We bought this beautiful Hurricane SS202 boat and it was fabulous – enough room, engine was reliable, and looked great!  But, we found out quickly that our boat (any boat, for that matter) wouldn’t be very easy to maneuver in shallow water.  That’s kinda important when you’re fishing…. so what do we need?!  A TROLLING MOTOR!

So, I went out trying to gather as much information as I could from others that had added a trolling motor to Hurricane boats (a deck boat).  Several people said it wouldn’t be worth it, others said it was great.  One thing I knew for certain – we weren’t going to have anyone install it for us.

As far as trolling motors go, there were two dominant brands – MotorGuide and MinnKota.  There are many debates as to what brand is better – so I won’t go into that mess.  We ended up choosing MinnKota since I’m a geek and I wanted a lot of the whizzbang features MinnKota offered.

Trolling Motors.net is a great source of information, and  I heavily used them for research and eventually buying our trolling motor.

We ended up with the MinnKota Ulterra 80 – this was one of the recommended trolling motors for bow-mounted deck boats (which was our plan).  We wanted to make sure we had enough power on stronger wind days, but we were also concerned about the weight and distribution of the batteries at the back of the boat. Due to the distance of the deck to the water, we had to use a long shaft length.  For your boat, if you’re in between ranges, I’d recommend the longer shaft – a little extra length can go a long way if you’re in an area with heavier waves.

Once you pick your trolling motor, the fun begins!  First off, how to easily mount it.  How to run the large cables from the battery to the trolling motor, where to put the battery, and how to charge the batteries.  Lots of stuff!  If you’re not comfortable with drilling holes into your boat or  working with 12/24V systems, PLEASE have a certified dealer install your setup.

With that being said, here are several other items we purchased in order to get our trolling motor on to our boat:

Minnkota 2-bank charger

This will plug into a 110 outlet to charge the 2 batteries required for our Ulterra.  The trolling motor runs off 24V, but we still wanted to be able to monitor each of the batteries separately. 

AC Power Port

We haven’t installed this yet, but think this will be a better solution than having to open our battery cover to start charging

MinnKota MKR-18 12V Plug & Receptacle and 6 AWG adapter

Of nearly the entire installation, these 2 pieces were by far the most difficult to get installed.  Cables would simply not stay retained in that adapter.  I’m sure there are much better solutions out there, so I would not recommend these 2 parts unless you simply cannot find anything else.

60A Manual Reset Bkr

6AWG Wire, Battery Terminals & Heat Shrink

I bought these all off eBay.  Try to get the most flexible you can afford, and make sure its 100% copper.  DO NOT purchase any wire that says CLA (Copper Clad Aluminum).  This will corrode quickly and you’ll be replacing much sooner than needed.  It can also impact the ability of your trolling motor to draw the appropriate amount of current.

• 6AWG wire – https://www.ebay.com/itm/131865031268
• Battery Terminals – https://www.ebay.com/itm/141627484659
• Heat Shrink – https://www.ebay.com/itm/141667732091

We put a cheesy video together to show some of the installation (see below).  However, we didn’t show much on how the actual trolling motor was attached.  Mainly, since that was a lot easier than we expected.  The biggest challenge was to determine the best angle that would 1) get it as close to the center of the boat as possible, and 2) not be terribly in the way when stowed.  Ideally, we wanted to keep the seats open while running about, and didn’t worry as much about interfering in the walkway.

Once we determined the correct location, we installed the quick release plate.  We spent quite some time with the trolling motor on the quick release plate without it bolted to the boat.  Both of us were assisting to make sure everything fit (and didn’t fall during installation).  Make sure to have enough clearance between the trolling motor and your boat – look down at the metal bracket to make sure you see the floor.  And no one wants to drill extra holes.  

We were initially concerned about whether we would require backing material on the inside due to the weight of the trolling motor.  After investigation, we were happy to find out that it was reinforced with wire mesh.  Because of that, we chose not to put any additional backing.  We felt comfortable with that decision, since they didn’t have any backing with the fishing seat installation either.

We did require some backing in order to mount our power receptacle near the trolling motor.  We were looking at other marine material for another project, and had purchased a sample chain of this king starboard marine plastic.  This worked great for us, but there are many other marine-rated products that you could use for backing. 

Installation of the power receptacle was… frustrating, to be blunt.  The video has a lot more detail on that installation along with how we routed the cables and other goodies.