Help please - Bennington or Harris Flotebote?

[awes]

We are purchasing our first pontoon and are completely confused. One Marina at our lake sells Bennington, the other Harris Flotebote. We are looking at a 22 ft. Bennington G series tritoon and a Harris FloteBote Super Sunliner tritoon, - Bennington G series has a 150 hp Yamaha, Harris Flotebote Super Sunliner has a 150 hp Mercury Verado. Flotebote has lifting strakes, Bennington does not. Both have hydraulic steering. Price is comparable. Is one better than the other - help!

[trott46]

I feel both are top of the line toons so it depends on what you are looking for. If you want speed then the one with the strakes would be the way to go.

[Bill1031]

We just got a Bennie 2275RLI with 150 Yamaha. Ours has the ESP and lifting strakes. This is my first toon so all I can say is from mine. Speed wise it gets right at 40. Ride is fantastic. Very smooth and turns on a dime (almost ). The motor is so quiet you can not hear it idle. Even at full throttle you can talk to guests. Wind is louder than motor. We went out last weekend and had a great time. most of the time we cruise at about 25. Good luck and have fun! Bill

[ROLAND]

well I own a bennington so I'm partial to that of course. But I can tell you both are very good boats. Even though my benny is brand new, its from thier "value" line, which is a nice way of saying thier lower cost boats, which was fine with us. Ours is a 20 footer and I bought ours based on two factors. 1- my son has a benny and loves it, and 2- the warranty on the bennington is really good... but I don't think you could go wrong picking either of those boats..

Roland
2010 Bennington 20 SFi
Yamaha F-75

[dparr]

Well we just had the same decision a month back, however we were looking at the Benny and Harris 20ft models. Our decision came down to 3 factors.

1) Harris had std 25" toons the Benny was 23"
2) Harris was actually 1ft longer overall but both were classed as 20ft
3) Harris was a few hundred cheaper and with the 2 items above that sealed it for us.

Even the though the Benny has higher rating for qulality on Consumers, the Harris still had over 4* so that didn't really play into the decision. I don't know if those are any variables in the models you are looking at or not but that's how we broke down the 2.

Good Luck!

[ROLAND]

dparr... you're absolutely right about the benny having 23" toons... when I got ready to order my benny, it came with a 50 hp 4-stroke. I wanted at least a 75 hp but in order to do that, I had to jump up to the 25" toons, which I did. but yeah, stock out of the dealership they would have been 23's.

Roland
2010 Bennington 20 SFi
Yamaha F75

[1badtoon]

Both are very good toons. The DEALER is the question?

[awes]

Thank you all for your input it helped a lot. It was a hard decision because each had aspects that we liked better than the other. We decided on the Flotebote due to the lifting strakes, higher people capacity and frankly the Flotebote dealer was much more helpful than the Bennington dealer and felt the future service was going to be better with the Flotebote.

[badmoonrising]

Thank you all for your input it helped a lot. It was a hard decision because each had aspects that we liked better than the other. We decided on the Flotebote due to the lifting strakes, higher people capacity and frankly the Flotebote dealer was much more helpful than the Bennington dealer and felt the future service was going to be better with the Flotebote.

Congrats, have fun and take plenty of pics

[ROLAND]

Hi awes.... congrats on the new boat. I'm sure you and your family will get alot of enjoyment out of it.