Boat Test - Warrior 165
Two words are all it takes to sum up the Warrior 165, which is officially the UK's most popular trailed angling boat. These are revolution and evolution. First Paul Haynes and Phil Bryom have undoubtedly and irreversibly changed small boat anglers thinking in a market previously dominated by cathedral hulls, which they did when they designed and produced their Warrior moulds back in 1994. That was the revolution bit. Having grabbed the small boating worlds attention, they then had to hold it by going forward in a way that provided the kind of boat anglers wanted in terms of aesthetics, layout, performance and suitability, as opposed to adopting a take it or leave it approach, or trying to cover a range of potential use options with the same package.
This was and remains an ongoing process, which is the evolution bit. Evolution as any scientist will tell you is not necessarily a constantly changing process. More often it is one with settled periods of re-design inactivity as a current model gets its chance, followed by shorter periods of intense activity as existing designs are adapted to meet changing circumstances. April 1995 saw the first Warrior 165 being fitted out for sea trials. That original design underwent a major re-vamp in 2001. But there has been ongoing tinkering too with the addition of minor changes incorporating a range of customer suggestions. So far as Paul and Phil are concerned, the 165 is now as good as it or any other boat in its class can get. But I'll wager that the tinkering still isn't over yet.
As a Warrior 165 user myself, and one who has owned models either side of the 2001 re-vamp as well as being a regular visitor to the factory, I have watched the evolution of the 165 at first hand. But as a cathedral hull user prior to my switch to the V-hull, it might be worth going back to a time before the 165 was even on the drawing board. When I bought my first boat, virtually every model was of a traditional displacement design. Boats which took an eternity to get anywhere, and which in hindsight, we not as stable nor seaworthy as everyone thought at the time. Then came the cathedral hull. Beamy flat bottomed boats that skimmed over the waves instead of ploughing through them. Apart from pace, their major asset was stability. But they did not ride well into a choppy sea. Nor did they sit well at anchor, in both cases slamming and banging all the time. But you could easily live with that as the advantages over what had gone before were so great.
Revolution and evolution are words which could just as easily have described cathedral hulls back in the 1980's. The full cathedral with its three equal keels paved the way for the semi cathedral design with its deeper more forward positioned centre keel and shallower cut back side keels. This gave a much improved ride, but at the cost of some lateral stability. In the small boat building world everything is about compromise. To gain something you must usually have to give up something in exchange. So what has the 165 to offer to make it so much more popular than its many rivals. And more to the point, what has it had to sacrifice to make those gains.
Forget for the moment the top moulding and all the little functional extras that help make a boat look good. The important bit is the one that is so often over looked because it spends its working life under the water. The first thing to be aware of is that V-hulls are not all the same. Design subtleties can make a difference to handling, performance under power, and performance at anchor. The main criticism of the cathedral hull was the battering you would frequently get in a lumpy sea. This was proportionate to the amount of power used. Understandably, when you have a potentially pacey boat you want to give it some throttle. With a V-hull you can do this as it cuts the water better and does not have tunnels either side of the centre keel to slam down onto the waves. For similar reasons it rides better to anchor. In terms of compromise however, it does not lie rigidly flat on the surface when you walk around the fishing well. When weight is displaced to one side it will dip slightly like a semi cathedral hull. Once its design level has been reached it is as stable as anything else afloat. That's something I don't even think about these days, but something I had to get used to when I first made the switch from a cathedral hull.
What Warrior have done is examine and pick out the hull design features best suited to the type of job the 165 was being designed to do. To give it the maximum stability possible they went for a shallow V design coupled to a massive parallel 6' 11" beam. While the front of the boat has a deep penetrating bow to cut the waves, it is the V measurement at the stern which classifies it as a shallow V-hull. The reason for choosing this is to give the boat a better lift and pace to power ratio. To the observer looking at the hull from the outside nothing has changed since its introduction back in 1994. The truth is however that massive changes to the hull moulding have taken place, but all on the inside hidden by the floor. A glassed in foam lattice is now in place for adding rigidity and strength. Roving matting incorporated in the layup saw to it that the hull could withstand any amount of hammering on the water. Trailed boats receive their worst punishment out on the road which is why Warrior only guarantee their hulls on an approved specification 32 roller trailer. With this in mind, Indespension build a range of their famed Roller Coaster trailers specifically for Warrior boats.
Most of the visible changes to the 165 over the past 10 years or so have been made to the upper moulding and interior. Some have been cosmetic, some look like they are cosmetic, and some obviously have improved the angling function of the boat no end. When I picked up my current model it has a re-styled splash well incorporating two live bait tanks, gunnel pockets in which to keep knives, disgorgers and the like to hand, and a re-styled folding canopy which was both higher and back sloping. Things like stowage lockers in the buoyancy tanks and steering console had always been there. But for me the most striking new feature was the rounding off of the gunnel edges and joint angles. While it looks good, this might sound like a minor cosmetic change. Not so. The significance of this as a design feature really cannot be overstated.
Safety has long been of paramount importance to Warrior. A flat topped gunnel could encourage people to walk around the front of the cuddy with potentially disastrous consequences. Using either side anchoring, or the redesigned fully opening forward hatch there really is no need to step outside the fishing well whilst afloat. That however was not the main reason behind the redesign of the top moulding. If you look carefully you will see no radius of less than 4 inches, be it the gunnel or cuddy edges, or more importantly the angles where gunnel and cuddy meet. When a boat is pounding away on a rough sea, the vibration energy put into the hull by the waves has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is often tight angled corners where stress cracks can form. Take a look at a range of the older boats still on the scene. Structural engineers looked at this problem for Warrior, and this was the proposal they came up with. The fact that the boat looks better, which it does, is purely coincidental. But this in itself gave them something extra to think about. Recreational Craft Directive regulations state that all the anglers a boat is designed to carry must be able to hold on to the side of the boat if it is submerged and they are in the water. It was thought by Paul and Phil that rounded gunnels might reduce the grip, so they fitted gunnel grab rails as standard.
As important in the promotion of the 165 has been the package options open to customers. You can have whatever range of options you like including engines, trailers and fittings. As already mentioned, Indespension RollerCoaster trailers are the recommended model. So far as outboards go, again the choice is yours up to a maximum of 80 hp. The customer preferred outboard size seems to lie between 60 and 70 hp, and if sales figures are anything to go by, the Honda 4-stroke is the favoured model. I personally have a 75 hp Honda and would not now like to go back to a 2-stroke. It took me a while to get into both Honda and the 4-stroke concept. I like to sit back and measure the progress of new ideas, particularly new outboard producers. They all look great in the show room, but can they stand the test of time in terms of reliability and corrosion. In Honda's case the answer is a resounding yes, and in terms of fuel consumption, 4-strokes cannot be beaten.
Boats, outboards and trailers are not cheap items, so value for money is important. So far as the 165 goes, it might even be regarded as an investment with little if any re-sale losses (if you can find a second hand 165 - apparently they as rare as rocking horse crap) due to a 6 month factory waiting list. Its like anything in this life - you only get what you pay for. And for a package that can cost as much as a very good family car, the investment aspect is no something to be taken lightly