Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i Motor Boat & Yachting

Recently I described an issue with the engine losing revs as we accelerated onto the plane and a subsequent issue with not going into gear. Well despite plenty of use since, the gear issue completely disappeared. The engine losing revs issue, however, was still amongst us. Open the throttle and as the boat began to climb onto the plane the revs would suddenly fall back, sometimes accompanied by the engine alarm sounding. At low speeds, perfect. Darthaven (the Volvo Penta engineers who look after my engine) reckoned that it sounded like fuel and could I drop the boat down (handily, now we’re on the river, they’re a mile downstream). They rigged up a remote fuel tank plumbed directly into the engine, bypassing the boat fuel system entirely. If it ran…

CLASSIC VAT QUERY I’ve had my eye on a beautiful old Italian motorboat for years, which could be acquired at a seemingly attractive price from a private individual. The catch: the boat was initially acquired through a company in the early 1990s and proof of VAT paid is not available, so the documentation is rather patchy. Questions: What is the process here? What to expect, especially in terms of any VAT possibly payable upon purchase? Should I seek professional advice and if so, who would be best suited to help me (without ending up paying a fortune!)? The EU-flagged vessel is located in the Mediterranean, citizenship is EU as well. I appreciate that giving a definitive answer may be difficult given the limited information I’ve provided here. But any help…

PERSHING GTX116 LOA: 115ft 7in (35.24m) BEAM: 25ft 4in (7.72m) ENGINES: Triple 1,800-2,000hp MAN V12s TOP SPEED: 35.5 knots PRICE: POA CONTACT: www.pershing-yacht.com Topping the bill on the Ferretti Group’s stand at this year’s Cannes boat show will be Pershing’s new GTX116. Formally classified as a sportfly, the futuristic styling and unusual layout suggest that the crossover label might eventually be the one that sticks. With a near vertical windscreen positioned much further forward than usual and a snubnosed bow like the flagship Pershing 140, the GTX116 certainly has a very different look to the 50-knot cruisers we’re used to seeing from this Italian brand – and the stern is also quite different. It features a trio of terraces that cascade down to sea level, culminating in a pair of…

Like everyone, we lost two seasons of boating through Covid and as we are on the wrong side of 70, every season counts, so we were determined to make this a memorable one. And so it turned out, but for the wrong reasons. This season’s objective was the Netherlands. Having relinquished my annual berth in Plymouth, the plan was for me and my friend Colin to cruise my boat to the Netherlands in early May where our wives and families would join us for a leisurely summer, cruising some of our favourite rivers, meers and canals, and hopefully a trip to the Frisian Islands. At the end of September we would return to take up our new berth in Ipswich Haven. Our Broom 41, Half Moon, is a great boat…

While prices seem broadly steady, it is beginning to feel like a little more choice at least is beginning to creep into the used boat market. Where 12 months ago most of the good stuff was sold before it even got as far as broker’s websites, there is now more of a selection to choose from, which is good news for buyers and for anyone writing a used boat column. What it means in particular is that we’ve been able to bring you a really interesting and varied selection for your delectation this month. Your £100,000 will put you behind the wheel of one of the best built and best-handling driving machines on the water, or at the helm of a mid-40ft Princess cruiser with home-from-home accommodation. Or perhaps you’d…

Forget stepped hulls, plumb bows and flamboyant outboard engines, this diesel-powered rip-snorting 50-knot sportscruiser is a boat to keep the Windy purist well and truly happy. Designed by Espen Oeino as the long-awaited successor to the Khamsin, the 34 Alize is the smallest Windy capable of taking a pair of D6 440s – and on our sea trial down in Poole, it gave us all the entertainment we could have wanted. Imagine ferocious pick-up at every point in the rev range. Imagine instant finger-light steering and perfectly judged balance. Imagine storming through a chunky sea, the bow cutting, the spray rails flinging water well wide and the prop flicking at the water’s surface before each disarmingly soft re-entry. It certainly has a tough act to follow but if you want…

THE LIGHTSHIP HASLAR Haslar Marina, part of the Boatfolk group, has been undergoing something of a resurgence lately. As we reported last month, the marina has just had £4 million lavished upon it and a fair chunk of that has gone into making The Lightship (formerly known as Trinity’s) one of the most desirable, must-visit restaurants on the Solent. In short, the venue’s unparalleled location is now matched by the quality of the dining experience; it raises the bar to a whole new level. Regular visitors to Haslar will know it wasn’t always thus. I can recall at least three earlier restaurant incarnations on board the marina’s lightship, Mary Mouse II. It always seemed to be a nearly place which never quite lived up to expectations. The food was acceptable…

We’re always excited to test a new boat but on this occasion we’re positively fizzing, partly because the Saxdor 270 is one of the most hotly anticipated sportsboats of the year but also because we’ve got two examples to play with. The first is powered by the entry-level 225hp Mercury V6 and costs from £89,857 inc VAT, the second by the 300hp Mercury V8 for £6,750 more. In almost every other respect they are identical, meaning we can see exactly what difference that extra 75hp makes to speed and fuel consumption and test the theory that a bigger engine can actually be more economical than a smaller one. First up though, a quick recap on why there is so much excitement surrounding this boat. Like Axopar, Saxdor is a Finnish…

