Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Motor Boat & Yachting

I hate to admit it but I really didn’t miss the lack of a London Boat Show last month. Much as I enjoyed having a home show to support in years gone by, there was rarely anything new to shout about that we hadn’t already seen a couple of months previously at the Cannes or Southampton shows. Last month’s DÜSSELDORF SHOW, on the other hand, was bubbling over with fascinating new boats, gadgets and gear. And judging from the number of British accents overheard on my rounds of the vast indoor showground, I wasn’t the only one swapping a DLR ticket to ExCeL for an Easyjet flight to Germany. The big trend at this year’s show was the number of electric and hybrid boats popping up, often in the most…

We recently received a postcard from sunny Portugal, which cheered up the breakfast toast and marmalade. This note had been thoughtfully penned by some friends who keep a sailing yacht down in Lagos, an attractive marina at the far west end of the Algarve. An experienced cruising couple, they’d come motor boating with us several times and rather enjoyed it. They liked the home comforts, spacious bathrooms and relaxed lounging on flybridges. In due course these folk may turn to power, but meanwhile they were writing from their current yacht in one of my favourite Algarve anchorages. A few miles east of Lagos, two breakwaters jut out from the beach, protecting the entrance to a tidal lagoon. On the east side of this expanse of shallow channels is the fishing…

CATEGORY EH? Am I the only reader who can’t get their head round RCD ratings? The various different categories baffle me, especially when I read that many 60-foot yachts are ‘only’ category B rated, while some much smaller boats are category A. Can you please put me out of my torment by explaining what these ratings mean and are they a good guide to a boat’s seaworthiness? Terry McDonald-Dorman. The four different categories of A, B, C and D form part of the Recreational Craft Directive which almost all new boats over 8ft long sold within the EU must conform to. They cover a multitude of different safety issues including stability tests at rest. The different categorisations give buyers an indication of the sea conditions, which the boat has been…

LOA 30ft 5in (9.3m) BEAM 9ft 0in (2.75m) ENGINES Single or twin inboards up to 540hp TOP SPEED 50 knots PRICE FROM approx. €275,000 ex VAT CONTACT Wessex Marine +44 (0)1202 700702; www.leviboats.com Attempting to improve the Levi Corsair is like suggesting the Mona Lisa requires some finishing touches, but that hasn’t stopped Levi Boats creating this Sport version. In exclusive renderings shared with MBY, the Sport boasts a sleeker and even more driver-focused design than the Classic version. The gracious arc from stem to stern is barely interrupted thanks to the extremely low-profile windscreen, and a pair of side exhausts sprout menacingly from its aft haunches. These deliver the V8’s mighty chorus but can be muffled via a button on the helm if you want to make a discreet…

From the outside it is not immediately apparent how different the 55 is from the 54 it replaces. The trace of the profile is much the same, as is the window architecture, and the dimensions are almost identical, but with the likes of the Princess 55 and Prestige 520 nipping at its bathing platform, the Italians knew they had to do something to give the 55 an edge. Ironically, that ‘edge’ is the curvaceous interior designed by Achille Salvagni, a man who originally penned interiors for Azimut’s larger boats but has more recently been let loose on the 60 and now this, his smallest Azimut yet. If anything, the effect is even greater on a smaller boat, as it’s such a treat to find the intricate detailing and obsessive commitment…

What started out as a crazy idea after a couple of bottles of wine while sitting by the log burner on a grim wet November day was suddenly starting to look very real. As a professional film and documentary maker I’ve always enjoyed adventure but even by my standards this was looking quite ambitious. I’d taken my previous boat, Shark Bay, a Sealine 34 around the British Isles in 2014; a year later I upgraded to a Princess V39, Cecienne, in Mallorca and cruised her back to Falmouth via Morocco and the Bay of Biscay. In 2016, in search of more excitement, I took her to Norway’s Lofoten Islands north of the Arctic Circle. So this year the plan was to take Cecienne through the Baltic to St. Petersburg in…

How do you like yours served? Short and steep with a sharp lip, or long and wide with a nice curl? We’re talking wakes of course, and with this flagship of the Malibu range of tow boats, you can choose the height, width and shape of yours. The M235 has an entire arsenal of tricks up its sleeve to make this possible. Water ballast tanks can add up to 2,200kg to the weight in just the right place, an adjustable foil known as a Power Wedge sucks the stern even deeper into the water, while its Surf Gate system controls the direction and shape of the wake. Why, exactly? Because being dragged around on a pair of skis (for which, ironically, a flat wake is best) is no longer enough.…

