New Boat Regulation
At a meeting held on Wednesday, May 31, 2023, the Board of Directors passed the following new rule for speed boat motors and boat sizes on Page Lake.
- A watercraft classified not to exceed 16 feet (manufacturer’s designation) with a dry weight not to exceed 1000 lbs with a motor not to exceed 60 HP will be allowed on the lake;
- A watercraft classified not to exceed 16 feet (manufacturer’s designation) with a dry weight between 1001 to 1500 lbs with a motor not to exceed 75 HP will be allowed on the lake.
Note: This does not change the speed limit of the lake which is still 40 mph and it does not mean you can exceed the HP motor your boat is rated for.
Problem the Board was solving.
We heard the following main concerns at last year’s annual meeting when we discussed increasing boat motor size.
- Members are frustrated because many new boats are heavier than the 1000 lb limit that had been set in the Rules. They could not find many new boats and used boats are very hard to find.
- Raising the HP limit for any boat would lead to boats going too fast on the lake, and it may cause those boats to exceed the 40 MPH limit on the lake.
The board worked together to research if there was a way that could be put in place that addressed both of these concerns. We feel the new above rule does just that.
Research and Data
We followed the following process to see what the effect bigger boats and higher HP motors would have on the speeds we would see on the lake.
- We looked at several boats in the market and what their weights were and determined there would still be a good selection if we kept the length under a manufacturers designation of a “16ft boat.” However, these new boats often were between 1000 and 1500 lbs.
- We used an online boat speed calculator to look at what the maximum speed each boat could theoretically achieve with 60HP and 75HP motors. The largest factor is the weight of the boat and the HP of the motor. The higher the weight the slower a boat goes and the higher the HP the faster it goes. However, the higher HP is somewhat offset by the additional weight of the larger motor (A 75 HP motor weighs about 112 lbs more than a 60 HP motor).
- You can see in the table below the results of the analysis. The green cells show the combinations that are allowed under the new rule. You can see that under the new rule the boats with 75 HP motors will not be going any faster than some of the lighter 60HP boats allowed on the lake already. Boats over 1300 lbs will actually be going slower than the boats on the lake with 60 HP motors today. The HP simply allows them to go speeds that the lighter boats are already going.
- It should be noted actual speeds will likely be lower than this as the weight used here did not assume there were any people or gear in the boat so this is truly a theoretical max speed. Vice President Doug DeAngelo’s boat, as an example, is about 650lbs with 60 HP motor and with just him aboard it generally only goes 32-35 mph not the 38 mph the chart below would suggest it should go.
Conclusion
The Board heard the concerns raised at the last annual meeting and did the research required to make the right decision to address all members’ needs and concerns. We feel this is why you elected us so that we could do this work and make strong data-based decisions. We had many discussions and feel the data supported this new rule. We could not include everything we considered here as this is already rather long, but these were the most salient points that drove our decision. We are happy to talk to anyone who has concerns and wants to talk in greater detail one on one this summer.
LOC Board of Directors