Well I just went for my sea trial, the boat looks incredible. Ill post a pic shortly.
the good: It is beautiful. It handles like a dream, picks itself up out of the water onto a step effortlessly, the bow hardly lifts at all. The finer details turned out great. The seating is comfortable, the layout is perfect, the trim tabs, washdown pump, lights, bilges, all that stuff works great. The boat doesnt pound or slap or vibrate at all. Theres tons of storage and its plenty spacious.
the bad: The throttle for the kicker is pinched or sticking somehow. On a turn to port it idles down, on a turn to stbd it revs up. The kicker cowling also bumps the main cowling when you turn hard to stbd when the kicker is raised, but that can be easily fixed. The digital display for the main isnt working either.
the ugly: My biggest fear about this build for the past few days came true. The self bailing deck sits 1 inch above the water line at the stern with 0 people or gear on board. At the bow its got plenty of buoyancy, it sits 6 or 8 inches above the waterline. TC regs for commercial passenger vessels specify that it should sit 3 inches above the water line fully loaded with gear and passengers. With a full load the deck would likely be below the water line at the stern. Self bailing decks operate on gravity, and must be above the waterline to work, otherwise you just have a boat with holes in it.
I feel awful for my builder, hes done an incredible job on everything, but this issue is pretty major. He thinks maybe he can get the buoyancy required by widening the pod but Im skeptical. My initial thought was to raise the deck with a subfloor and bolt everything back on, but that is a ton of work and might require taller stern and bow rails. He seems to think if it comes to that hed be better off building me a new boat. Another option is to seal the scuppers off and just have a regular hull and deck, which is not something I want. I had planned to keep this boat for the rest of my life and the self bailing deck is a must for me, for function and for safety. Another possibility would be to swap out the suzuki 150 for a suzuki 140, saving about 50kg of weight but Im not sure that would do it either. The stern needs to come up atleast 3 inches, maybe more.
If anyone else has any suggestions feel free to post them.