Bavaria motorboats have always offered a strong alternative to established British builders. Its latest line of family-focused sportscruisers utilised 25 years of sailing yacht construction in GRP with up to date modular moulding methodology. I have always been surprised by the quality of finish and strongly laid up hull shells of the Bavaria range. Production of the original 28 spans just three years, so they are not in abundance in the marketplace, although it is noticeable that during this time, few of the Brits offered an entry-level 30ft motor cruiser. Structurally, no faults stand out and I’m pleasantly surprised to hear that the shallow vee hull profile doesn’t seem to cause too much slamming in moderate to heavy sea states. Fuel, water and electrical installations are fitted to good practice,…

Starter boats are crucially important and arguably the most vital to get right. Choose wisely and you should have fun and a relatively trouble-free pathway into your new boating pastime. Get it wrong, however, and you will wonder why you ever bothered. (In fairness, getting it right also comes with regular bouts of wondering why you bothered, the difference is that they are outweighed by wondering how you ever managed without it). As a toe in the water exercise you’ll be wanting to keep the cost down as much as possible but you also want a boat that’s going to allow you to stretch your water wings a little and explore your brave new world. You don’t want to outgrow your first boat within weeks of it arriving so try…

It’s not often we get the chance to drive a boat through woodland – it tends to mean something has gone badly wrong with the passage planning! In this instance it was a deliberate decision to put Sealegs’ largest and most capable amphibious RIB to the test on some suitably challenging terrain – a muddy track across a privately owned island in Poole harbour. Our new commitment to testing boats as their owners might use them involved a day-long adventure to some of this vast natural harbour’s least accessible corners, making full use of its abilities on land and sea to reach the parts other boats can’t reach. To find out how we got on, turn to p35. SEE MORE mby.com/slegs…

LOA 66ft 5in (20.3m) BEAM 17ft 6in (5.33m) ENGINES Volvo Penta IPS10150 TOP SPEED 26 knots) PRICE FROM $3.75m ex VAT CONTACT Vicem Yachts. +1 (443) 871 9211; www.vicemyachts.com With its headquarters in Maryland, USA, and a shipyard in Istanbul, Vicem’s mix of classic American design and traditional Turkish construction have always given its boats a unique identity built around excellent seakeeping and outstanding build quality. The cold-molded structure uses light yet strong laminated mahogany and epoxy resin which, according to the yard, has a better strength-to-weight ratio but is also more forgiving for a softer, quieter ride. There is more timber to admire on the inside, where mahogany and teak combine to create a warm and relaxed ambience. There isn’t a shred of plastic to be seen; in fact…

Once upon a time, I broke a world record. The year was 2005 and Sealegs had just launched its first craft, a fairly basic 5.6m aluminium RIB powered by a 90hp outboard engine. It was unexceptional in every way except for one – the three folding wheels that allowed it to crawl in and out of the water under its own steam. As far as the Guinness Book of Records was concerned this made it eligible to challenge the cross-Channel record for amphibious vehicles, held at the time by Sir Richard Branson in a Gibbs Aquada car. Sealegs’ founder Maurice Bryham, the then UK importer Nick Fox and I duly drove down the slipway at Dover one still September morning, nipped across the Channel and up the beach at Sangatte…

For Geoff and Piers, lifelong friends and business partners who both had houses in Menorca and a shared love of the water, owning a locally built Menorquin was the obvious next step. In Piers’s view, they were both were well-suited to this type of joint venture as he’d always dreamt up the most impractical of ideas and Geoff was gifted at fixing them. Geoff took a little more convincing; as a passionate and experienced yachtsman he was initially dismissive of going down the motor boat route, but in mid 2016 even he was finally bewitched by the sturdy honesty and ageless style of the Menorquin range. The hunt was on. Timing was also spurred by significant birthdays for them both and the suggestion by one friend that they should call…

Back in 2003, when the original Beneteau Barracuda 7 was launched, it felt very much like a blueprint for modern high-value boating. It certainly wasn’t the cheapest boat in its field and neither was it the most dynamic to drive, but by refusing to commit to any single strain of recreation, it brought a taste of everything to the mix. You could cruise on it, wakeboard behind it, dine on it, fish from it, sunbathe on it and helm it single-handed with the utmost ease. For those who enjoy a bit of everything, it was almost the perfect boat – and 15 years on, the launch of the line’s new flagship suggests that those same guiding principles still lie at the heart of the Barracuda experience. The freedom of movement…

