where boating is typically 6-8 months out of the year, there are few boaters that boat in the winter months. The ultimate boating die-hard is the boater that keeps their boat in the water year round – and may even be a live aboard!

Depending on your geographic area, boating in the winter months may not actually be “boating”. Keeping your boat in the water during the winter means docking at a marina that will provide protection from water freezing around your boat and will continue basic services for slip holders in the off season.

In northern areas, there are a lot of challenges associated with keeping your boat in the water during the winter. First, you’ll need to locate a marina that offers winter docking. Then you’ll want to make sure the marina offers bubblers and de-icers at the dock as well as snow removal on docks. Also make sure that they provide mobile pump-out and water tank refilling service throughout the winter (since you will likely not be able to cruise over to the pump-out facility and running water will likely be shut-off on the dock). Heating and cooling systems may need to be winterized so you’ll need to heat your boat with portable space heaters.

In other warmer climates, keeping your boat in the water year round has many advantages. Basically there is no off season for boating. You never feel obligated to go to the boat every weekend because you have many more weekends available to boat. When the weather is not so great, you can skip a weekend. And then when the weather is particularly nice you can head to the boat and enjoy a winter cruise.

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A FEW PONTOON BOAT CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS

By: www.manitoupontoonboats.com

‘Tis the season of stringing up lights, hanging your stockings by the fireplace, and illuminating the Christmas tree with beautiful ornaments. If you find that your tree is a little bare this year, or if you’re looking for a last minute Christmas gift to a pontoon boater that you know, we’ve assembled a few pontoon boat Christmas ornaments that we thought would make a great addition to your Christmas tree, and provided links to where you can purchase them. If you find any of these pontoon boat ornaments to be sold out, or if you have a few recommendations of your own, let us know. We’ll do our best to keep the list updated.

For all your accessories and/or vinyl flooring visit Pontoon Depot's shop site.

Average Pontoon Boat Speeds (With 15 Examples)

By: BetterBoat.com

When buying a pontoon boat, one of the major considerations is your top speed. Since pontoon boats are generally not built for speed, skiing and tubing behind one can be difficult unless you take care to select an engine, weight, and pontoon style that will be conducive to speeds required for skiing and tubing.

How Fast Do Pontoon Boats Go?

• G3 Suncatcher 22′ V22RF with a 115hp engine and medium load can go about 25 mph (39 kilometers)
  • 22mph (38 kilometers) with a 90hp engine and medium load
  • With 11 people in the boat (max capacity) and a 115hp engine, it gets about 22 mph (35 kilometers)
  • Under perfect, ideal conditions and only one person in the boat, it can hit 31 mph (48 kmph)
• 21′ with lifting strakes and a 90hp engine and perfect conditions gets 36 mph (58 kilometers)
• 18′ Bass Buggy with 60hp engine can go up to 18mph (29 kilometers)
• Suntracker 22′ with a 70hp engine can get 21 mph with a light load (34 kilometers)
• Gigantic 30′ Pontoon with a 115hp will only get around 15mph (24 kilometers)
• 24′ Pontoon boat with a 115hp and a medium load got around 25mph (38 kilometers)
• 18′ Party Barge with a 75hp engine can get around  24mph (38 kilometers)
• 20′ Bass Buggy with a 60hp motor only gets around 13-17 mph (18 to 27 kilometers)
• 20′ Starcraft with a 75hp engine and with no load can get 23 mph (36 kilometers)
• 26′ Crest III with a 90hp engine and medium load can get around 28mph (45 kilometers)
• 24′ 2006 Sweetwater with a 90hp engine can go around 18mph, or 20.5mph with a 115hp engine
• 26′ Tritoon with a 175hp engine and a medium/heavy load can get up to 35mph (56 kilometers)
• 21′ Tritoon with a 90hp engine and only two people on board can get up to 27mph (43 kilometers)

How Fast Do You Really Need to Go?

Your initial response is probably “the faster, the better” but in reality you likely don’t need to go as fast as you think.  While speeds certainly vary according to the tastes and abilities of your riders, consider the following as good average speeds for various water sport activities.

