Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul-2018 i Motor Boat & Yachting

The Cruising Association has received official notice from the Belgian Finance Office that there will be no fines or penalties for UK vessels visiting Belgium with red diesel in their tanks provided crew have proof of 100% fuel duty having being paid. The official wording states: ‘The policy of tolerance regarding red diesel in UK-flagged yachts visiting Belgium will be maintained until further notice. Any change to this policy will be communicated in due time. This removes any remaining uncertainty for the members, and other yachtsmen and women, who wish to make the crossing from the east coast or channel ports to Belgium. This status quo to the agreement will not change, without warning, on behalf of the boating community in the UK.’ Belgium had previously taken a hard line…

The Chase Boat, designed by Dutch architects Hoek Design and in build at the Claasen Shipyard, is being presented as a shadow boat for a superyacht; a vessel to be used for ferrying guests to and from the mothership or for the owner to commandeer and head off to explore without the crew in tow. However, the Chase Boat also makes for an achingly stylish and thoroughly unique motor yacht that offers an alternative to more mainstream 75ft craft. On the one hand it is, amazingly, a 75ft tender, on the other hand, it is a boat dripping with class that’s endowed with enough space to cosset its owner and guests in wood and leather-lined luxury. The boat’s lines are as elegant as they come with the flared bow drawing…

The fabulous seaport of Genoa lies at the hub of Italy’s Ligurian coast, which sweeps in a grand curve from the French border near Menton to the glittering Gulf of La Spezia. Liguria is a wonderful region of mountains, rolling hills and the sunny, south-facing Italian Riviera. Between Menton and Genoa, the shores are mostly soft and gentle with a convenient trail of marinas and timeless fishing harbours. East of Genoa, the Riviera has a steeper, wilder character, reaching a climax along the sheer cliffs of the Cinque Terre. Genoa is a warm and romantic city, an ancient trading post built on a coastal mound. It is also Italy’s busiest port and one of the great names in the history of seafaring. The vast docks handle all manner of commerce,…

Two years ago, Williams brought its jet tenders to a new audience with its super compact Minijet 280. As the name suggests, this pocket-sized runabout measures just 2.8m (2.79 to be precise) and weighs just over 200kg, meaning it can squeeze on to mid-40-ft boats like the Prestige 450, yet its BRP Rotax Ace engine means it can provide the genuine Williams jet tender feel and even pull a skier. It’s been so successful that it’s been treated to a package of upgrades for 2018. Most obvious is a more powerful motor, albeit only 5hp – but that’s more than 10%, and we’re assured it makes a big difference. Also new for 2018 is an upgraded dash cluster and a new set of sponsons that Williams says enhance stability. Interestingly,…

Boat hi-fi-specialist Fusion has released a new design of its Signature Series speakers. Available in Sports White and Sports Chrome, the big difference appears to be the speaker grilles, which are ‘completely redesigned with an elegant finish and crafted to perfectly blend with the decor of any modern vessel.’ They look a little like tiny alloy car wheels to me and are available in 6.5in, 7.7in and 8.8in sizes. They include a dual-colour diffused LED lighting option that illuminates in either ‘striking blue or sparkling white’. Combined with the silk dome tweeter and fully sealed crossover components, they sound as good as they look. Plus, they are engineered to the ‘True- Marine™ standard for a flawless listening experience that creates a smooth upper-frequency response and increased efficiency’. Price: £219. Contact…

Last year, we based ourselves in Steenwijk where the Steeler shipyard is and did various cruises from there to familiarise ourselves with the area and our new boat, Symphony. As I’m still working, we had to settle on five-day trips, which was no hardship in northern Holland as most of the area is very picturesque and there are so many canals, it’s easy to plan a circular route. The first few weeks were used to familiarise ourselves with the boat equipment and its handling characteristics. Being a very modern, unusual design, she attracted many complimentary comments and lots of photographs were taken of her. She has two Yanmar LY440 engines, the latest models, and they have lived up to their claims of delivering more torque and better performance than the…

Back in 2011, Boats.co.uk and Fairline persuaded me to order a Squadron 78, which performed beautifully. I loved Fairline’s semi-custom build offer, and it became slightly addictive. After cruising the new boat for just one season, I knew what worked well and what I should have done better, so I ordered another one, intending to push Fairline’s customisation to a new high watermark. They agreed, to the extent that they even changed the hull mould to add more windows. Match turned out so well that 2018 will be my sixth season cruising her. Normally at five years I would change the boat, but I am going to keep Match until I find something I like better. Current 24m boats have many great features but lack some things that matter to…

