Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i Motor Boat & Yachting

I hate that old trope about the two best days of owning a boat being the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Buying a boat is exciting, I’ll grant you that, and selling it can be a relief, if only because the process itself can be quite painful. But the two best days of owning it? Not even close. I’ve owned my current boat for almost 20 years and it still gives me just as much pleasure as the day I bought it so the idea of selling it hasn’t even crossed my mind. At least it hadn’t until a couple of things set me thinking… The first was chartering a powercat in the Seychelles (see p86-93). I’ve had more than my fair share of boating…

A very interesting conversation with a boat-owning friend recently focussed the mind on the value of boat ownership. He and his wife had moved through several boats to their current circa 45-footer, but were considering selling up as they felt they weren’t getting full value from it. It was triggered by being sat in a bay wondering whether the guy on the boat half the size was really having half the fun? It resonated with me because this summer only really got going mid-June. I’d used Smuggler’s a few times prior to that but it had been sporadic. So at best I’d get the rest of June plus July and August – September boating is wiped out for me by boat shows. Let’s say 2/3 of that time is great weather.…

SAXDOR 460 GTC LOA: 46ft 0in (14.00m) BEAM: 11ft 10in (3.60m) ENGINES: Twin/triple outboards from 900-1,200hp TOP SPEED: 50 knots PRICE: Pending CONTACT: www.saxdor.com Very few modern shipyards (Axopar included) have forged a more powerful reputation for innovation than Saxdor. In fact, its capacity to create versatile spaces on modestly sized powerboats from 20 to 40ft has seen it become one of the world’s fastest growing powerboat brands, so the arrival of the all-new 46ft flagship is cause for serious excitement. It all starts with a full-beam pilothouse that can be fully enclosed for year-round boating or fully opened up, both at the sides and at the back end, for summer parties. With fold-out backrests at the big starboard dinette and the port bench, you can make brilliant use of…

LAZZARA LPC 300 LOA: 70ft 2in (21.4m) BEAM: 29ft 2 in (8.9m) ENGINES: 2 x 1,350hp D13 IPS TOP SPEED: 21 knots PRICE: From $8 million (ex VAT) Lazzara may not be the first yard to build a power catamaran with a deep enough bridge deck to house cabins across the full width of the lower deck but it is the most extreme iteration yet. That’s partly because it feels way bigger than its 70ft LOA suggests – it really does have the space of a 100ft monohull – and partly because of how all that space has been used. That starts with a fabulous full-beam beach club framed between two glazed flying buttresses providing a wonderfully sheltered space to hang out at sea level. But the real surprise is that…

Big boats are expensive things to run. Every hour at sea costs money for the fuel, crew and engine time. So perhaps it’s no surprise that most media sea trials of 80-100ft craft tend to be fairly brief affairs lasting an hour or two at most. There is only so much you can learn in that time, especially when there are a dozen other journalists fighting for their time at the helm. But every now and then we get the chance to do something altogether more involved, a proper sea passage that really shows you what a boat is capable of. This is one of them and it’s all thanks to MBY reader and contributor John Wolf, who kindly invited me to accompany him on a cross-Channel passage aboard his…

According to Espen Aalrud, the boss at Norwegian builder, Marex, the plan is very straightforward. He simply wants to “build the best family sportscruisers in the world” and few would deny that his company is on the right track. Its recent 440 flagship scooped top prize in its category at every major international awards scheme going, including Best of Boats, the European Powerboat of the Year and our very own MBY Awards. And while that presents the new 390 with a very tough act to live up to, the early signs are almost absurdly good… OUTDOOR OPTIONS We’re told that during the ten days of the Cannes Yachting Festival, Marex sold 22 of these new 390s and it’s not hard to see why. For a start, it adopts much the…

The idea of a joystick control is nothing new, everyone from Volvo Penta to Mercury has been doing it for years, but Yamaha has taken it one step further; its latest Helm Master EX system is available with a wireless remote controller. Yes, you read that right the first time, you can now drive the boat from anywhere on board using something that looks like a hand-held gaming device. Need to keep an eye on the stern while backing into a tight berth? No problem, take the remote control with you to the cockpit, ease the tiny joystick back with your thumb, keep the bow in check with a quick push or pull of your forefinger on the front-mounted slider and before you know it you’re safely in your berth.…

