Motor Boat & Yachting

One of our subscribers emailed me the other day to say that he couldn’t work out whether we were exhorting readers to go slow and save fuel, or to bolt an array of 600hp Mercury V12s onto the transom, or to fill their boats with rechargeable batteries and hope they don’t run out of power whilst trying to negotiate an ebb tide in the Bristol Channel. It’s a fair question, given that we have featured boats using all of these different technologies in recent months, but the simple answer is that we are not trying to persuade anyone to adopt any particular solution, we are simply reflecting what the market has to offer and advising on the pros and cons of each of them. This issue is no different; we’re reporting on…

We’d feasted on coffee and croissants before slipping away from our breakfast berth. On the way out, we’d seen the King of Sweden slide past in his own original J Craft. And having wound our way through a ‘Who’s Who’ of iconic superyachts, we set about enjoying a boat that very few people in the world will ever have the chance to drive. Conjured into existence at a rate of two per year by a team of craftsmen in the wilds of Sweden, this outrageous 42ft plaything is the embodiment of calibre over commerce. Each boat is the product of more than 8,000 painstaking man hours and each is intimately known to the people who built it. This is the J Craft Torpedo – an exclusive Med-style runabout with the power…

1 DASHING NEW DELTA Delta Carbon Yachts has released the first renderings of its sportiest boat yet – a fully enclosed 50-knot sportscruiser with some of the sharpest lines afloat. The new 48 Coupé measures just over 49ft long and, as with the rest of the Swedish yard’s range, features an all carbon hull and deck to keep the weight down and improve performance and fuel efficiency. Despite a generous 13ft beam, the new model weighs just seven tonnes, roughly half the weight of a Princess V50, so even when it’s powered by the same 440hp Volvo D6 engines (albeit on sterndrives rather than IPS pods), it should reach a top speed of 44 knots in comparison to the British boat’s 31-knot maximum. While Delta hasn’t yet released any fuel burn rates,…

Last year’s autumn boat shows felt like a tentative return to normal. This year however, it was full steam ahead! First Cannes, perhaps my favourite show. Fairline was exhibiting its fabulous looking and wonderfully detailed new Phantom 65, plus the new F//Line 33 alternative seating layout, which turns a good boat into a near perfect one. The new Cranchi Sessantasette 67 was a wow, the Majesty 120 superyacht was Gulf Craft doing what it does best, and the M48 catamaran was Prestige doing what it has never done before. I toured a 110ft 40-knot(!) Sanlorenzo, Grand Banks’ new 85, and a rather lovely Extra Yachts X96 Triplex. Twenty-two films in the can and it was home for an intensive week of editing before… Southampton. Princess was showing off its new F65, proving,…

THE BOATYARD PEEL, ISLE OF MAN Anyone who has ever visited the Isle of Man – be it for the TT races, the Snaefell Mountain Railway or the magnificent Laxey Wheel – will A know what a magical place it is. As a measure of its appeal, the island attracts around 1,500 visiting boats a year, split between Europeans travelling north, Scandinavians travelling south and Welsh, Irish, English and Scottish boaters making the most of this jewel on their doorstep. The island has two marinas; Douglas on the east coast, which accounts for around two thirds of the visitors, and, to the west, the smaller Peel Harbour where The Boatyard, this month’s chosen restaurant, occupies a prime position on the quayside. Peel is a busy, traditional working port where visiting pleasure boats sit…

SUNSEEKER SUPERHAWK 55 LOA 56ft 10in (17.32m) BEAM 16ft 1in (4.90m) ENGINES Twin 725hp Volvo Penta IPS-950 TOP SPEED 38 knots PRICE from £1.425m ex VAT CONTACT www.sunseeker.com Sunseeker’s all-new Superhawk 55 might be the smallest boat on this year’s Düsseldorf stand but it’s set to make quite an impact. With long, raked windows, both on the hull sides and in the coachroof, this strikingly innovative open-top day boat looks wonderfully dynamic. And because the coachroof windows are integrated at eye-level, it ought to deliver great views over the gunwales from the lower saloon, as well as letting in extra light down below. Rather cleverly, Sunseeker has arranged the main deck around a triple helm station on the centreline, with a cockpit wet bar built into the trailing edge of the three offshore…