Marine Design’s TrimSync Testimonials:
Backed by five decades of professional powerboat racing experience in multiple classes from his
Allison Boats start in 1969 to tunnel boats in the mid 70s to more current victories the last
twenty years in an array of offshore V-bottoms – one must only say the name Ben and it’s
evident the respected world-champion racer being referenced is Ben Robertson, president of
South Carolina-based BAR Marine Group. And while his early career includes time spent at
Cigarette Racing Team and a more recent partnership as a stateside representative for Predator
Performance Boats out of Norway, by and far, the badge Ben Robertson wears most proudly
from the brand that defines him is – Fountain Faithful!
As a result, when someone with Robertson’s wealth of nautical expertise speaks out in favor of
a product, the boating community listens… and does so attentively! Such is the case with
TrimSync the game-changer from Marine Design, in which he’s been an outspoken advocate of
for seven years repetitively stating, “I won’t race professionally or run a boat for pleasure if
TrimSync isn’t installed.”
Campaigning Peter Meyer’s Fountain Instigator at the 2014 Key West Worlds is when Ben first
became aware of the innovative instrument after hearing the success stories from Team Gone
Again and STIHL Racing which had them installed in the catamarans; discovering the device’s
capabilities during testing is what hooked him in. Climbing out of Instigator at the docks, “All
you have to do is push a button,” he said. That day Mike Clesceri, the proprietor of Marine
Design and the architect of TrimSync, took on the “button guy” moniker.
Robertson explained, “TrimSync keeps the drives perfectly even which is the biggest job of the
throttleman, plus another major advantage is the fact, there’s no need to look down at the
indicators. The impact it makes on how to trim the boat and keep the drives synchronized is
huge. The beauty of the system is that it has an infinite amount of numbers to work off of,
whereas, Mercury cables and digital indicators don’t come close to being that precise. Even
when Mercury introduced Auto Trim it was speed controlled only up to 50 mph… with TrimSync
it’s about user input and control.”
The recall feature has four preset modes that let you set or automatically sync the drives to the
exact position you want for: getting on plane; going into the turn trimming down; accelerating
out of the turn trimming up; and half way down the straightaway when trimming the drives in
with less slip and better hooking up of the props. In addition, this takes the load off the
competitive racer, not to mention, the pleasure boat poker runner who is always making
adjustments during go time!
Racing is where Robertson fell in love with the system and learned to make it work; today he
continues to triumph in that arena. This past August at the 33rd Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, he
laid down a 152-mph pass in Swedish powerboater Christian Dahlberg’s 2008 Fountain. For the
speed run, Robertson engaged just two presets, rightfully titled: launch mode and haulin’ ass!
Off the competitive course, businesswise Robertson is also seeing big gains on his BAR Marine
Group customers’ triple and quad center consoles by way of 2-to 3-mph bump-ups in speed and
an improved fuel economy of up to ten percent. Because the multi-outboard crafts are often
improperly trimmed due to the longer drive shaft of the center engine (or engines) which throw
off the geometry, he’s discovered it’s necessary to trim the middle one (or two) buried in the
water just two degrees higher.
For a not-so-experienced boater, removing the “how and where” guess work from the equation
is worth its weight in gold, and whilst it takes a bit of skill to set up the perfect angles, once the
task is complete TrimSync keeps the engines perfectly offset and aligned. Competitively priced
and easy-to-use, Clesceri guides you through the software programming, and even better, with
a Wi-Fi connection the system can be remotely accessed for setup and diagnostics. Isn’t it time
you tried TrimSync?