After more than 40 years of marriage, you get used to doing things together. So much so that when you go solo, there’s always a bit of trepidation. So it was that during the August Bank Holiday, when my wife was on a two-week Baltic cruise with her sister and the harvest on the farm was all done and dusted, I decided on a short boys’ trip with Otto, our daughter’s dog, as first mate. PLAN V REALITY I had a romantic notion of dropping anchor in a remote cove in the style of Rick Channon, fellow MBY “Our Boats” writer and Mylor local. The wind was forecast to be in the north, which is offshore in Falmouth Bay, but when I stuck my nose out past St Anthony light,…

We’ve visited a few beachside bars over the years, strictly in the name of research, but none have yet matched the Café des Arts in Anse Volbert, Praslin. Stumbled across (and later out of) by editor Hugo during a week-long charter in the Seychelles aboard a Moorings 403 powercat, it has all the key ingredients of a perfect beach bar: cold beer, fresh fruit cocktails, spotless white sand, safe anchoring a short tender ride away, a stunning view and a delicious menu of locally caught seafood. Even his younger, better looking, more widely travelled brother and sister-in-law seem to approve! SEE MORE mby.com/bigpic…

THE CROOKED BARN OULTON Hotel restaurants aren’t normally my thing, so when I booked a table for two at The Crooked Barn, Oulton, I have to confess I wasn’t actually aware the eatery was part of a larger whole. But it is, for the Crooked Barn is the feature restaurant of the Ivy House Country Hotel, a highly regarded establishment set in beautiful grounds a stone’s throw from Tingdene’s Broadlands Marina. The restaurant had been recommended to us by locals and its proximity to the marina sealed the deal. On arrival we initially thought we’d taken a wrong turn, for if there is a sign to the restaurant we missed it and ended up prowling around the hotel car park instead. With nothing to go on we decided to ask…

You almost have to force yourself to dismiss what you know about modern market trends when you come across a boat like this. Forget volume. Forget expandable decks. Forget crowd-pleasing toys. What we have instead is something far simpler and more purposeful. A clean, slippery, stepped hull with a fine entry and a subtle bow flare; a gently swept sheerline lined with smooth teak rails; and an elegant open transom with a beefy inboard engine tucked out of sight beneath the deck. Throw in some duck-egg blue gelcoat, some stitched leather furniture, an empty teak foredeck and some gleaming steel accents and you have a surefire recipe for a fantastic looking boat. But of course, that’s nothing new to Cormate. For a long time, this race-derived Norwegian brand has been…

The finalists for the 2026 Motor Boat of the Year Awards have been revealed. Featuring boats from as far afield as China, Turkey, Finland and Ukraine as well as Europe and the UK, it looks like being one of the strongest shortlists ever assembled. In accordance with our strict set of criteria all the boats have been thoroughly sea trialled by Motor Boat & Yachting’s team of judges and grouped together into categories according to size and type from sub-30ft sportboats up to custom yachts of 80ft or more. Once again the awards are being championed by headline sponsor Sleipner, world leaders in improving comfort at sea, with individual category sponsorship from Garmin, Lumishore, JL Audio and Marinedi. The winners will be revealed on the evening of Tuesday 20 January…

Remind me which boat you were on?” asked the lady at the Moorings’ check-in counter when I returned the keys for our charter boat. “Bea, the 403 Powercat,” I replied, slightly surprised that she hadn’t recognised me from our enthusiastic welcome meeting the week before. “Oh my goodness!” she giggled, breaking into a huge Seychellois smile. “You look so….different!” It was the biggest compliment she could have paid me. When I’d arrived the previous week, straight from a delayed overnight flight, I was tired, pallid and bearing the unmistakable gloom of a British boat owner facing the onset of winter. After six days of sun, sea and spectacular cruising in some of the most glorious surroundings our planet has to offer, I felt (and clearly looked) like a different person.…

Boating inland on rivers and canals brings its own special set of circumstances that need extra consideration when afloat. Canals are generally man-made and have little or no water flow, as any level changes are done with locks. Rivers always have a flow of water downstream from the river head to where they either join another river or become tidal. Again, locks are used to ease the passage of boats along stretches of river when the water level change is too great. These are usually accompanied by a weir and sluices to control the level and flow of the navigable river. When boating inland, there are some special considerations that you need to take into account and that may affect your choice of vessel. The boat we used for this…

