I had an opportunity to take a friend’s new MX2025 out for a full day for a “test drive” with my family (me, wife, 6 & 3 year old kids) on Lake Roosevelt last Sunday. I thought I would share my experience with you.
We had a beautiful fall day with zero wind, clear skies, and temps in mid to upper 80’s. I’ve had a wonderful Triton 18DV center console with a Yamaha SW130 on it for about 16 years, but a CC is just not enough of a family boat. Here in the pacific NW where I fish soft water all year long, it will be nice to have a full windshield for me too. Thanks to my friend who let me borrow it… guess this was a bit of a pay it back as I was the one who alerted him to the new Skeeter design back when the MX1825 was just announced.
The day on the water exceeded all of our expectations in many ways. The next day my wife said to me that she definitely wants us to purchase a boat, and wants to go to the Skeeter boat center when we are back in Minnesota over Thanksgiving to look at the full lineup of all our options… ability to see, touch and feel our options are quite limited here in Eastern WA. I agreed with her that the boat would be best for us with a few more skier friendly options such as jump seats, a true boat ladder, perhaps even one with a small platform on it, a ski pylon, and perhaps even have some removable pads custom made to match the seats for the bow of the boat, or even cover the entire back casting platform. I bet we could order some seat cover materials from skeeter at the same time we order / buy our boat. Here are some of our observations from our day on the water:
My daughter liked bring able to go really fast. At one point sitting where the jump seat would be and “catching air” in her loose cheeks & laughing all the way down the lake.
We left the rear two passenger seats out of the boat to mimic the open feel of how we would set up a boat with Jump seats for just our family. This was a great choice… gone were the days of bumping into everyone all day long, never having anyplace to put your feet, or not having room to blow up inflatables or to stage for the next person’s ski run. The amount to deck space open to us was huge.. front, middle and rear was all appreciated. I think my wife saw how nice this was when internally comparing this to a more ski emphasized fish and ski boat with more cushioned seats eating up all the real-estate.
Storage was much more than I expected. I had my friend leave all of his fishing tackle in the boat. He has tons as he is a tournament Walleye fisherman. I did have him remove his rods from the center rod locker though. He left a few rods in the side rod locker, and I added a few there as well. This would allow us to “test” out what I see as a seldom discussed “family” feature of the Skeeter multi-species line. On days where we may start with some fishing, then switch to water sports when it gets warmer, the lack of rod tubes in the center rod locker would allow us to store a wakeboard, slalom ski, the kid’s training skis plus a few life jackets, ski ropes, etc. there, and still have a safe, covered, fully functional and lockable side rod locker for several easily accessible rods… Rods where I don’t need to remove lures or sharp hooks from just because the kids are going to be in the boat later. This layout worked very well for us, and will be a huge feature to remember as I take my spouse to look at a Ranger Reata, Lund 208 Tyee GL, or other boat options. When I fish alone, I’m never with less than a dozen rods, so size of rod storage is important to me even on non-family days. Skeeter did a great job on that as well… with large center and side storage options, I wouldn’t have to bury my rods below other rods when stored, thereby making them all more easily accessible when fishing.
In addition to my friend’s fishing gear, for this trip, I had 7 life jackets, a slalom ski, three ski ropes, kids training skis, sand toys, several beach towels, camp chairs, a cooler with a few gallons of water plus our food / snacks, a bag with four people’s extra clothes, a bag with inflatable water toys, our tube, pump and shorties in it. The boat could have swallowed it all easily, but I simply didn’t use the front bait well as a cooler for convenience sake (and just in case a small kiddo decided to start playing with the live well switches and flood our food), and left our food in our soft side cooler. This is one downfall of the current WX2060 or MX2025 as it doesn’t have a small built in cooler. Same goes for the bag that had our inflatables, 12V air pump and shorties in it. I could have taken time to place them into compartments, but for time sake just didn’t do so. If I had the boat in my garage the night before, I would have taken time to properly hide all of it. Just eyeballing this boat to pictures of others listed above, I’d guess the Skeeter WX2060 / MX2025 will have much more storage space than any of them. In addition, most of the storage areas are lockable with the exception of the shelfs under the dash boards… another feature important to me as we do travel a lot with our boat. Another thing I’d consider with the MX is removing at least the starboard side rear storage liner / insert. Doing so reveals a fiberglass / painted interior (not gel coated) that is over twice as big as the plastic insert’s capacity. I could do the same with the port side’s rear hatch, but behind this area was where the starting battery was located, and one would need to put up some sort of baffle there to separate the battery from the rest of the gear. I’ve seen pictures online of other’s removing jump seat liners on the WX2060 as well.
My spouse had an awesome slalom run and got up on her first try. She said she really popped up. She didn’t even realize that I slightly missed how I managed the throttle and could have provided her with a much better start. This was my first time with electric controls, and was still getting used to the feel of it. She enjoyed a few miles of glassy Lake Roosevelt at it’s finest. A month ago, I was driving the boat when she slalomed behind a supra competition ski boat with 7 passengers (3 adults / 3 kids) plus her skiing. There was little if any difference in hole shot in how I pulled her up. Also, in that boat I could feel her slightly tugging the boat side to side. I could not feel any of this with the Skeeter MX2025… the react keel provides much more lateral stability than does the fins on a ski boat in this experience. When tubing, you could turn on a dime with no sliding of the boat and easily provide a thrill enhanced ride… MUCH easier than with my current boat which slips during it’s turns. My friend had his boat propped for speed, and I know I could prop the boat for hole shot and do even better, but it still met all of our expectations and then some. Even with the boat propped for speed, I felt we could easily add a few more bodies to the boat and still get my spouse up easily on her slalom ski… perhaps even more so with her ski rope tied to a higher ski pylon instead of a harness attached to the rear transom tie down points as we had to do. (As info we had a full tank of gas and an empty livewell.) I’d bet a WX2060 would get very similar hole shot even with it’s max rating of 250 versus the MX2025’s 300HP given both motor’s have the same displacement. Anyone have any feelings on that? Hmmmm, perhaps I’ll order just a hull, and purchase one of the new 2nd generation e-tec’s for it… that might provide me with a bit more low end torque over the yammies!
The color on the top of gunnels was gunmetal flake, and remained cool to the touch all day long. The major color below that and above the side rub rail was black galaxy flake and was much too hot to touch! Just a note that shade of black is important when selecting boat colors you’ll be in contact with, especially when small kids are in the equations.
No fishing was done as we were having fun with the warm weather. I’m not concerned that the boat won’t fish though!
Hope this helps other’s in their decision process in selecting their boat too.
