REVIEWS

Belinda: Hi, I’m Belinda Rayment and this is my husband, Bruce, and this is our Bar Crusher. We live in Cronulla in NSW, and we’ve had this since 2009, it’s our second Bar Crusher.

Bruce: We first had a Bar Crusher 560C [since superseded by the 615C] that I purchased from the Cleland brothers in Melbourne in 2004, and we had that for a few years and then we purchased this boat in March 2009.

It’s the 620C, now known as the 670C, and we just love this boat and love where it’s been able to take us and what we’ve been able to catch with it.

The hull of this boat has more than 2200 hours on it over the time we’ve owned it, the last nine years, and we’re generally now putting around 400+ hours a year on the hull and the engine.

Belinda: We do a lot of fishing with ANSA, and in the game fishing scene as well, and this boat has seen us catch a lot of great fish.

We fish with our sons who are now 18 and 15, and between the four of us we’ve set over 120 state and national records, and a majority of them have been out of this boat.

Bruce: We fish either with our sons or our good mate Chris, who’s become part of our regular crew over the last five years, and whilst originally we did a lot of ultra-light sport fishing, we’re increasingly doing more and more game fishing.

My most memorable day on this boat was landing southern bluefin tuna south-east of Sydney back in July 2014. There were thousands of fish under the boat and it was just one of those magic days that you dream of.

Belinda: One thing I love about this boat is that it does everything for us. We can go water skiing, we can go drifting for flathead inshore, we can go 40 miles out to sea, and it does everything that we need it to do.

Bruce: We have had times where we’ve been stuck offshore in bad conditions, where the weather’s changed, and twice over the years in the middle of winter we’ve been stuck offshore when the strong westerly winds are blowing up. Had long, tedious trips homes, but we’ve never doubted we’d get home in the Bar Crusher.

This is our fourth boat and our second Bar Crusher. What attracted us to this boat originally was how tough it is, the features it has for hardcore fishing, how easy it is to launch and retrieve, and to maintain. It just suited our needs perfectly, I couldn’t think of owning anything else.

With the age of this boat and the number of hours we’ve put on it, it’s not the most pristine Bar Crusher you’ll ever see, but very functional and does everything we want it to.

While the boat came with everything we needed as standard, over the years we’ve upgraded the electronics fitting radar and autopilot and we’ve done a number of other things to it to just make it more suitable exactly to our needs.

Both of our Bar Crushers have had an aluminium box welded in the middle of the boat that we use as a fighting chair and storage, and while it wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking and needs for us it’s been perfect.

I’ve been fishing all of my life, everything from estuary fishing, freshwater and offshore game fishing.

Belinda: I’ve been fishing for about 25 years, ever since I met Bruce’s family. Over the years we’ve done a lot of family holidays in this boat; Sussex Inlet, Port Stephens, South West Rocks… it’s given us some great memories.

Bruce: The whole family has got a lot of enjoyment out of this boat. Our sons in many ways have grown up in the boat, especially our eldest son James.

Belinda: …and he now takes it out fishing with some of his mates.

Bruce: We’re looking at keeping this boat for another couple of years before upgrading. A 730 Hard Top or Hard Top Pilothouse is certainly very high on the shortlist.

Let’s get out on the water!