Does the idea of chugging through bucolic rural idylls at the stately pace of 4 knots while your guests sip a glass of fizz appeal? Then what better way to realise your dream than by investing in a timeless river cruiser? And guess what – Bray Marine Sales might have just the thing for you: a 2008 Linssen Grand Sturdy 29.9 Sedan situated at Harleyford Marina, priced at £129,000. Brimming with Dutch boat builder Linssen’s knowledge and experience of what makes a great little river cruiser, the 29.9 Sedan sits alongside its Aft Cabin stablemate at the smaller end of the renowned Grand Sturdy 9-series. With their all-steel construction and a hefty rope rubbing strake (rubber in the case of the Nordic variant), these boats are called Grand Sturdy for…

1 NEW PRINCESS F54 A brand new F54 is set to replace the six-year-old F50 in January 2027. Now that the F45 has been discontinued, the new craft will become the entry-level model in Princess’s flybridge range. As the name suggests it is a couple of feet longer than the outgoing F50 but crucially it’s also eight inches wider in the beam, creating more internal volume. This ensures all the cabins and day spaces will feel significantly larger, enabling additional features and, for the first time on this size of Princess, the option of a flybridge hardtop. There is no major departure from the usual evolutionary Princess design path but the two-pronged shape of the hull window profiling is new and it appears to have quite a bit more glazing…

NEW BROOM? I have owned a 1999 Bayliner 3055 for over 6 years, using it mostly at weekends around the Solent area with occasional longer trips to Dorset and Kent. This summer, having passed the day-to-day running of my business to my general manager, we had our first bigger trip over to the Channel Islands and St Malo, and this has wetted our appetite to do more – probably further along the French coast but also up to the Netherlands and into the canals. Unfortunately, it also highlighted that the Bayliner isn’t great for these longer trips. The main issue is fuel cost. Running two 220hp petrol engines is expensive. And despite being beamy, it’s quite cramped for living onboard. So we are looking at getting something a little bigger…

Surrounded on all sides at the recent Cannes show by the wild excesses of modern motor yacht design, Azimut’s big new flybridge boat stood out for its no-nonsense air, its snubbed bow more mission statement than fashion statement. An absence of unnecessary curvature and those black-glazed horizontals lend a seriousness of purpose to the Fly 82’s profile that is almost military, as if to remind us that for all the Avigliana shipyard’s Seadecks and Magellanos and S-boats, flybridge yachts are the core of the business, as they have been at Azimut for more than 50 years. Fads and fashions come and go, but this matters. Not getting it right is not an option. Any sense of seriousness ebbs away as you get closer, however, for at heart the 82 is…

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EVOY VITA BREEZE G2 120+ HP INBOARD European giant of electric propulsion, Evoy Vita, has teamed up with Montreal-based battery specialist, Taiga, to deliver an uprated second-generation Evoy Breeze 120+ hp electric inboard system. Designed for boats from 15 to 50ft, the new system combines Evoy’s established inboard architecture with battery technology that has already been proven in more than 1,500 jet skis and snowmobiles. The aim of that approach is a lighter, more powerful, faster-charging system with better endurance and a lower price, and the figures certainly look good. The compact 90kW (continuous)/137 kW (peak) inboard motor (equivalent to 120hp and 185hp respectively) pairs with twin 24 kWh Taiga NMC battery packs, which can be recharged from 10% to 80% in just 21 minutes. On an efficient hull in…

A ton up, 100 bags of sand, a brick, 100K, call it what you will, £100,000 is a chunk of money to spend on a used boat even if, these days, it barely buys an outboard powered sportscuddy on the new boat market. Fortunately, it still buys you an awful lot of secondhand boat, especially if you’re prepared to be a little brave, or just very hands-on and practical. You can burn up the coast in a sleek muscle boat in the form of the evergreen British-built Sunseeker Superhawk 34. Or you could buy a stylish sports cruiser with a surprisingly large interior in the form of a Fairline Targa 39. Live the 1980s dream aboard a 50ft Fairline, the flagship of the range back in 1989 when this one was…

FPB 83 WIND HORSE COOL RATING GENUINELY ANTARCTIC We’ve debated on these pages before what makes a boat cool. History, filmography and style can all make a boat cool, but so can a single-minded (and successful) pursuit of a specific performance – it might be speed, it might be range or it might, as in this case, simply be the ability to go out and keep going, right around the globe. To put some numbers on that, Wind Horse clocked up 37,000 nautical miles in the first four years of her life in the hands of owners Steve and Linda Dashew. In fact, Wind Horse was conceived and designed by the couple specifically for long-range all-weather cruising. Made from aluminium, she is 83ft long and weighs 41 tonnes. But she’s…