Seating Capacity 87 Nova III?
 

Can anyone tell me the wieght/seating capacity for my 1987 Wellcraft Nova III with twin 5.7's??

Thanks,

DB

about half of whatever its rated for. Boats over a certain length don't have capacity placards. Common sense usually wins

87 Nova III Seating Capacity
 

So that explains why my 27' - 28' boat doesn't have a cap plate...

Anyway - I have a total of 7 fairly good sized guys that want on my boat to get out to the nooner on 6/25. I'm not so much concearned as to whether the boat will handle all of us as much as I am concearned about having the hassle of getting pulled over due to over loading. I'm fairly new at this and don't want anyone hurt or myself ticketed. Any extra information would be appreciated.

Thanks

Gunnarb

Take 7 good looking slim girls and you wont have any problems.:drink:

I had 28 people on a Nova 210XL once. Took forever to plane out, but since about half of the load was on the nose and in the cuddy she finally got on top of the water. 36 mph was all she would do, though, and turning hard put the whole nose into the water along with much screaming and cursing from the nose passengers.

Best I can recall, there wasn't a capacity plate on that boat either, although I am fairly certain we were overloaded.

That boat was a fun boat. When it wasn't so heavily loaded, we used to run WOT at neutral trim and do "Starsky and Hutch turns". Get up your speed, yank the stick back to idle at the same time you turn full left followed by immediate full throttle. The prop spin direction would assist the violent turn that ensued. It was really fun, but sometimes the passengers wouldn't listen when you told them to brace themselves.

Those particular passengers usually hurt their shin or shoulder as they launched out the back of the boat into the lake.

They REALLY should have listened....

Anyhow, it was a fun boat. Wellcraft did have a couple of design flaws in that model, though. They should have used a more "acid resistant" carpet in the boat. The Starsky turn would occasionally rip the battery free from its hold-downs and shatter the casing, thus spilling acid on the carpet. The cheap stuff they used just wasn't up to the task. The other glaring deficiency was the stringers. After 50 or 60 of those Starsky turns, the smallblock ripped free from the stringers out of the boat. They were clearly far too weak for the boat. Those boat designers shouldn't have cut corners in either of those areas.

Naughty boat designers.....

MC