Sea Jay 590 Titan with Yamaha 150hp 4 stroke

by Steve Morgan •
We like it at Fishing Monthly when we get the heads-up about new models on the way. And we like it even better when we get to ride in them. So when I got the call to duck up to Bundaberg to take a couple of new Sea Jay hulls for a run with Sea Jay and Yamaha staff, I pointed the truck up the highway and headed up.

The Elliott River is a pretty neat place to test boats, too. Half an hour south of town (and the Sea Jay factory), it’s a clear water estuary with easy access into the ocean. You can do all of the performance stats in the calm water and then take the rig for a bash out in the rough stuff.

And the test day delivered, with a sporty northerly making anything unprotected lumpy indeed.

“The Titan is a new rig built on the famous Samurai hull,” Sea Jay National Sales Manager, Garry Fitzgerald said, “It was created after talking to lot of Sea Jay dealers and customers. They wanted a walkaround with a proper cabin and that’s exactly what this is.”

The Sea Jay Titan 590 was created after plenty of customer and dealer feedback. It’s a mean fishing boat with plenty of fishing space and the ability to get out of the weather when you’ve had enough. Photo courtesy of John Hooson

The Titan is built on Sea Jay’s proven Samurai hull.

The 590 is a proper walkaround – not a shuffle-around – and caters for all styles of fishing, especially with a trolling motor fitted for’ard. Photo courtesy of John Hooson

Powered by a mechanically controlled version of Yamaha’s 2.7L, 150hp 4-stroke, the test boat was fitted with maximum allowable horsepower, just as it should be. Photo courtesy of John Hooson

The transom bait station will get plenty of wear on offshore trips and complements the transom fitted live bait tank.

Sea Jay’s livewells are always simple and self-levelling. This one will keep plenty of your baits alive.

The transom is enclosed, apart from a couple of access points for the batteries.

You don’t necessarily need a self-deploy electric here. You can easily walk up and manually deploy one.

The windscreen is the right height to look through (while seated) and over (while standing), unless you’re Fitzy. Then you have to always look through it.

Fitzy isn’t the world’s tallest man, but even he needed the bunk extensions to fully stretch out.

We love when a boat has enough room to flush mount the electronics that we know most buyers will install. This dash will swallow them up.

You can quite easily step up and fish right in the middle of the walkaround. You can’t do it that easily in all boats of the same design.

Supplied on a Sea Jay trailer, you’ll get an extra year of warranty and the peace of mind that everything is set up properly and fit for purpose.

The mini hard-top gives you some shade and folds down, but don’t expect it to save you from all the spray or assume it’ll fit into a standard garage when it’s folded down.

The electric motor bracket is now a standard feature on plenty of boats, although there’s all the gear to set an anchor as well.

The 590 is the middle-sized boat in the Titan range (you can also get a 5.5 and 6.3m version) and was fitted with the maximum horsepower. In this case, a mechanically controlled, 2.7L Yamaha 150hp 4-stroke.

Put together just after the launch of Yamaha’s HelmMaster EX system, I was half expecting this test rig to be fitted with the technology. It’d work great with it, but it was fitted with a plate for an electric motor.

As far as walkaround rigs go, the Titan’s pretty easy to get around – no sideways shuffling is required – and there’s room to fish along the walkaround as well. The cockpit it big and the transom is smooth. The transom door and folding steps are standard and necessary. With a 2.45m beam, this rig sits on top of the tandem trailer and that’s basically the only way into this boat (either on the trailer or in the water).

The helm part of the cabin is interesting. There’s a small, hard top that is more like a baseball cap peak and a gap to the windscreen. Air flow is wonderful but you will get a little wet when quartering a sea. We drove it all ways through the mess outside the mouth of the Elliott; could drive the rig to avoid the pounding but not necessarily the spray.

It has a big, flat dash that will hold all of your electronics or MFDs and the lack of length in the cabin is compensated by some bunk extensions that fit between the bunks and the helm chair bases. Time will tell if this is an elegant or clumsy solution. If it worries you, just buy the 6.3!

Of course, the test rig was supplied on a Sea Jay designed trailer that will give you an extra year of warranty on the hull. For me, you’re crazy if you don’t buy the dedicated trailer and the maximum horsepower on any rig, but I may just be someone that likes the power when you really need it and likes trouble-free boating.

The test boat was supplied by Bundaberg Marineland, but your local Sea Jay dealer can quote you up a price on your preferred iteration of this hull. As tested, this rig came in in the high $60,000 range, but you’d be spending a little more than that to truly make it a turn-key fishing machine. I’d be opting for a 100lb+ electric and 12” MFD.

For more information, watch the video boat test (and thank you to COVID for training us all how to do it through your smartphone camera) or visit www.seajayboats.com.au.

SPECIFICATIONS:
Length 5.82m
Beam 2.45m
Depth 2.11m
Bottom sheet 4mm
Side Sheet 3mm
Capacity 6 persons
Floor ribs 15
Hull weight 895kg
Rec HP 130
Max HP 150

PERFORMANCE:
RPM Speed Litres/hour
1000 7 2.3
2000 12 1.6
3000 31 2.1
3500 41 2.1
4000 48 2.0
5000 63 1.6
5900 76 1.2