Yes, it’s that time of year again when all the invoices for the boat thunder in together, leaving me impecunious and bereft. But it’s worth taking you for a shallow dive into the budget, as current running costs are always interesting. If you are thi

BUCKLER’S HARD With the many gastronomic pleasures we have the French to thank for, perhaps one of the more unexpected is the Master Builder’s House in Buckler’s Hard. For if the grand plan of John, second Duke of Montagu, had gone ahead, this idylli

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When I was at school back in the 1980s, one of my favourite publications was Autotrader. Since the internet didn’t exist (it was being invented at the time), Autotrader was the standard way to sell a used car and was therefore absolutely chock full o

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Well-known marine canopy and exterior upholstery manufacturer Sunbrella has released a new swatch of fabrics for this year, imaginatively titling it the ‘2024 Marine Collection’. The new collection comprises more than 200 textiles designed to cater t

Riva’s marketing people have had so much fun over the years thinking up names for new models that it was only a matter of time before they came up with this one. The Diva is certainly an attention-grabbing performer, as boldly styled as anything in t

After a year and a half with my Axopar 22, its first 130 engine hours have been made up entirely of short hops. They’ve tended to involve either trips to restaurants along the Florida Intracoastal or 12-mile jaunts to the islands of Lake Erie. But wh

LOA: 52ft 2in (15.90m) BEAM: 25ft 6in (7.76m) ENGINES: twin Volvo Penta D6 480s TOP SPEED: 22 knots PRICE: pending CONTACT: www.aquilaboats.com Chinese-American powercat specialist, Aquila, is back with a 50-footer that takes the brand’s well regarde

Top marks to British adventure brand Arksen for coordinating this Red Arrows-style fly-by of its newly launched 85 Explorer with a pair of its smaller Adventure models. They all share a common ethos and hulls made of tough, light and easily recyclabl

When cold 30-knot winds roll in unchecked from the east, Essex can be a sobering place to go boating. It was with good reason then that the guys at boats.co.uk decided to confine our drive of the new Parker Sorrento to a more placid test zone, tucked

Now that it finally feels like the boating season has arrived after one of the longest, wettest winters any of us can remember, it’s a good time to remind you all that many of the most interesting stories in the magazine are written by readers. I’ve

Boaters can sometimes be complacent about issues we probably ought to be confronting. That’s certainly true in my case, when I noticed a dribble of oil in the forward bilge of our Fairline Targa 34. A couple of years earlier, there had been a lot of

COOL RATING PIERCINGLY COLD The biggest obstacle to high-speed offshore boating is the topography. Conventional wisdom suggests that the route to high speed is to use hydrodynamic lift to skim the boat across the surface; the planing hull. And it wor

STROMNESS, ORKNEY TO BERWICK-UPON-TWEED 215NM Having already covered over 1,500 miles in nine days from Yorkshire to the Orkneys via Dover, Land’s End, Dublin and Cape Wrath, we now had just 330 miles and two days to complete my circumnavigation of t

LOA: 49ft 1in (14.95m) BEAM: 15ft 6in (4.72m) ENGINES: from two 435hp inboards to five 500hp outboards TOP SPEED: 87 knots PRICE: POA CONTACT: www.technohull.com Technohull’s new flagship is everything fans of the Greek brand would want it to be. As

I bought my main boat, a Windy Bora 40, in 2001. It’s a fabulous craft for everything from family outings to week-long cruises that I still own and use regularly. However, back in 2006, when our four children were all in their late teens and early tw

LOA: 78ft 8in (23.98m) BEAM: 19ft 0in (5.8m) ENGINES: Triple 1,000hp Volvo IPS1350 TOP SPEED: 34 knots PRICE: From POA CONTACT: www.pershing-yacht.com Hot on the heels of last year’s GTX116 comes this second model in the GTX range of Sports Utility Y

Jasper Smith’s formative years were full of outdoor adventure; of climbing, mountaineering and sailing, and while his professional background would eventually anchor itself in the software business, the older he got, the keener he became to build tan

LOA: 91ft 0in (27.75m) BEAM: 29ft 6in (9.75m) ENGINES: Twin MTU 16V 2000s with Arneson surface drives TOP SPEED: 40+ knots PRICE: POA CONTACT: www.otam.it While Otam’s “Custom” range doesn’t actually begin until the 100ft mark, the new flagship of it

Nearly 30 years ago Mark Richards, Australian yachtsman and boatbuilder, set up Palm Beach Yachts. He named the company after a favourite spot just to the north of Sydney, where he grew up and learned to sail. A lot of water has flowed under the brid

IN BUILD: 2014 – CURRENT PRICE RANGE: £530,000 – £1,300,000 Azimut’s 50 Flybridge is one of those boats that really ought to come with a health warning. After all, should one of these ‘eleganti yacht a motore’ sashay by in a blur of sensuous Italian

watching Howard’s Way on a Sunday evening as a teenager, I always saw boating as a pastime of the super wealthy, but I loved the sea and wanted in. My route to the water was meant to be the Royal Navy when I was 16 but after narrowly failing my final

Being out in any form of restricted visibility, due to heavy rain, snow, mist or fog, is a major concern to all boat users because three things immediately come into play. First – as soon as you are navigating in or near an area where the visibility

WORTH OVER £49 …AND RECEIVE FREE BOOMPOD SPORTSPODS OCEAN EARBUDS† Totally wireless earphones built for those hooked on sport! Ergonomically crafted for comfort and stability, the overear hooks give extra security for the most extreme sports, workout

Before you think we’ve lost the plot and suddenly started testing 55m superyachts we should probably explain that the Sunseeker Ocean 182 is not 182ft long. It’s not even close. Its actual LOA is 88ft 11in – exactly the same as the Sunseeker Ocean 90

Princess has released details of an all-new F58 flybridge that slots into the range between the F55 and the F65. Quite a bit bigger, better equipped and more luxurious than the F55, it promises to bring new levels of sophistication to this sector of

what would be your ideal holiday if you lived in a country so cold it had 40 different words for snow? How about sunbathing on the deck of a brand new Princess Y80 while a smiling crew member topped up your gin and tonic? It would certainly be very n