Bayliner 185SE & 205SE

 

Issue: August 2006

BLACK KNIGHTS

Bayliner's latest Special Editions are real head turners...

WORDS + PHOTOS IAN MACRAE

Take two sleek new Special Edition Bayliners and two friends and business partners, with more than 40 years of boating industry experience behind them, and you've got a recipe for success. Toronto Marine Centre's Glen Coulam and Darren Binkin have joined forces with the Australia-wide Avante Marine Group to offer their customers the complete range of Bayliner, Maxum, Trophy and Meridian boats. With Glen running the sales side of the business and Darren looking after the service department, the future of the Toronto Marine Centre, on the banks of Lake Macquarie, north of Sydney, looks very bright indeed.

The two boats I referred to earlier are the Bayliner 185 Special Edition (SE) and 205SE. Bayliner released the two models for limited sale by selected dealers worldwide. One look at the pair confirmed the Modern Boating team's opinion that these black beauties are going to be top sellers. So good, in fact, that the first two potential buyers to see the new vessels snatched them up on the spot. So this test was the shakedown cruise for both boats ? and they passed with flying colours.

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BAYLINER 185SE
The first thing to grabs one's attention with the 185SE is her striking black hull with contrasting white underside. She's a roomy bowrider with a classy new interior trim (featuring silky grey inlays and a stylish, new, metallic-finish dash) that in the looks department anyway, elevates the boat to the Brunswick Corporation's more upmarket Maxum range standard.

A smooth and economical 4.3lt MPI V6 220hp MerCruiser provides the power and propels this top little bowrider to 56mph at 5100rpm. Aggressive chines and strakes, plus a deep-vee hull with a sharp bow-entry, give this boat almost 'purpose-built ski boat' handling characteristics. She doesn't need much trim out to perform to the max. In fact, this hull, like any other, can get flighty if trimmed out too far. But new drivers and families don't have to worry, because the prop will lose traction before you could possibly get into trouble. She slices across other boat's wake with ease and treats the average chop with distain. The harder you drive her in choppy conditions (within reason), the better the ride.

This boat comes with an optional wake tower and while the boat isn't a world-beater when it comes to walling-up huge wakes, having her engine mounted aft allows her wake at slow speeds to be big enough for an average rider.

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