The idea of an electric outboard may be nothing new but the RAD40 drive from British startup RAD Propulsion appears to be far more than just a conventional outboard leg with an electric motor bolted on top. Every single element of it has been designed from the ground up to maximise the benefits of electric power. The result is a brand new drive system that is not only much cleaner, quieter and more efficient than a petrol outboard engine but also smaller, lighter, cheaper to maintain and even more manoeuvrable. In its current 40kW guise (equivalent to around 55hp) it’s powerful enough to propel everything from a 25-knot planing RIB to a 10-knot displacement craft but with a larger 160hp RAD120 as well as a portable tiller steered RAD2…

Whether driven by science, legislation or the court of public opinion, the W spectacle of corporations scrambling onto the sustainability bandwagon has become part and parcel of life today. At the top end of the scale are the titans who drive new technology like Elon Musk, while at the low end come the virtue signallers who do little but blurt out toe-curling platitudes: “Our amazing people proudly pledge to protect the planet,” you know the kind of thing. But somewhere in the middle are the canny operators, those who seize the moment by running with here and now solutions backed up by headline-grabbing marketing. Firmly cemented into this latter category is Greenline Yachts, whose 33ft motor cruiser we review here. Greenline Yachts was created in 2008 by J&J Design, a…

The Blue Riband of the Atlantic Trophy dates back to 1890. It’s an accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest average speed. The Queen Mary held it for a while back in 1938 with an impressive average of 31.69 knots, beaten a few years later by United States at 35.59 knots. Richard Branson thought it sounded a good wheeze and commissioned a fast boat to blast across and claim the title, himself on board as a paying passenger in a bid to qualify as a passenger-carrying ship. In 1985 he set out from New York with an experienced crew in a custom-built 65ft powerboat called Virgin Atlantic Challenger and after three-and-a-half days was just 100 miles from the Bishop Rock…

1 PRESTIGE F4 MOVES UPMARKET Prestige has released renderings of its next generation flybridge model, the F4, ahead of its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Yachting Festival. Measuring 49ft 9in (15.18m) with a maximum beam of 14ft 9in (4.49m), it is similar in size to the outgoing 520 but features a new Michael Peters hull with a deeper vee and a fuller, higher bow, said to offer ‘unparalleled stability, efficiency and comfort in navigation’. However, the biggest changes are saved for the interior and exterior spaces, where a number of innovative ideas, layouts and materials are being used to try and lift Prestige further away from its mainstream market origins. This starts at the stern where twin staircases lead up from the optional hydraulic bathing platform to a cockpit…

FAIRLINE SQUADRON 58 LOA: 58ft 4in (17.80m) BEAM: 16ft 4in (4.99m) ENGINES: Twin Volvo Penta D13-900-1000s TOP SPEED: 34 knots PRICE: from £1,798,800 inc VAT CONTACT: www.fairline.com One of the few major world debuts taking place at this year’s Southampton show, the O all-new Fairline Squadron 58 is big news. The old Squadron 58 (2001-2009) is still fondly remembered as one of Fairline’s all-time greats and the new one looks every bit as promising. Fairline is describing it as ‘a Squadron like no other’ and yet there’s no mistaking the DNA. The exterior has a similar profile to the existing Squadron 50 and 68 models and it uses the same distinctive trio of aft superstructure fins that have been a trademark of the Squadron line since 1991. Elements of the…

After our friends Sabine and Rainer have flown back to Hamburg, it is also time to say goodbye to Asha and Helge and their sailing yacht Gegenwind. They will stay here a little longer since strong and, above all wrong, winds are forecasted on their route to Italy. We, on the other hand, leave Zakynthos in the opposite direction and head for Patras in the Gulf of the same name. The marina there is said to be out of service and does not answer the phone when we call them so we use an agent to book a berth in the port of Patras as well as water and electricity so that our generator (and ears) can finally take a break from its non-stop operation in Zakynthos. After a week…

You know you’re in for a special boating experience when you step through customs to find a suited and booted chauffeur waiting to whisk you straight from the airport to Split’s main harbour in a spanking new Mercedes limousine. Then again when our home for the next few days is a 50m superyacht that will be cruising languidly through some of Croatia’s prettiest islands, squeezing into the back of a 20-year-old Toyota Camry driven by a chain-smoking cabbie isn’t really going to cut it. It’s this level of service that helps to justify charter company Goolets’ claim that it offers guests the full superyacht experience in one of the world’s finest cruising destinations for a fraction of the usual price. If this sounds a little too good to be true…

Windy’s celebrated sportscruiser range is not really a range of sportscruisers at all. It’s a range of sporting weekenders, with acutely angled hulls, traditional sterndrive propulsion and slick, puckered foredecks that put the emphasis squarely on performance rather than volume. Over the years, the modern Windy fleet has of course been infiltrated by outboard options and there are also a couple of parallel “SR” open boat and Tender lines. But what Windy is famous for and what purist Windy fans continue to demand are premium Nordic weekenders that can take you across rough seas at pace with soft-riding agility and then accommodate you for a night or two when you reach your destination. The much-loved 34 Khamsin was just such a boat until it was cruelly discontinued in 2013, and…

With its graceful lines and modest trim, this boat feels quite timeless The style of Azimut’s Magellano 60 is a world away from the radical cutaways and faceted hull angles of the Fly, S and Verve lines. In place of unflinching modernity, what we have here feels far more classical and self-effacing and as the new entry point to the four-strong Magellano line, that’s exactly as it should be. There’s a clean, pared back linearity to the external form and a modest confidence to the trim that makes this boat feel quite timeless. The block-coloured hull and the weightlessness of the upper deck also lend this boat a much lower profile than you might expect of a 60ft flybridge cruiser – and at the aft end of the superstructure, like…