Merury Active Trim

It was a few months ago when Mercury brought their new Active Trim innovation into South Africa and my charter boat Wizard, was one of the first to be fitted with the unit.

- Rob Naysmith

The Mercury Active Trim comes in single or dual engine operation and can be used on any boat which is powered by Mercury F40 > 400 Outboard or Mercruiser Sterndrive engine. Basically, the Active Trim reads and talks to the engines, as well as other instruments in the boat such as the GPS. The Active Trim has five basic programmes and I find these work well straight out of the box on the factory settings. Each setting can be fine-tuned to the skipper’s personal preference.

In the beginning you need to understand how the system works and experience the varying attitude effects on your boat. On the first trip with the Active Trim installed and engines trimmed in for take-off, I immediately realised the benefits of the system when my boat reached 4000 rpm and popped out of the water onto the plane without touching a thing. The best attitude for your boat when starting off is with the engines trimmed right in, this gives you maximum thrust for take-off. Thereafter one trims the boat’s bow up until the perfect ride is achieved for the current water conditions. In trimming a boat one is looking for a combination of comfort, safety and efficiency.