Upgrading After Three Years
After three years of, in their words, “doing everything” in their 670HT, the Hook, Line and Sinker crew stepped up to a Bar Crusher 730HT. It’s a slightly bigger, later-model hard top, but not a dramatic departure from the boat they’d grown to love. This is an upgrade story, not a dissatisfaction story: a team that had outgrown its boat after years of hard use.
Choosing the Options: Building It Right the First Time
Ordering a new Bar Crusher isn’t just picking a model off the showroom floor. It’s a proper build process, and you choose options the way you’d pick fixtures and fittings for a house. For this boat, the crew chose deluxe king and queen back-to-back seats with a slide-out Engel fridge/freezer, black upholstery to match the hull colour, trim tabs to fine-tune the ride in different conditions, and a saltwater deckwash for keeping the boat clean on the water. Every option is factory-fitted rather than added later, so it’s done right from day one, with nothing left for the owner to sort out.
Delivery Day: Built to Fish
When the crew collected the finished boat from Bar Crusher’s factory in Dandenong South, it was clearly set up to fish. It had factory-fitted rod holders, a livebait tank, twin batteries and a big baitboard, all positioned with the angler in mind. That’s a deliberate design philosophy: the cockpit is built around how a fisherman actually works, so rod storage, the baitboard and the coamings sit at the right height and everything you need is within reach.
What’s New in This Hard Top Design
This 730HT also shows off Bar Crusher’s latest hard top cockpit design. The double-layer roof is noticeably thicker and has extra space for radios and electronics, a response to sounders and screens getting bigger across the industry. The dash is angled to minimise glare on those larger displays. Other ongoing refinements include a helm seat that works sitting or standing, and a cockpit coaming bend eased from 90 to 45 degrees. It’s a small change, but it’s more comfortable over a long day on the water.
On the Water
Powered by a Yamaha 4.2-litre V6 F250 four-stroke, the boat delivered a dry, warm ride under the hard top on its first run, and a reported top speed of just over 40 knots (about 75km/h) on an initial, cursory run. The current 730HT is rated for 200–350hp, so check the model page for today’s power options. For a boat about to face years of serious offshore fishing, that first impression mattered, and it went on to land the full billfish grand slam.
Ready to build yours? Talk to your local Bar Crusher dealer about options, or read about Bar Crusher’s warranty.