Bow thrusters have become standard equipment on most craft over 30ft and even some smaller ones offer them as an option. Almost any craft will benefit from having one and it’s certainly the one extra I would always tick on a new boat (and consider retrofitting to an older boat), especially if I were purchasing a single-engined craft or one with high windage. We all know the basics of how to use a bow thruster, but overuse and/or poor usage often mean that skippers can cause themselves as many problems as they solve. I like to consider the bow thruster as an extra crew member who can lend a hand when needed but shouldn’t automatically be relied upon. Electric bow thrusters have a finite period of time they can run…

It’s the sound and feeling that motorboaters most dread. That split-second moment from all being well with the world to the gut-wrenching, heart sinking drop of revs as the boat suddenly and inexplicably slows. It was a routine run to Brixham for fuel. The crab pot buoys were out in force, an ever-growing menace that seems to increase unchecked and unregulated, but it was flat calm and low water so there was little chance of any being dragged beneath the surface or hidden by waves, as is often the case. But every chance, as it turned out, that some fisherman looking to save a couple of quid would use cheap polypropylene rope to secure the buoy to the pot. And polypropylene rope floats, so if there is too much of…

The clever thing about Monterey boats is that although they are usually very competitively priced from new, they do a great job of appearing anything but cheap. This 218LSC is a case in point. Look at the through-bolted pulpit stanchions mounted seamlessly to the deck rather than attached on the outside with self tappers, the glossy hull colours and the standard fit pop-up cleats. INTERIOR It is strictly a cuddy cabin, and one area where the prosaic build shows is inside, with plenty of bare shiny GRP on show and little in the way of facilities beyond a chemical loo and lockers beneath the seats. But there’s enough room to escape a shower or for two people, to sleep. What else do you really need? EXTERIOR Pulling the cockpit right…

Thoughts of perfect first boats tend to err toward small fast day boats, and not unreasonably as they straddle a price spectrum of performance and manageability. But they tend to be small and not everyone feels the need for speed, so how about trading speed and youth for space, grace and acres of space? And while you may need to get a little more ‘hands on’ with this 44-year-old classic, it’s so simply engineered that if you’re competent with a screwdriver it shouldn’t hold too many horrors. INTERIOR The big news, literally, is cabin space. There’s a forward cabin with vee berths on the lower deck and the dinette opposite the galley creates a wonderful kitchen diner (and also converts to a double berth). On the main deck you’ll find…

1 BRAVE NEW WORLD FROM SUNSEEKER Sunseeker has given us a glimpse of the future with the help of two projects due for release in 2020. The first is a new boat, currently referred to as Project 8X, the second is a hybrid diesel-electric drive system. Although Sunseeker hasn’t yet settled on an exact length for Project 8X, the finished boat will be between 80-90ft. Crucially, it also showcases an entirely new design direction for Sunseeker’s next generation of large yachts. The focus of the design team was outdoor living. This starts at the stern with an enormous beach club set inside the boat’s protective side coamings. Described as a ‘highly specified entertainment area’, Sunseeker says it covers four times the area of a traditional bathing platform, creating enough space…

LOA 44ft 2in (13.48m) BEAM 13ft 10in (4.23m) ENGINES Twin Volvo Penta 300hp/435hp diesel TOP SPEED 26 knots PRICE FROM POA CONTACT Dale Motor Yachts +44 (0)1646 603112; www.dalenelson.co.uk It’s not every day that Pembrokeshire-based Dale Motor Yachts announces a new model, so the 40 deserves some attention. Stylistically there is no great departure from the smaller 38 but the exterior has been rounded, giving it a fresher aesthetic. Dale says it takes the best of the Nelson 38 – namely its astonishing sea keeping – but puts more of a focus on internal volume. Underpinned by the renowned Arthur Mursell hull, the 40 is available as an aft cockpit (Express) design or with an aft cabin (AC) if sleeping space is more of a priority. That said, the handsome…

LOA 78ft 6in (23.95m) BEAM 35ft 9in (10.95m) ENGINES Twin 50-250kW electric motors TOP SPEED 20 knots PRICE FROM €3.4m ex VAT CONTACT Silent Yachts. +49 175 640 5303; www.silent-yachts.com In next moth’s magazine you can read our in-depth review of the solar-powered Silent 55 and find out whether its promise of silent, emission-free cruising lives up to expectation. In the meantime Silent Yachts has already started building three of its new flagship 79s at its Ancona shipyard. Like the 55, it promises silent progress with unlimited range if the weather conditions suit. Key to this is the vast array of solar panels arranged on the wheelhouse roof and lifting hardtop. With over 70 panels rated for 25kW peak and the same lithium ion batteries as used by Tesla, rated…

