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Ever
notice certain inconsistencies in yourself? Like how you’re totally
into economical, highly engineered, politically correct automobiles these
days—I mean, you own one or two, or even three—yet there’s
still a nifty chunk of your autonomic nervous system that dries your mouth
out and slips your ticker into overdrive every time you get within a country
mile of a refurbished, revitalized, gas-guzzling muscle car from the “Born
to Be Wild” era? You know, like a Dodge Coronet Super Bee with a
426 Hemi, four speeds on deck, and two hulking, four-barrel carburetors.
A recent
sea trial of Cantieri di Sarnico’s new Maxim 55 brought me eyeball
to eyeball with the same kind of inconsistency in myself. While I’m
indeed “a trawler guy,” with a mighty love for displacement
speeds and all their attendant green-hued virtues, from fuel economy to
easy-ridin’ serenity, there’s a significant part of my personal
makeup that loves the endorphin-pumping rush I get from driving big, bodacious
conveyances fast.
And
the Maxim is indeed big, bodacious, and thrillingly fast. In fact, at
one point, while throttling the 17-tonner straight across a succession
of four- to six-foot head seas off Fort Lauderdale, I was constrained
to jack my jaws above the windshield, deeply inhale the salt-laden air
roaring past at a solid 40 knots, and gleefully yell, “Whoooooooooeeeeeee!”
Of course,
speed usually comes at a price. And as you peruse the acceleration curve
shown here, you’ll see our Maxim mixed top-end alacrity with significant
lag time coming out of the hole. There are two reasons for this, I believe.
First, the boat’s ZF transmissions turn a top-speed-enhancing 1.757:1
gear ratio—this tends to consume a little extra bottom-end torque
during spool-up, at least by comparison with the more common 2:1 ratio
for this size and type of boat. And second, I’d say our 1,050-hp
MAN diesels needed a little tweaking. Why? Throttling up quickly from
dead idle during our trials engendered virtually no black exhaust smoke,
a highly irregular—albeit squeaky-clean—phenomenon, even for
electronic engines. What this indicates to me is that, via a simple mechanical
adjustment on each engine, a more muscular balance could be struck between
low emissions and out-of-the-hole performance. I ran this observation
past a MAN representative, and he agreed.
At any
rate, while the resulting 10 or so seconds required to get the test boat
fully up and running felt a bit drawn-out, the payoff—an average
top speed of 48.2 mph and near soot-free operation—seemed to compensate,
especially when teamed up with some related factors.
Seakeeping,
for instance. To begin with, the running surface of the Maxim is atypical
of the high-speed, express-type, big-boat genre—her transom deadrise
is a mere eight degrees. The upside of such flatness is increased lift
and planing efficiency. The downside? The potential for a boisterous ride,
something I did not personally observe on test day, perhaps because sea
conditions were just a tad less than boisterous. What I did observe, however,
was impressive. The Maxim handled the Atlantic’s four- to six-footers
like a big-hearted, easy-riding thoroughbred, cornering smoothly if widely,
planing without obfuscating visibility with bow rise and tracking like
a train whether going up-sea, down-sea, or even side-sea.
The
helm is another important factor. Our Maxim was equipped with smooth,
optional Mathers MicroCommander electronic controls, fingertip-sensitive
Italian BCS steering hydraulics, easy-to-see analog VDO instruments, and
an ergonomically savvy ordering of dashboard, helm seat, and windshield.
All these elements combined to instill a sense of calm and control in
me, the driver. Even at wide-open throttle I felt more like I was presiding
over a comfy snooze cruise than a high-speed romp-and-stomp across the
high seas.
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