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I love
going fast, especially on the water. There’s no better way to latch
onto the very essence of being alive, in my opinion, than driving a lithe,
high-performance speedboat, with 1,000 horsepower in her machinery spaces,
at well over the speed limit on our nation’s interstate highways.
No better way to experience life at its most gutsy level, with moments
of sheer intensity and a heightened awareness that’s seldom encountered
in tamer pursuits.
I think
one design element in particular is critical to the true enjoyment of
going fast afloat: a good running surface. I remember feeling excitement—and
excitement only—while driving a Douglas Marine Skater Cat on Long
Island Sound at approximately 116 mph several years ago. Not long after,
while test-driving an experimental catamaran in the same size range in
Florida waters at not even half the speed of the Skater, I remember feeling
considerable anxiety and discomfort during my time behind the wheel. What
made one boat inspire confidence and the other fear? Although balance,
a proper job of rigging, expertly tuned control surfaces, and steering
hydraulics played their parts, bottom shape was the most important factor,
in my opinion.
But
there’s more to life than going fast, of course. Another thing I
love is driving a nicely designed and balanced offshore-capable boat offshore.
Especially in rousing sea conditions pretty much like the ones James Clayton,
Cranchi’s stateside rep, and I encountered recently while testing
the Cranchi Mediterraneé 50, a three-stateroom, two-head Italian
cruiser with sea-chompin’, bluewater-stompin’ handling. And
here again, I think the primary reason why the boat performed so well
offshore was a well-designed running surface.
Clayton
and I started our day routinely enough. With no chance of collecting accurate
high-speed numbers offshore given the conditions out there, we gathered
the acceleration and other data shown here in the lee of Peanut Island
in the port of Palm Beach. The results were impressive, mostly thanks
to a sporty top end of 35.8 mph and decibel readings in the cruising range
that made conversation possible most of the time.
Operational
aspects were impressive as well, thanks to a comfortable driver’s
seat that was adjustable fore and aft as well as up and down, excellent
sightlines forward, and a savvily prioritized dashboard layout I like
a lot, except for one detail. Cranchi mounts the Volvo Penta electronic
engine controls vertically, which makes centering the levers in neutral
much less intuitive than I’d like. Why not swap them out with the
two engine-start switches on the flat just to the right of the steering
wheel, so clutching the engines out of gear leaves the levers standing
straight up?
When
we got to the open Atlantic for the rough-water portion of PMY’s
testing procedure, the Gulf Stream looked like a battlefield, with four-
to six-foot seas soldiering down from the north, pushed along by winds
gusting to 25 knots or so. Nevertheless, the driving experience was marvelous,
thanks to a running surface with both complex and unique features. Although
shallow prop pockets, spray-knocking chines that extend well forward,
and lifting strakes which fade out of existence astern contribute to the
overall theme, the true genius of the 50’s underwater form seems
to lie in combining flattened aft sections that boost transverse stability
and a succession of dramatically deep, knife-like bow sections that slice
waves with a vengeance.
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