Early last September, Jane and I accepted an invitation to cruise with friends aboard their 1930s motor yacht Chico. Designed by the legendary G L Watson & Co, Chico was built by James Miller in Fife. A Dunkirk Little Ship, she has enjoyed a full and active career, which continues under her present owners Gus Geddes and Sue Maclachlan. Starting from Oban on Scotland’s west coast, Gus and Sue run summer charter cruises around the Inner Hebrides in the civilised style to which their elegant ship is accustomed. Our original plan was to work south round the Mull of Galloway and into the little-known waters of Solway, but strong westerlies made it prudent to stay in the relatively sheltered Firth of Clyde. This was certainly no hardship because the sounds…

I’m standing in a Boston Whaler 235 Conquest that drifts on the oily calm water of the Solent, smiling wryly at the crystal clear blue skies above me. The source of my amusement is the conversation just three days earlier with Sealine dealer Chris Manners from TBS Boats during which we nearly postponed this test due to forecasts of high winds and heavy rain – forecasts from the Met Office, an organisation that confidently tells us what the weather will be doing a decade and more from now… The reason I’m here at all is bearing down on me at 30 knots, so I lift my Nikon and adjust the zoom of its F2.8 70-200 lens. Brought into sharp focus is the first Sealine F430 to hit the UK. Only…

Never before have leisure boat owners had access to such a sophisticated array of navigational electronics. The leading manufacturers are on a never-ending mission to make navigating on the water safer, more intuitive and more inventive. Thermal imaging and the use of tablets, smartphones and even smart watches to control your boats’ system are just a few of the recent introductions. And the drive to innovate continues with Raymarine launching two new pieces of technology that have the potential to alter the way we navigate entirely. The first and most significant is its ClearCruise Augmented Reality (AR) technology for the Axiom range of multi-function displays (MFD). The system works by combining at least one Raymarine camera (either the CAM210 Bullet or CAM220 Eyeball), an AR200 video stabilisation unit and an…

Car companies getting involved in boat design is all the rage these days. Lexus has just revealed the first renderings of its new LY650 flybridge cruiser; Aston Martin teamed up with Quintessence Yachts to produce the pretty, if somewhat impractical, AM37 sportsboat and Mercedes Benz has its Arrow 460 superyacht tender. But one boat manufacturer teamed up with an automotive design house a decade ago – Bavaria Yachts approached the entirely appropriately named BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke, or in English, Bavarian Motor Works). In fact it was BMW Group’s DesignworksUSA studio that actually collaborated with the German boat builder. First from its pen was the rakish but extremely rare Deep Blue 46. The Sport 28 was the design company’s first mainstream boat, and it launched in 2009. The Sport 28…

We were last aboard the boat in September and our week’s holiday began with a serious clean. The decks had been covered in a fine yet stubborn layer of black ash due to forest fires within the Monchique mountains north of Marina de Portimão. This was not a case of running the hose across the decks; this was buckets and brushes out, scrub until your palms are blistered type stuff. It is never quite so bad with the sun on your back, however. We had treated Blues Away to two upgrades this season, the first an Ultra Marine anchor and swivel and most recently a set of Fusion 7.7in speakers, two for the cockpit and two for the flybridge. The original, eight-year-old Clarions had spluttered on manfully but they were…

You may recall the halcyon days of car magazines full of ‘buy a 25-year-old Porsche for the price of a new Ford Fiesta’ stories. Those days are over as anything that has escaped the scrapyard gets elevated to ‘classic’ status and is priced accordingly. But in the boat world the concept of a classic has yet to catch on, which is why you can buy a 27ft Fairline for the price of a new 16ft Bayliner Element. INTERIOR The greatest strength of an older Fairline is the fact that the factory never grasped the fact that cheaper boats could be any less well built. It’s why the interior woodwork of this boat is every bit as solid as a 50ft Fairline of the same era. The layout is pretty standard…

A builder based in West Sussex, the name originates from the design of its first model, a 16ft day boat launched in 1973 and based on early beach launched fishing boats in the Orkney Isles (3,500 of which have been built). Orkney has stuck to those roots, expanding into an 11-strong range of sturdy practical boats that span 13ft to 27ft. Like most of the range, the 20 is easily trailerable, keeping costs down and cruising options up. INTERIOR Pilothouse refers to Orkney’s range of wheelhouse boats. The 20 is the smallest of the current three boat range, yet still manages to pack in a compact fully enclosed and lockable wheelhouse that seats two, plus a lower area forward that will sleep a couple or, with the table installed, offer…