V drive or direct drive

[Lvnspeed]

I have a 2000 Air NAutique DD if I could I would trade mine for a simular V drive boat just for the storage and seating layout.

[horkn]

If it were me, I would stop at 2002 because I don't like GM motors.

[ag4ever]

Coming from an I/O, I bet you will love a v-drive.

But if you really love to ski, you will always wish you got a direct drive.

There is no debate on the versitilty of a V-Drive. Much more space, much more storage and generally beter family boat.

But there is no debate on the ski wake of the Direct Drive. I don't care what CC claims about the V-Drive and hydrogate, the V-Drive will never create a world class ski wake.

It really is a simple choice, if you ski, then DD. If you have a family and do all day boating, the V-Drive.

[apexrig1]

I loved my dd boat, handled awesome but no room for anything it seemed. if you had 8 people you had someone sitting on the floor and thats no fun. But It may also depend on the brand. But the V-drive with all the open space in the answer.

[Craigk]

I had an I/O before I bought our '98 Air Nautique this year. It's a direct drive. I do all my own work on my boat so I wanted the most access possible to the engine.

We have a house on the lake that the boat stays at so even though there isn't much storage on the boat we can keep most of the stuff in the garage and grab extra vests, skis, beer whenever we need it. We also have a couple of people that still prefer skiing over wakeboarding, but we wakeboard most of the time.

If I was trailering the boat all the time I would have probably leaned more towards a V-drive because you can't just go in and grab the extra stuff you need.

[Chexi]

If you go DD, what I did to add storage space was buy the largest cooler I could find that would fit (bought mine from West Marine) and put it behind the driver seat along the motorbox. Be sure you can open it and that it does not press up against the motor box. I took off the latches so as not to damage the vinyl on the motorbox cover. This area is generally wasted space on the DD's and now I have a decent storage box on the boat. It's no substitute for the V-drive, but it helps. Note, the V-drive's better storage is due mostly (and I say mostly, not exclusively) to the fact that you can put all the ballast in the rear side compartments. With a D-drive of 98 or later you get the same bow layout as the same year v-drive (which in both cases I would fill up with an integrated bow sac... so no storage there). The difference is to surf I have to put sacs in the cabin area on the rear seat and floor. This is a pain and won't really work well if you have more than a 3-4 man crew.

On the D-drive plus side, I took my 99 Air up to 35 with no ballast over the weekend to check out the ski wake. It was not totally flat, but the wake was very small.