• Waterskiing with two skis – 15 to 26mph is pretty normal (28 to 42 kilometers)
• Tubing with very young kids – My kids really don’t want to go faster than 5 to 10 mph (16kph).  They are 4 and 6 years old.  Most of the time, they feel like idling is a wild ride, but will sometimes get brave enough to hit 11mph.
• Tubing with kids 8 – 10 years old – Depends dramatically on the kid, but most wouldn’t want to go faster than 15 or 20 mph (24 to 32 kilometers).
• Tubing with older teens and adults – Above 25 mph (40 kilometers) is dangerous unless you’re just going in a straight line.  At 20 (34 kilometers), you can get really nice air and have the ride of your life but even this speed can be dangerous with more than one rider.  21 mph is a pretty adventurous ride and will easily knock off riders if you make tight turns.
• Wakeboarding – 13mph to 18mph (30 kilometers) is a pretty average ride. Wakeboarding requires less speed than many other water sports, and going too fast increases the danger dramatically.  The large, solid board strapped to both legs makes this water sport more dangerous at high speeds than some others.
• Slalom skiing – 14mph (22.5 kilometers) is a little slow and 36mph is HAULING (and extremely dangerous)!  A good average speed is somewhere around 22mph (35 kilometers).
• Kneeboarding – Somewhere around 13 to 20 mph (22 to 32 kilometers)
• Barefoot – This blog gives a formula that is helpful for those in the U.S.  Take your weight in pounds and divide by 10.  Then add 20.  So if you’re 200 pounds, you go to 20mph, then add 20, which means 40mph.

If you are new to boating, that is probably a little eye-opening.  Before, you thought you needed as much speed as possible, but as you can see from this breakdown, the optimal speed for most watersports is only 22 mph (36 kilometers).  Just about ANY pontoon boat with a 90hp motor can do that as long as it isn’t loaded down with people.  With a 115, you should be hitting the optimal speed even if your boat is pretty well loaded down with people. For most pontoon boat captains, the real goal is to hit the golden 22 mph (36 kph) mark.  At that point, your fishing/cruising rig becomes a nice watersports rig as well.

How Weight (Load) Affects Speed

Prepare yourself for a horrible generalization.  This depends dramatically on the specific boat and the setup, but just as a guestimation aid, for every thousand pounds you add to your boat, you’ll lose about 15% of your speed.  So a 22′ boat with no load may get up to 29mph, but will likely slow down to 24.5mph with 1,000 pounds of people in the boat (5 or 6 adults).

How the bimini Affects Speed

• One pontoon boat captain reported that folding down the bimini took  his speed from 32mph all the way up to 36mph (51kilometers to 58 kilometers).  In my experience, it’s usually much less of a difference than that unless it is an incredibly windy day.  I usually only see a 1 mph difference with top up vs down.

How the Prop Affects Speed

• When you first get your boat, it will likely come with a “safe” prop that is meant to make the motor operate under nice and easy conditions.  Almost everyone will switch out that prop and go with something a little smaller (usually) to get the speed up and push up the RPMs to around 5000 or 6000 depending on your recommended range for your particular motor.

How Dirty Pontoons Affect Speed

• It is not surprising to see a pontoon boat slow down 2 to 6mph if you have algae, barnacles, or other crud on your pontoons.  For those pontoon boat captains who don’t trailer but leave their boat in the water most of the season, this is an important consideration.

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The Evolution of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

By: www.arcadiapublishing.com

Holiday Mania:

The United States is unique in its annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday traditions. Each year the newsreel rolls with headlines of monstrous crowds storming Wal-Marts and Macy’s department stores across the country while images and videos spill across the internet of people fighting over Barbie Dolls and television sets. So why is it that consumers rush to department stores with their wallets handy the day after declaring all they’re thankful for?

While Black Friday has a long history in the United States, Cyber Monday arrived on the scene many years later. In 2012, with the blessing of online retailers, marketers took Black Friday and gave it a digital spin. No longer did people have to fight the chaos and crowds - they could now do their holiday shopping from the comfort of their homes.
 
So, where did it all begin? How has Black Friday and Cyber Monday evolved into the events we experience today? Surely, you’ve heard the rumors - some reaching all the way back to the early 1800s. Over the years, as people have tried to pinpoint the exact origin of the spectacle, wild stories have come to light. Some are true while others are entirely false. While each has helped to build the perception of Black Friday we have today, only one is the true genesis. With this post, we’re going to dispel the myths and reveal the true history and evolution of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
 
The Myths of Black Friday
 
The term “Black Friday” didn’t originally refer to a shopping bonanza on the Friday following Thanksgiving. On September 24, 1869, the stock market crashed, causing the price of common goods to drop 20 percent and the cost of gold to plummet 60 percent. This happened as a result of two thieving Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and James Fisk, who together bought up as much of the nation’s gold as possible and sold it at enormous prices. It was a Friday when the plot was revealed, and the market crashed, thus the name “Black Friday.”
 
