SEAKEEPER STABILIZER
One of the “magical” toys I played with when I was in grade school was a gyroscope. A metal wheel was mounted in a wire cage. Wind some string around the axle then pull the string to get the wheel spinning. For the next 20 or 30 seconds the gyroscope would balance in most any position and if you held onto the cage and tried to rotate it there was enough force that it felt as though the two-ounce toy weighed a pound or more.
I’m sure a physicist could explain it better than just “magical,” but I doubt I could understand the “principles of angular momentum” in his explanation. Still, it works and gyroscopes are vital components in airplanes, rockets, spacecraft and many other devices and equipment.
Now, that list of gyroscopically controlled devices includes vessels and I was treated to boat ride with a Seakeeper Boat Stabilizer on Lake Michigan. The test-ride was in a 36’ Yellowfin Center Console normally moored at Coco Beach, Florida taking anglers offshore to fish in the Gulf Stream. What did the Seakeeper do?
The Seakeeper is that principle of angular momentum at work. The guts of the machine is a gyroscope wheel spinning up to 9750 RPMs and in the most simplistic explanation, it dampens or eliminates the boat’s side to side rocking and rolling.
SEE HOW IT WORKS
The true test of a boat’s side to side stability begins when the boat is at idle or trolling speed and the boat is positioned sideways to the waves – or when some lug speeds past and rocks you with their wake. I’ve been rocked so hard in my boat that the diver rods’ tips splash into the lake on one side, while the other side lifts so hard it trips the Dipsey.
For my test ride the boat’s captain moved far enough offshore to be away from the general boat traffic then cut several tight circles to push up an acre or two of confused seas on top of the wind-driven waves already present. Then, in the middle of the chop and waves, he pulled the shift lever to neutral and pushed the button to turn off the Seakeeper. The screen on his Garmin display showed the boat was rocking 13 to 15 degrees to port and then equally to starboard. That’s almost 30 degrees of roll, total—and not something I’d like to put up with for long. On my boat, I’d either be trolling with or against the wind.
One push of the button and a short few seconds, the roll indicator showed one to three degrees of roll. The waves and chop were still present, but movement of the boat was only straight up or down as the waves, chop and swells passed under the boat.
Interested? Seakeepers are not something that can be ordered and installed as a DIY project. You’ll need to contact a licensed dealer, arrange for a technician to personally look at your boat and then decide mounting options. There are several Seakeeper dealers currently available in the Great Lakes region, and more locations planned for the future. The screenshot attached to this review shows the current locations. The exact locations (and other info) can be found at www.SEAKEEPER.com.
Seakeeper devices come in several sizes, from the Seakeeper 1, recommended for boats 23’ to 30’ to larger units that will smooth the ride of 200’ yachts. (The Seakeeper rep along on my test ride said they could put one in my 21’ fiberglass ProLine.) They can be installed in wood, fiberglass or aluminum boats.
The 1 unit measures roughly 23”X23”X16”—so about the size of a medium cooler. In many installations, the unit is mounted to the boat’s hull through the floor so the height is minimized and often a unit can be installed under a console or seat. The only limitation is the unit has to be somewhere in the rear half of the boat. Every installation will have a sleek, professional custom finish. Many new boat manufacturers are offering a Seakeeper unit as an add-on from the factory. The Seakeepers run on a separate deep-cycle battery (either lithium or traditional) like most boats employ for electronics or bow-mounted trolling motors.
I can imagine Seakeeper equipped boats trolling comfortably crossways to waves that might be keeping owners of non-gyro-stabilized boats off the lake. I can also imagine Lake Erie drift boat anglers equipped with Seakeepers fishing level and comfortably when the “walleye chop” becomes extreme even if everyone is fishing on one side of the boat.