1967 £110,000 Philips 50 Early in the 20th century, the Philip & Son boatyard on the River Dart turned out everything from Trinity House lightships to tugs and tankers. In the early ’60s, before Princess, Sunseeker and Fairline had even been thought of, this once-prolific yard turned its tools to luxury motor yachts. Going straight in at 50ft, the twin-diesel Philips 50 was constructed using laminated Iroko frames planked with teak below the waterline and mahogany above. The superstructure was varnished teak with a sheathed plywood coachroof deck and wheelhouse roof. Launched at £20K, six were built of which four remain – two of them on the Dart. This is one of them. INTERIOR An aft-cabin layout creates space for three separate sleeping cabins, the master cabin aft with twin…

The race is on to find a new investor for one of Europe’s biggest boat builders after Bavaria Yachts went into self-administration last month. According to Bavaria’s UK and Spanish importer, Clipper Marine, the administrators have already received multiple expressions of interest from potential investors. The decision to call in administrators caught dealers and customers by surprise. Bavaria Yachts put on a bullish performance at the Düsseldorf boat show in January, launching four new boats and reporting strong sales of both motor and sailing yachts. The trigger for this sudden turn of events seems to have been the refusal of its current backers to put any more money into the business, causing a cash-flow shortage that threatened to halt production. The self-administration process means the firm’s 600 workers will have…

Rotherham-based Ship Solutions company Martek Marine says it has invented a device able to rid the skies around your boat of intrusive drones. Citing defence against everything from terrorist use of drones to incidents where paparazzi have used drones in an attempt to get intimate images of guests on board, the company’s D-Fence superyacht drone detection and defeat system claims to stop a drone in its tracks. The system detects and identifies commercial drones within a 20km+ range, providing GPS positioning of both drone and pilot together with the drone’s speed and heading. Once a drone threat has been established, the system enables a 500m+ electronic ‘exclusion zone’ to be created around the yacht. Should the drone approach this exclusion zone, its control/video signal is blocked, initiating its fail-safe mode,…

The Royal Yachting Association is warning boaters of new regulations governing all boats under 15m long being used in Denmark, including visiting boats from the UK. The rules apply to ‘personal watercraft and speedboats’, which will require a certificate of operation and compulsory liability insurance. This must be presented to Danish authorities if requested. The boat’s operator is responsible for taking out the compulsory insurance and crucially, the insurance must be provided by a company which is a member of the Danish association of insurance companies. This could rule out many existing valid policies from reputable British-based insurance companies, even if they carry the required level of cover. ‘Speedboat’ is defined by a slightly complex calculation and does encompass some larger cruisers. To check, multiply the length of the boat…

What’s changed in terms of threats to private vessels? Pleasure boat owners of all sizes are considered wealthy and therefore a potential target for anything from theft to possible kidnapping and ransom. Compared to robbing a house or a car, boats present a relatively soft target – they are often left unattended, their security systems are usually quite basic and response times are slow. What can you do about it? Common sense and a little effort are the main defence against crime. The gas locker is neither an original nor secure location to hide a cabin key. Nav equipment is valuable, easy to remove and easy to sell so ensure it’s not left in the cockpit. Small outboard engines are a popular target for thieves so secure them with a…

Spanish yard De Antonio has made a name for itself with its distinctive range of outboard-powered craft, but surely it would have to switch to inboard diesel power for its latest 46ft sportscruiser? Apparently not – lift up that large rear sunpad and lurking underneath are no less than four Evinrude G2 outboard engines of 300hp each. I’ve never been strong at maths but even I can work out that adds up to 1,200hp in a boat weighing less than 13 tonnes. We haven’t yet had the chance to experience what this feels like but judging from the wide-eyed expression of the French journalist I saw stepping off the D46 after a quick spin, it clearly made an impression. He kept muttering something about a top speed 47 knots before…

Princess 55 Full test of Plymouth’s answer to the Sunseeker Manhattan 52 – has it got what it takes to unseat the class leader? Small boat cruising We meet the owners who prove that size is not an issue when it comes to boating adventures Going electric Could an electric drive be the solution to quiet auxiliary power? A Targa owner puts his money where his mouth is SUVs of the Seas Free 22-page buying guide to these fun, versatile, tough AND affordable small craft…

