Innholdsfortegnelse for The Adventure Issue i Motor Boat & Yachting

I first came across Harry Hornby almost exactly three years ago. He emailed me out of the blue to thank MBY for the used boat report and video we’d recently published on the DALE 45 CLASSIC. It had inspired him to make the switch from sail to power by purchasing one of the actual boats featured. His only complaint was that if anything we’d underestimated the exceptional style, build quality and after-sales service of the team at Dale, as he and his wife Tricia had discovered on the cruise back from South Wales to Inverness. “Our first trip from Milford Haven to Arklow across the Irish Sea in a Force 6-7 astonished us with the comfort and sea-kindliness at over 20 knots,” he wrote adding. “All being well we will…

During our recent jaunt to the south of France, I was reminded how important tides are in our normal cruising. While I enjoy Mediterranean boating, there is something slightly unreal about coasts where the sea level stays constant. After a while I hanker after that enchanting tidal magic which adds life to Channel harbours and estuaries, changing their characters throughout the day. There have been some spectacular tides at home this season. We were in Brittany for one of the largest of the year, with high water at St Malo more than 13m above chart datum, and low barely half a metre. Equivalent to the height of three double-decker buses, this dramatic rise and fall is easily explained by scientists but seems almost mystical when you see it happen. Low…

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE After a lifetime of dreaming about boats I am now the proud owner of a 2008 Jeanneau Prestige 32 Flybridge. Growing up in the seaside town of Southport, Lancashire, boating was not an obvious childhood passion. However, the television series Howards’ Way in which Jack Rolf and the team created spectacular boats and sailed them in the Solent, inspired me to give it a go. From that point on I decided to become a boat builder, starting with teaching myself to build fibreglass canoes and 14ft speedboats. Sadly, this venture didn’t work out as barely anybody went boating in Lancashire. Refusing to give in, I loaded my Vauxhall Cavalier with all my worldly goods and headed to the Southampton Boat Show in 1987. I ended up…

LOA 34ft 4in (10.49m) BEAM 11ft 5in (3.49m) ENGINES Single/twin Volvo Penta up to 600hp TOP SPEED 37 knots PRICE FROM £354,000 inc VAT CONTACT Wessex Marine +44 (0)1202 700702; www.marex.no Launching in 2019, the all-new 360 Cabriolet Cruiser is a real Swiss Army knife of a boat, with bits that fold and slide to make the very most of the sub-35ft frame. A pair of sliding sunroofs top the main deck and the canopies stow – like curtains – in vertical recesses either side of the rear roof supports. To ensure the cabins feel as large as possible, the lower deck is used for accommodation only with a pair of comfortable doubles sharing a bathroom with a separate shower cubicle. On the main deck there are three forward-facing seats…

We suggested staying aboard the boat; the answer was ‘sure, help yourself’ A suspected mechanical malady meant that a recent passage home on my boat that would normally take 45 mins at 25 knots instead took almost three hours at 6 knots, and as we finally reached port we firmly agreed on one thing. Cruising at displacement speed for a change had been brilliant! We’d chatted, relaxed, listened to music and enjoyed the scenery. And the icing on the cake was over two miles out of each litre instead of the usual three quarters of a mile – less than half the fuel burn! That last facet is particularly relevant in these times of ever-increasing fuel prices and uncertainty over the future of red diesel. Displacement speed cruising is becoming…

BOAT: Fairline Phantom 43 Reel Estate LOCATION: Brixham BERTHS: 4 COST: from £125/night “The joy of Beds on Board income is that it provides pocket money to spend on the boat without feeling guilty. I’m about to replace the swim platform at a cost of £2,000 and that is excess boat expenditure that the boat itself is effectively funding. I reckon that it costs about £10,000 per year to run the boat; if it can generate some of that itself then that really helps to justify the expense.” Nick Craddock has been renting out his boat via the system for two years, and has noticed a real uplift in popularity. “We began renting in August 2016; in fact I think we were probably one of the first to do so.…

BOAT: Hatteras 40 New Life 2 LOCATION: Town Quay Marina, Southampton BERTHS: 5 COST: from £150/night “It’s restored my faith in the general public,” says Graham Etheridge. “The boat has always been incredibly well looked after, and the people using it have been lovely. In the main they’re very grateful for the opportunity to stay on board and they treat it as though it were their own.” Graham keeps his Hatteras 40DC at Town Quay Marina in Southampton and uses a variety of peer to peer sharing platforms, proudly pointing out that on one non-boating site it’s reviewed by users as the highest rated accommodation in all of Hampshire. His guests come from all over the world and for a variety of different reasons. “It’s become very popular for cruise…

