I agree with the antenna height having a significant impact on range. I had a flybridge cruiser with an 8 foot antenna that was mounted about 10 feet above the water level. Quite often I could listen to boats off of Portsmouth and pretty much anyplace on the lake was within range.
If you have a hard wired VHF I would highly recommend an extension speaker. Most VHF radios have a jack to plug one in. They are inexpensive and the sound quality is much better than when the small built in speaker is used.
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