We couldn’t run a feature on the new generation of British sportsboats without mentioning the most exclusive of them all. The Aston Martin AM37 isn’t just reassuringly expensive but thanks to input from some of the world’s most talented car designers, it’s also drop-dead gorgeous. And unlike most of its rivals (Bladerunner 45 excepted), this one’s already in build. We published a drive story of the prototype back in February 2017 and although production versions haven’t exactly been flying out of the factory gates since then, the fourth boat is now in build with a fifth due to start construction next year. At the time of our sea trial, the factory was still fine-tuning some of the complex systems such as the sliding carbon-fibre cockpit covers. They have used the…

One of my earliest memories of motor boats has never left me. It was 1942 and I was eight years old, living in Trinidad where my father was admiral in charge of the naval base during the war. I went to school in the morning but in the afternoon, I was free to do my own thing. One afternoon, much to my surprise, my father invited me to help drive the fleet of fast motor launches used to ferry supplies to and from the assembled ships waiting in the gulf for the next convoy to England. Needless to say I never looked back, and have had the boating bug ever since. As an adult, I worked my way through a variety of boats both sail and power. By the mid-1980s,…

Ever since we saw the movie Mama Mia! we’ve wanted to visit the island of Skopelos, where most of it was filmed. And here we are at last, heading over the calm seas from bustling Skiathos to her more sedate sister island in the Sporades. We meander gently along the coast, marvelling at the many white coves so popular with the tour boats, and then nose into an almost perfect anchorage at Panormos. It is as beautiful as any that we have been to over the past six years, and I have my first swim of the season, carrying the stern ropes ashore, aware that there will be many more to come and hoping that for most of them the water will be a tad warmer than it is today!…

The new range of Clean2Gleam cleaning products has been developed specifically for boat use, rather than simply being the automotive products most of us use. Clean2Gleam is actually a ‘hands-on’ marine-valeting company (as well as aircraft and vehicles) and the new range came about when CEO Gary Winter became frustrated at what he describes as the limited range of products on the market. So he took what he considered to be the top ten cleaning products from around the world to various chemists in the UK and asked for them to be bettered. The result is four exterior cleaning solutions and three for the interior. Boat Wash is your basic squirt into a bucket of water and shampoo, but it’s claimed to be gentle on gelcoats as well as effective…

£79.95 for 2.5 litres Regular readers may remember the story I wrote last year about the restoration of a lovely old motor launch that has been in my family for over 70 years. The work was carried out by students at the International Boatbuilding Training College in Portsmouth and although they were mostly learning complex skills such as steaming wooden frames and installing teak decks, they were also happy to take on more basic tasks like painting and antifouling. Given they’d stripped her pitch pine planking back to bare wood, this was an opportunity to start again from scratch with a quality antifouling that would look the part as well as keep the critters at bay. That meant finding something that was compatible with a wooden hull, gave excellent results…

In January this year, spy shots appeared online of a mysterious open sportsboat with a crazily bright hull wrap perched on a trailer outside the Ben Ainslie Racing HQ in Portsmouth. The rumour mill began to whir: are BAR building powerboats? If not, who’s behind this? What is that colour scheme all about? The speculation stopped when Princess Yachts announced that it had been developing a 50-knot sportsboat with BAR Technologies that harnessed foiling technology. Fast-forward to spring and we’re given a world-exclusive sea trial of the prototype that is a blueprint for the most radical Princess ever made. Is it as game changing as Princess claims? Turn to p46 to find out.…

Powerboat racing is returning to London for the first time in 33 years. The British leg of the inshore Formula 1 powerboat racing series – the UIM F1H2O Grand Prix of London – will be held at east London’s Royal Victoria Dock from June 15-17. Ten teams are expected to race in the F1H2O World Championship event, with a further nine teams competing in the Formula 4-S class, contested by up-and-coming drivers. After a free practice session on Friday, qualifying will take place on Saturday with racing getting underway on Sunday afternoon. Spectators will also be able to enjoy demonstrations from several classic racing boats, jetskis and a V12 Class 1 offshore powerboat. F1H2O powerboats are tunnel-hulled 6m lightweight catamarans built out of carbon fibre and Kevlar. Powered by two-stroke…

After 15 years in production, the last Squadron 78 has left Fairline’s factory at Oundle. Its completion marks the end not just of this model but also of large boat production at Oundle. Its replacement will be built at Fairline’s Southampton facility. Destined for the Mediterranean and fitted with twin Caterpillar C32 engines, the final boat is finished in an unusual Light Ivory gelcoat, unique in Fairline’s history. The Squadron 78 is one of Fairline’s most successful and long-lived flybridge models ever built, with 115 being produced. MBY reader John Wolf told us, “The Squadron 78 was one of the very best 80ft flybridge boats on the market, so good that when the time came for me to replace mine, I bought another one.” Russell Currie, managing director at Fairline…

