Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Motor Boat & Yachting

I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve run stories about yachties of a certain age deciding to switch from sail to power. It’s an obvious move to make if you love being out on the water but are tired of spending the entire day at 45 degrees, getting cold, wet and shouted at by your other half! However, in recent years I have started to detect another trend, this time from experienced motor boat owners making the switch from coastal cruising to the inland waterways of Europe. Take this month’s feature from MBY reader Martin Craddock. He bought his first big boat, an AZIMUT 46 flybridge, in 2002 and spent the next 16 years working his way up through a series of increasingly substantial offshore passagemakers in which…

LONDON STREET BRASSERIE READING Remember your most dispiriting restaurant experience ever? I do, and it didn’t even involve food. Having gone out of my way to drop into a relatively upmarket establishment I asked if I could book a table for a month’s time. “No,” came the haughty reply. “Here, we only take bookings for today – if you want to book in advance, you have to do it online.” But (spotting a computer over the receptionist’s shoulder) I enquired, “Can’t you do that for me?” “No, I cannot.” And that was that. This miserable example of customer anti-service happened recently in central London. Fortunately, in another ‘London’ – the London Street Brasserie, Reading, the story was very different; the opposite in fact as the staff there could not have…

SEE MORE mby.com/f900c It’s fair to say that the Nordic weekender is in a state of flux. While brands like Axopar have deviated wildly from the inherited script with their radically tapered bows, stepped hulls and disruptively intelligent deck layouts, the ‘classical’ high-performance family cuddy (often abbreviated to DC for Day Cruiser) has been plugging away at the heart of Scandinavian leisure boating for decades. Even in its most classical form, it has continued to attract droves of fans for its exhaustively finessed combination of step-through bow, forward cuddy, deep-set cockpit, quick-rig canopy and outboard propulsion – and that popularity looks set to remain for some time to come. After all, in spite of its compact proportions and the relative conservatism of its approach, a properly sorted Nordic weekender is…

SEE MORE mby.com/ct28 Way back in September 2018, we staged a group comparison test between three 28ft sportsboats: an Axopar 28, a Nimbus W9 and a Cormate T27. At the time, the Cormate seemed like the outlier. Equipped with a modest 250hp V6 sterndrive engine and curvy retro styling, it looked on paper to be underpowered, outdated and overpriced compared to its more modern outboard-engined rivals. It was only when we got behind the wheel that the picture changed. The T27 was by some margin the most fun to drive and the most capable in the rough – and even though it was considerably more expensive than the 300hp Axopar, it looked and felt the most special of the three. In short, it punched well above its weight and remains…

Over the last five years, I’ve covered 1,675nm in Greyfin – the equivalent of circumnavigating the UK and Ireland. So I thought it would be a good time to do a full review of my costings, so that those who are new to boating can get a firm grasp of the kind of financial commitment a compact multi-purpose family sportsboat involves. THE IDEAL BOAT Greyfin is a 2015 Beneteau Antares 8. Though billed as a sportsfisher or family weekender, I would consider her an entry-level cruiser. She is 8m (27ft) long and weighs about 3,000kg, loaded with fuel, water and equipment. She has a 200hp Nanni Diesel motor (a marinised 3-litre Toyota Land Cruiser engine) and is shaft driven by a 4-blade bronze propeller through a ZF gearbox. She has…

Thunderbird is what happens when you combine an obsession with aircraft, the heady days of the 1930s and a LOT of money. George Whittell was an eccentric San Francisco tycoon who, in the mid-20th century, owned about a third of the land in the Tahoe basin and 27 miles of the lake’s shoreline. He built a beautiful lakeside home called Thunderbird Lodge; kept a pet lion called Bill and a pet elephant called Mango; owned a variety of aircraft including a DC-2, outfitted for his private use; six of the rarest Duesenberg motorcars; a 145ft superyacht and this legendary 55ft sportsyacht, Thunderbird. Commissioned by Whittell specifically for Lake Tahoe to go with the estate he was building there, Thunderbird was designed by the famous naval architect John L. Hacker, built…

THE EDITOR’S VIEW… I can see why some people don’t like the idea of pure electric boats but it’s hard to see anyone objecting to a DIESEL ELECTRIC HYBRID that offers meaningful fuel savings without sacrificing range or performance, especially when the boat itself has been designed around the drivetrain to maximise its benefits. 1 AZIMUT’S NEW HYBRID RANGE Azimut has revealed details of a brand new range of hybrid powered motor yachts due to be launched next year. Called Seadeck, they are designed to take the yard and its customers a step closer to a fully sustainable future. Based on ultra-efficient planing hulls with a 40% carbon fibre content to reduce weight, they will feature Volvo’s forthcoming diesel-electric hybrid drivetrains and roof-mounted solar panels. This will allow them to…

STERK 31 LOA 31ft 0in (9.73m) BEAM 9ft 8in (2.99m) ENGINES Single 425 to twin 450hp outboards TOP SPEED 40-80 knots PRICE From €217,000 inc VAT CONTACT www.sterkyachts.com Making its world debut at the Düsseldorf boat show, against a backdrop of DJ tunes, the new Sterk 31 looked for all the world like another reverse-bowed weekender to muddy the waters of the Axopar-inspired sportsboat sector. But as we got a little closer, its individuality became ever more evident. Firstly, this is a distinctly premium boat, built in Germany to a very high standard with a price tag that, when specced up to show boat level, puts it closer to the Axopar 37 than the Axopar 28. And its approach to performance also feels very individual. The hull and topsides, for…