With the origin of the term “Black Friday” clear, it’s important to identify where this idea for a day of massive sales originated. In some myths, the history of Black Friday takes a dark turn. It is said that during the slave era of American history, “Black Friday” was the day after Thanksgiving when all the slaves on the market were half-price. The concept leaked into department stores nationwide and the Black Friday we know today was born. Fortunately, this version of the story is untrue. 

A common thread of narrative, and the one you’ve likely heard most often, stems from retailers. As the story goes, retailers curiously reported seeing a hike in sales the day after Thanksgiving. After a year of mediocre sales, they took this as an opportunity, offering steep discounts with the hopes of drawing in customers who would spend large sums of money. While this tale isn’t the reason behind Black Friday, it did help to build potential for a day dedicated to shopping. In fact, the history and evolution of Black Friday is far less glamorous than a couple of conniving bankers or thrifty retailers.
 
The Truth about Black Friday
 
Imagine Philadelphia in the 1950s. The city is swarming with people. But this isn’t the normal crowd. They’ve all found their way here in anticipation of the huge Army-Navy football game, which takes place on the Saturday following Thanksgiving every year. Authorities began referring to this day as “Black Friday” because of the chaos the crowds brought to the city every year. This Friday saw an influx of shoplifting, and retail workers were forced to work extra long hours to accommodate for the crowds. In turn, Philadelphia’s department stores and restaurants saw massive spikes in sales.
 
In later years, Philadelphia officials would change the name to “Big Friday” to avoid any negative connotation of “Black Friday.” Little did they know the name had already stuck. By the late 1980s, the term caught on with the rest of the country. Looping it with the belief that sales increased the day after Thanksgiving, retailers dubbed the Friday following Thanksgiving “Black Friday” and enhanced it with eye-catching discounts. It was an instant hit that transformed this day into a one-day shopping bonanza.
 
Since then, Black Friday has marked the unofficial beginning of the financial holiday season. In 2017, the average shopper spent $1,0007.24 each. Roughly $637. 67 of that was spent on presents, $215.04 on gift wrap, decorations, food, and holiday cards, and $154.53 was spent taking advantage of the seasonal deals.

Since its beginnings, Black Friday has remained steadfast in this country. Retailers continue to find new ways to lure in consumers and as a result watch their sales skyrocket. The popularity of Black Friday also inspired the creation of a series of other retail holidays, like Small Business Saturday.
 
Cyber Monday
 
Cyber Monday is Black Friday gone digital, and is thought to reflect the trend in recent years to digitize virtually every real-world experience. It was born from a collective of online marketing agencies in response to the increasingly popular Black Friday. Every Monday following Thanksgiving tremendous deals take over the web. In recent years, companies have reported their income on this day as much as doubling, and according to Adobe Analytics, more than half of Thanksgiving weekend’s purchases were made from a mobile device.
 
The first attempts at Cyber Monday didn’t draw the attraction online retailers had hoped, but with the ongoing transition from physical shopping to digital, Cyber Monday has evolved into an online phenomenon. Shoppers can avoid both crowds and waking up at an unsavory hour, and still complete their holiday shopping, all from their bed while sipping a fresh cup of coffee.
 
Now that more and more brick-and-mortar stores are closing their doors, it’s safe to say that online shopping has taken the world by storm. Consumers enjoy the convenience and ease of purchasing from their digital devices, securing Cyber Monday a place in the retail landscape for the foreseeable future.  
 
Americans spend around $6.6 million on Cyber Monday. In 2017, Cyber Monday became the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. Adobe Analytics found that for the first time ever, mobile sales reached two million dollars within a 24-hour period.
 
While Black Friday has roots in American history, its digital companion Cyber Monday is still a relatively new player in the retail game. What these traditions evolve into next is anyone's guess.

For all your accessories and/or vinyl flooring visit Pontoon Depot's shop site.