I went to the 2017 New England Boat Show yesterday and as usual looked at the new Formulas as well as some other high end boats, like Grady white, Boston Whaler, Edgewater and Pursuit.
I was hoping to see some outboard version (s) of the Formula's but they were all the I/O's. I did notice that Regal had a couple bigger boats with twin outboards.
Anyway, Formula seems to be the seating king of the boats that I favor, but I did notice one thing that I was a little taken back by . . .
It looks like on recent models, probably within the past 2years, Formula has done away with the traditional helm seat that butts up to the U-shaped seating, in favor of a combination helm seat that the backrest can adjust to be either forward seating or rear facing seating.
Here is a picture of the 330 CBR seat from the show. Note the combination split backrest that can either face forward or backward. This essentially reduces the overall seating capacity (it seems) by 2 people.
By contrast, here is a 310 SS of a few years earlier with the traditional dual helm seat and U-shaped seating
I suppose in the big scheme of things it would not matter that much, but I do miss seeing/and would miss having that extra seating capacity. Typically, with my boating as we come home from a day of boating and the wind and waves are up we have most of the crew forward in the cockpit seating to avoid the spray that tends to come over the cockpit from the rougher seas. . . the loss of these two seating positions would perhaps mean a couple of people get a bit wetter than before
Thoughts?
I was hoping to see some outboard version (s) of the Formula's but they were all the I/O's. I did notice that Regal had a couple bigger boats with twin outboards.
Anyway, Formula seems to be the seating king of the boats that I favor, but I did notice one thing that I was a little taken back by . . .
It looks like on recent models, probably within the past 2years, Formula has done away with the traditional helm seat that butts up to the U-shaped seating, in favor of a combination helm seat that the backrest can adjust to be either forward seating or rear facing seating.
Here is a picture of the 330 CBR seat from the show. Note the combination split backrest that can either face forward or backward. This essentially reduces the overall seating capacity (it seems) by 2 people.
By contrast, here is a 310 SS of a few years earlier with the traditional dual helm seat and U-shaped seating
I suppose in the big scheme of things it would not matter that much, but I do miss seeing/and would miss having that extra seating capacity. Typically, with my boating as we come home from a day of boating and the wind and waves are up we have most of the crew forward in the cockpit seating to avoid the spray that tends to come over the cockpit from the rougher seas. . . the loss of these two seating positions would perhaps mean a couple of people get a bit wetter than before
Thoughts?