New owner of 2011 Centurion Avalanche C4

kenv · June 27, 2022

Hello,

Recently acquired a 2011 C4 Avalanche and after driving for a few days(about 7 hrs total) a few observations that i hope someone can help clarify:

1. Noticed the boat lists to Starboard when i engage the throttle. Is this from the prop torque? If so how do i compensate?

2. I seem to have all the ballasts (rear port is full hard tank, rear stbd is half hard tank, plus mid of both and single fwd ballast for total of 5). finding wake is quite messy on port(reg) side and much cleaner on the goofy side. Do i just have to play with the weight/ballast and fine tune it to get to the happy place? for this past weekend surfed with all tanks 100% full. New to surfing so hoping to get some people that have a similar boat and can help!

3. What is the minimum safe depth to operate this boat(or lake gets quite shallow at end of summer)

Thanks to anyone that can help!

Bigcatpt · June 27, 2022

A little bit of list or quite a lot to the Stbd side when you engage the throttle? What about while on plane? Can you confirm that your ballast tanks are empty on that side?

No idea what your hard tank ballasts hold as far as weight. Most of the hard tanks are about 240 to 250 lbs.

In order to get a good surf wave you are going to want about 1000 lbs in the surf side rear locker and about 350 to 500 lbs under the side seat on surf side. This will list the boat to the surf side and create a great wave. You want the surf side rub rail touching or almost touching the water at rest. If you want bigger wave put a couple hundred lbs of lead weight in the rear of the surf side locker. You will have to pay attention to waves and rollers on that side as they will roll over that corner into the boat.

If you want to weight the boat evenly you will need to use some sort of shaper on the side of the boat or flappers on the rear of the boat. Many use them successfully. I could always get a bigger cleaner more powerful wave on my Avy leaning it and this way uses less gas.

You probably have a right hand rotation prop which will naturally give you a better wave on the Stbd side. The port side will be a little harder to clean up but can be done. Adding an adjustable asymmetrical (A plate) trim plate on the rear will help significantly cleaning up the port side wave. You can confirm if yours is a right hand rotation by looking at the prop. It will either have a LH or RH stamped on it as well as the prop number and diameter and pitch.

If you can get 1500# of weight on the surf side and none on the non surf side your eyes will pop out at how good the wave will be. The Avy throws an incredible wave.

Oh.. and no bow ballast while surfing. The Avy doesn't need it unless you just can't get up to surf speed without it.

GPS speed 10.7 to 11.0 is the sweet spot.

Good luck.