A classic 52ft Express Coastal Cruiser, St Joan, has been awarded National Flagship of the Year status by National Historic Ships UK in recognition of a planned circumnavigation of the UK in aid of charity. The crew of St Joan will be raising money for the RAF100 and RNLI charities as they go around to commemorate the air-sea rescue work the boat did during WWII. The tour will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the formation of the RAF, the 70th anniversary of St Joan returning to private ownership and the 15th anniversary of her purchase by the current owners, who say that supporting the RNLI and RAF100 symbolically reunites the air and sea rescue services. Built in 1929 for Nigel Guinness by J W Brooke & Co of Lowestoft, St…

There’s a delicious guilty pleasure in jumping a boat so far out of the water that you get the props clear; that telltale fraction of a second as the engine revs suddenly flair, causing your adrenalin gland to do the same. It’s the same frisson of excitement, that same sense of lawlessness, that you get from briefly slipping the back end of a powerful rear-wheel drive car out of line on an empty wet roundabout – just for a moment, you’re Tom Cruise buzzing the tower in Top Gun. But just like the car, it only really works if the boat is well balanced, if it feels born to do it – there’s little pleasure to be had opposite locking a camper van! The mere fact that we’re trying so…

The F-Line 33 is the boat every British enthusiast has been crying out for for the past 20 years. The R-Class may be cleverer, the Bladerunner may be faster and the Sunseeker Red Bull will doubtless be flashier, but none of them tug at the heart strings quite like the F-Line 33. That’s partly because the starting price of £264,600 inc VAT (for those lucky enough to pre-order their boats), is roughly half the cost of its nearest British rival, and partly because of the fond memories so many of us have of the 28-34ft Targas that dominated British boatbuilding during the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s. It may not be called a Targa, because Fairline wants the F-Line range to become a sub-brand in its own right, but make…

Since purchasing the main assets of Hunton Powerboats in January 2017, the newly formed Hunton Yachts Ltd has been keeping a relatively low public profile while it seeks to rebuild the business as a smaller, leaner, more luxury-focused boat brand. At the time of going to press, CEO Fiona Pool assured MBY she was on the verge of signing a deal to secure the funding needed to put the hotly anticipated Hunton 55 into production. All the structural engineering is said to be complete and ready for tooling of the moulds to begin at mouldCAM in Poole. Custom yacht manufacturers Fibre Mechanics of Lymington will be contracted to build the boats themselves. Based on an original Jeff Hunton hull shape and styled in house with the assistance of the London-based…

We have unfinished business with the flagship of the Hardy range. Back in 2013, we joined the original version of this boat – the Hardy 62 – on a trip from Southampton to Ipswich in an attempt to give it a proper test in what would hopefully be some challenging conditions. As it transpired, we left the Solent, crossed the wash of one tanker and then didn’t see another wave for about 200 miles. The boat performed beautifully, topping out at 33 knots, but the millpond conditions offered nothing to challenge the boat’s seakeeping. Fast forward to March of this year and I am standing on a pontoon in Gosport that is covered in about four inches of snow and a howling wind is blowing flecks of the white stuff…

WoKart? It’s a portmanteau word that blends the words ‘water’ and ‘go-kart’ Why so? Because the concept is designed to blend the incredible agility of a go-kart with a fast sportsboat to give the sensation of a go-kart for the water. How does it do that? It has ‘a unique asymmetric catamaran layout (by Dr Albert Nazarov) for a boosted performance’, apparently. We’re told that ‘WoKart transforms water into roads and gives the feeling of driving on water, even in areas where jet craft aren’t permitted’. So it’s not a jet then? No, it’s actually outboard powered, and the reason you can’t see it is because it’s mid-mounted in the pod just behind the driver. Putting the weight and thrust towards the middle is another thing that promotes the dynamic…

An anchor isn’t just a handy tool, it’s also a vital piece of safety equipment. If used correctly, it can often remedy a tricky situation or at least prevent it getting worse. So knowing how to use it, where the electrical breakers are and how to deploy it manually if needed are vital to good seamanship. The first thing you need to know is how deep the water is and what type of seabed lies under the boat. Sand, mud or shingle all give good holding, while weedy bottoms often prevent the anchor from digging, so if visibility allows, look for a sandy patch. Rocky seabeds can have fantastic holding but often make it extremely difficult to get the anchor out again. How much rode you put out depends on…