It’s not just the spaciousness that impresses but how this space is utilised, especially in the forward master cabin Part of the reason why the Navetta 48 has such a voluminous interior is because it has to be split in half. Let me explain. Absolute builds its boats in Piacenza, a town in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, roughly 150km north-east of Genoa. Every boat it builds has to be transported to the sea by road and, to negotiate the road network, the only way to do this is to move the boats with the hull and deck on separate trucks. Once a boat has been thoroughly inspected and signed off in the tanks at the shipyard, the decks are prised apart for the journey and then bonded together securely…

One of the joys of larger boats is the ability to carry ‘toys’, be they paddle boards, sea bobs or even a jet ski. Typically you need to be well past 40ft before you can consider carrying this ultimate plaything, but that’s all changed. Made in France, the IconCraft 24 is an 8-metre semi-custom build in aluminium, offering a huge amount of customisation over a normal fixed GRP mould. Add twin outboards fitted at the edges of the transom, and a cockpit forward layout, and you’ve got a heap of choice available, enabling you to fit the aft section out as you like. The most impressive option is the ability to transport a Sea-Doo Spark Trixx jetski that slips between the twin Evinrude outboards and floats into a built-in cradle.…

Having already covered 1500nm in our new Princess 49, 4 Sea Sons, from Heusden, Holland to Baiona, Spain we were now heading to Porto in Portugal. The weather looked good for the next two days so we shouldn’t have had any trouble reaching our destination, but it was a difficult trip with no wind or swell but thick fog from ten minutes after our departure to the moment we arrived. The radar and AIS were invaluable but my eyeball navigation was more important than ever to detect poorly marked pots and small fishing boats. There are a few marina options near Porto but we settled on Freixo even though it is five miles up river as the views are said to be magnificent. We arrived – we thought – in…

BUILT 2004 PRICE £119, 750 It’s no surprise that three of our four all-weather boats hail from Scandinavia, in this instance Sweden. Another cleverly conceived boat, it utilises some fairly unique design and layout ideas to create an astonishingly spacious sub-40 ft flybridge cruiser. INTERIOR Like the little Aquador, there are three ways into the cabin, two sliding side doors plus access from the aft deck. Head through the latter and you’ll find a dinette opposite the galley, so far so normal. But move forward and you’ll find yourself going up steps, not down, to a raised separate pilothouse. The lower deck houses two cabins, the forward one featuring a vee berth (an offset double was an alternative) and the mid cabin utilising the extra height gained by that raised…

MBY reader Harry Hornby spent three summers exploring Scandinavia in his Dale Classic 45, taking full advantage of the long summer days to explore the parts that visiting boats rarely reach. This shot was taken at exactly ten minutes past midnight on 27 July, 2018 looking across Vestfjorden in Northern Norway to the Lofoten archipelago — often referred to as the Lofoten Wall due to its impenetrable appearance. Having survived the long dark days of winter this far north, the locals make the most of the 24hr summer daylight by pouring out along the coastline in craft like this sturdy little Viknes, often staying out fishing or cruising until long after the rest of us are safely tucked up in bed. You can see more of Harry’s stunning photographs and…

Cruising the Exeter Ship Canal is something I planned four years ago with Smuggler’s Blues 1, however, come the allotted week, the heavens opened and stayed open, so we had to abort. This time my good friend Sue Weston organised it so it was just a case of turning up at 5pm at Thatcher Rock in Torbay the day I came back from a (fantastic) Jimmy Buffett concert in Paris. I pretty much ran into the house, dumped one bag, grabbed another and headed for the marina. The plan was to run the boats around to Exmouth Marina and spend the night there before heading upriver the following morning. It was a grey blustery day as Millie and I met Sue and her husband Matt and headed east along the…

LOA 66ft 8in (20.37m) BEAM 17ft 2in (5.23m) ENGINES Twin CAT 1,150hp/MAN 1,200hp TOP SPEED 32 knots PRICE FROM £1.63m ex VAT CONTACT www.fairlineyachts.com Fairline’s drive for new product continues apace and these latest digital renderings give the clearest idea yet of what the new flagship of the flybridge range will look like. Production is well under way at Fairline’s new Hythe facility with the first boat due to be ready in time for a show debut early in 2019. In an effort to streamline the production process and keep costs under control, the 64 shares its hull, lower deck layout and engine options with the Targa 63 GTO, but from the main deck upwards it’s an all-new Alberto Mancini design. The contrasting dark superstructure helps to lower the boat’s…