CUSTOM YACHTING 26 extra pages of big boat heaven including sea trials of the Princess X80 and Ferretti 860, plus the MBY reader buying a Sanlorenzo SL96A TOP 10 DUTCH MOORINGS Experienced waterways cruiser Andrew Fells shares his 10 favourite overnight berths for exploring the Netherlands LAUNCHING A TRAILBOAT Jon Mendez takes us through the dos and don’ts of launching a boat safely from a road-going trailer on a public slipway CONTACT Email: mby@futurenet.com Write: Motor Boat & Yachting, Future Plc, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR…

SEE MORE mby.com/howto Entering a harbour at night is a very different challenge to entering during the day. If you haven’t carefully considered what you are looking for and when, it can be very confusing or even dangerous. In addition to your normal safety equipment, the key points to think about before attempting a night entry are to check that your navigation lights are working, keep a small head torch close to hand for seeing what you are doing on the boat and a red light for chart checks that won’t ruin your night vision – I like having two separate torches so you don’t blind yourself with the wrong switch. Lastly, get a decent handheld spotlight in case you need to illuminate something or someone afloat. The next step…

From the multitude of names, makes and brands inhabiting the marine ecosystem, few attract such universal acclaim as the Nelson hull. Much loved by pilots, port authorities, the military, police, commercial operators and leisure boat owners alike, this semi-displacement masterpiece has been making waves (literally and figuratively) since its creation in the early 1960s. The man behind the original design was Peter Thornycroft, a third-generation member of the family whose eponymous company eventually became part of British Shipbuilders. Following a distinguished career in the British Navy, Peter Thornycroft formed two companies, Keith, Nelson & Company Limited in 1955 and, a decade later, TT Boat Designs. Incidentally, the Nelson name has nothing to do with the one-armed chap in Trafalgar Square – it comes from Arthur Nelson who, together with Keith…

Two years ago a gentleman approached me at a boat show to tell me how much he enjoys AQUAHOLIC. Not an unusual occurrence, but this particular chap was famous comedian Jim Davidson. I thanked him and, half jokingly, asked him if he’d like to film a ‘Meet The Owner’ video with me? He said he’d love to. We met aboard his beautiful Princess 61 and he was brilliant. Warm, funny, self-deprecating and with a rich stock of boating tales, what came across most was his love of boating. The video was a hit, over a million views. Many people commented, saying they’d seen a very different side to Jim to the one the tabloids love to portray. Meet The Owner actually came about almost by accident. A chap called Nick…

SEE MORE mby.com/rand28 Scandinavia has a reputation for building some of the best small to medium sized boats in the world. Brands like Windy, Targa, Nimbus, Marex, Sargo, Grandezza and Nordstar all trade on their Scandinavian heritage as evidence of their functional design, robust seakeeping and high quality build. By and large the reputation holds true thanks to the challenging sea conditions around Norway, Sweden and Finland where all these yards are based. But there’s another Scandinavian country, which for some reason rarely features in motor boat building circles – Denmark. That’s something which Danish brothers Carl and Oscar Rand are determined to change. In 2014 they co-founded Rand Boats to manufacture a range of sustainable electric boats for city-based boat rental company GoBoat. Their first model, the Picnic 18,…

I have been boating for over 40 years in everything from kayaks and speedboats to my current Redbay 1450, Dromquinna. In that time I must have covered over 25,000 nautical miles – roughly the equivalent of circumnavigating the world. However, 90% of this has simply been cruising around my local waters of Ireland and Scotland with occasional holiday charters in Croatia and the Caribbean. Despite all those miles and the perception that I am nominally an experienced boat owner, I had never lost sight of land. I suspect, like many people, I simply find it more reassuring to stay in sight of land even though it’s a false sense of security as most accidents happen close to home. Since buying Dromquinna I have wanted to conquer that fear and pass…

Until an hour ago our charity fundraising attempt to circumnavigate Britain in 26 days was going swimmingly. We’d made it from Brighton to Wick, a few miles south of John o’ Groats, in just 11 days but coming out of Wick harbour this morning, my Aquastar 38 April Rose came to a shuddering halt on a submerged rock. We managed to get back to the marina alright but heavy vibration from the bent propeller means we aren’t going anywhere until it’s fixed – not an easy task in somewhere as remote as this. The harbourmaster arranges for a mobile crane to come and lift April Rose and within a couple of hours she is perched on the harbour wall. The port propeller and P-bracket are badly bent. There are some…

Regular readers may remember that in June 2021 we began a long-term test of eight different antifouling products, from the latest silicone fouling release coatings to conventional copper-based paints and long-term treatment Coppercoat. The aim was not just to see how well they performed over a season but to assess their longevity, ease of application, environmental factors and cost. We applied all eight products in evenly spaced vertical stripes to both sides of a regularly used Hardy 42 called Raymariner, which is owned and operated by Raymarine as a floating test bed for its navigation equipment. We also painted a GRP panel, of about one square metre in size, with the same products and in the same way as for the boat. This would allow us to see how the…

Emigrating to Florida nearly six years ago saw some big changes in my boat life. I took my current boat, a 2006 Princess V48, with me and ran it out of Miami for nearly five years, enjoying a wonderful trip of nearly 2,500 miles, up through New York and into Lake Erie. But the Covid lockdown also saw some big changes in my lifestyle. I sold my main home at a Florida country club and bought a three-storey town house on a canal, just 15 minutes from the Intracoastal Waterway. I also sold my one-bedroom marina apartment on Lake Erie and bought a big house right on the lake. The idea behind all of this was to split the year in two. I wanted to enjoy perfect winter boating in…