The banks rise steeply on both sides of the river providing a dramatic backdrop We leave Vigo, Spain, in glorious sunshine bound for our first Portuguese destination of Porto. A pod of dolphins plays in our bow wave and a pair of cheeky seagulls hitch a lift on our bimini. Other than a refreshing southerly breeze, not mentioned in this morning’s weather forecast, the trip runs to plan. We’re greeted at the mouth of the Douro by the expected lively current and the less expected attention of the Portuguese Coast Guard, who, charging towards us in their RIB, hail us on the VHF. They ask the usual questions about destination, last port of call, number and nationality of people on board, then allow us to proceed to Douro Marina. A…

BOAT: Fairline Squadron 50 Italian Job LOCATION: Lymington BERTHS: 6 COST: from £200/night “It sounds strange but I really do genuinely enjoy doing it,” says Nick Trainer, who owns a Fairline Squadron Italian Job in Lymington. Nick previously rented his Azimut 55 but has recently swapped that boat for the Squadron 50. “It’s not as flashy as the Azimut, that was a stunning boat, but it’s actually more homely and more practical, with things like four huge opening windows in the saloon compared with two small ones on the previous boat. And one double plus two twins works better for this than two doubles and one twin.” Retired and living locally to the boat, Nick personally hands over the boat to each set of guests, although he contracts out the…

The dream of a powerful but refined diesel outboard engine is about to become a reality. After years of promises, dead ends and false dawns, British start-up Cox Powertrain finally unveiled the first pre-production units of its hotly anticipated CXO 300hp turbo diesel outboard engine at last month’s Fort Lauderdale boat show. Unlike rival diesel outboard manufacturer Oxe, which uses a highly tuned marinised version of General Motors’ 200hp 2-litre four cylinder car engine, the CXO 300 has been designed from the ground up as a purpose-built marine outboard engine. Developed in conjunction with British-based engineering specialists Ricardo, who have worked with everyone from McLaren Cars to Bugatti, it uses a brand new four-stroke 4.4-litre V8 block. Cast from aluminium alloy, rather than steel, to keep the weight down and…

When IPS drives arrived back in 2005, it was viewed with a degree of scepticism by many people, including me. The joystick technology may have been very clever, but it seemed like a complicated way to solve the issue of how to drive a boat well. Thirteen years on and IPS has become the standard drive system for many craft in the 40-60ft bracket, partly because it’s more fuel efficient than shafts and frees up space for accommodation, and partly because it helps convince potential buyers they can drive a bigger boat. But while it has solved much of the angst associated with tricky berthing manoeuvres it doesn’t always encourage good seamanship. So how do you use IPS effectively? The theory is simplicity itself: twist the joystick and the boat…

The very loose internet definition of a boat friend is as follows: a normal friend prevents you A boat friend just makes sure you stay on the boat. There are many reasons for buying a Marex, but one that I never expected was making new friends. When we were considering buying a new boat we visited the Southampton Boat Show so we could have a touch and feel of as many of our initial selection as possible. When we sat on the Marex 310 we knew she was the one, and settled in to the comfy seats hoping never to move. As another couple also hopped aboard we made eye contact and gave polite English hellos. “It’s a lovely boat, isn’t it?” my wife Julie said to the couple. “I…

BUILT 2011 PRICE £69, 950 Finland, with its achingly beautiful archipelago, northern climate and boat-mad populace, is ground zero for all weather, go anywhere, go any time boats. Based on the Aquador 25 Cabin, the upgraded 25CE is the perfect example of a boat that works brilliantly at any time of year. INTERIOR At first glance, the 25CE is not a conventional layout. How many other 25-footers have three doors into the wheelhouse – twin side doors and the main one from the aft cockpit? Inside you’ll find two bench seats facing each other behind the helm and navigator chairs. The galley and heads are on the lower deck behind a forward cabin with vee berths that infill to create a double. But it gets stranger. There are two more…

1 NEW LONDON YACHT SHOW British Marine is backing plans to relaunch a major new boat show in London in the spring. Informa Exhibitions, which already runs the successful Monaco and Fort Lauderdale boat shows, has taken over the old London On Water show with a view to turning it into a bigger and better event. The show takes place in May at St Katharine Docks, close to the City of London and yards from Tower Bridge. In previous years it has been a relatively small event but with Informa’s resources and the backing of British Marine, which runs the Southampton Boat Show, hopes are high that it will put a London boat show back on the international calendar. “We’ve taken this show on for what it can be, not…

LOA 47ft 1in (14.35m) BEAM 13ft 11in (4.25m) ENGINES Volvo Penta IPS600 TOP SPEED 31 knots PRICE FROM £648,000 inc VAT CONTACT www.princessyachts.com It has been quite the year for Princess with the launch of the R35 and the announcement that it is to build an entirely new range of superyachts, starting with the X95. With all this excitement the F45 should not be allowed to fly quietly beneath the radar as it has an important job on its hands. Firstly it replaces the 43, which replaced the remarkable 42, a boat that Princess sold over 300 units of. Secondly this is now the smallest flybridge boat in the range, meaning it has the task of balancing Princess quality with a price that isn’t going to send customers fleeing to…

Our autumn cruise started in style and continued in much the same vein As the long hot summer of 2018 drew to a close, Jane and I knew we didn’t want the sunshine to stop. A spell in the warm south was needed and an unexpected phone call came to the rescue. Our friend Steve Adams, from the waterways hire company France Afloat, asked if we could deliver a Linssen Grand Sturdy 34.9AC from Beaucaire near the River Rhône to its charter base at Capestang on the Canal du Midi, passing through the fascinating salt-lakes of the Camargue. We could indeed. Soon afterwards we were boarding a comfortable Brittany Ferry at Portsmouth, bound not for St Malo but Bilbao on the north Spanish coast. After a hectic few months we…

BOAT: Princess 414 Kermit LOCATION: Poole Boat Haven BERTHS: 4 COST: from £175/night Location, location, location is Adam Baker’s key to successful boat rental. Unlike many users, the boat Adam runs with a partner is an entirely commercial proposition. “We’ve coded the boat so that we can run charters, and we also have some success with Marine Memorials, where we take funeral parties out to scatter ashes at sea.” An early adopter of peer to peer sharing, they began renting the boat in Easter 2016. “It was pretty quiet to begin with; in fact that’s why we coded the boat to enable us to access other income streams. But bookings almost doubled in 2017 and this year we’d overtaken last year by the end of August with 142 nights booked.…

OLAS MOB TAGS OLAS Tags are an inexpensive way of raising the alarm should you lose a crew member (or pet) overboard. Each tag is a small waterproof disc that can be worn on a wristband like a watch or attached to clothing or a lifejacket. They link to an app on a smart phone or tablet, meaning you almost certainly already own part of the kit needed. This creates a virtual wireless tether which when broken by moving out of range or falling overboard triggers an audible alarm and light signal on the phone within 8 seconds. It also records the time and GPS location and will guide the user back to that location using clear direction information (it doesn’t actually track the tag). You can even program the…

IN BUILD 2013 – 2017 PRICE RANGE £650,000 - £1,000,000 From a distance, the Princess 52 launched at the London Boat Show in 2013 looks every bit the gradual evolution from the Princess 50 it superseded. A little longer, a little higher and a little fatter than its predecessor but in most other respects similar to look at, with the exception of snazzier styling and bigger windows. However, move in close, or better yet, get on board, and you realise just how wrong that lazy assumption is, because the 52 was a top-down rethink of mid-range flybridge boats from Princess. “Volume sells,” Andy Lawrence, Head of Design at Princess, tells me when I quiz him about it. “The Princess 52 saw us introduce some radical new ideas to really maximise…

It’s said that there is no such thing as the wrong wrong clothing. Maybe it’s the same with boats. Dark nights, strong winds and cold weather don’t speak of the joy of boating. But actually, in the right vessel there’s much to be said for spending winters afloat. Empty marinas, a wide availability of visitor berths, and anchorages all to yourself, devoid of the irritating whine of jet skis. Bliss. And just occasionally a perfect winter’s day of calm seas, bright sun and crisp, clean air that will make summer season boaters green with envy. And there’s something cosy and inviting about a warm cabin on a chilly night. All you need to enjoy it is the right boat, something with an enclosed helm, good visibility and easy decks to…

BUILT 2000 PRICE £89, 950 Hardy has been around since the 1970s, originally building small outboard engine-powered pilothouse boats like the Navigator 18 and Pilot 20. In the 1990s the range was extended upward with the introduction of the 27 and 36 Commodore. The 32 Commander arrived in 2000 to bridge the divide, and was launched at the London Boat Show. INTERIOR Unlike many builders, Hardy didn’t focus on massive cabins, in fact there is just one, with a vee berth up in the bow. As a result there is masses of living space, enough for a decent galley with a proper oven as well as twin hob and grill and a dinette opposite on the lower deck, and then a decent saloon area on the main deck. Both social…

BUILT 2016 PRICE £129, 95 The wildcard of this feature is supposed to offer something different, and the XO 270 certainly delivers that in spades. From the vertical stem of the origami-sharp aluminium hull to the vertical wraparound window line, this is a boat like no other and it’s been made even more distinctive by the pale grey hull wrap, black powder-coat finish to the stainless steel rails and triple spotlight installation on the roof. INTERIOR Minimalist best describes the interior. With its stark grey upholstery and plenty of bright white GRP, it has the same no-nonsense vibe as the outside. The dinette converts to a small double, there’s a galley unit opposite, a small fridge under the helm seat and a separate heads beneath the console ahead of the…