Boat test for the 2006 Fairline Squadron 66 with boat pictures, boat specifications, and boat test results. Includes pricing, videos, engine test reviews, and ratings for the 2006 Fairline Squadron 66.

When a PMY editor tests a boat, he or she is supposed to approach it with an open, unbiased mind. Of course, this is impossible. Being human, we can't avoid preconceptions. Every time we step aboard, we take along our notebooks, measuring tapes, inclinometers, dB meters—and yes, our baggage, which we try our best to ignore.

My wring-out of the Fairline 66 Squadron was like that. Before I boarded her in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I'd been aboard her in Southampton, England, and was impressed by her luxurious interior. Before that, I'd driven a number of Fairlines, including the cushy 43 Phantom PMY had for a summer. Before that I'd been to the factory in Oundle, England, and seen how Fairline lays up its hulls and finishes its joinery.

But a different impression resulted from a conversation I had with Fairline product manager Alan Masters at the 2006 Miami International Boat Show. Learning I was about to test the boat he helped create, he offered to send me Fairline's own test results: speeds, fuel consumption, and sound readings. This is rare. If I ever get factory numbers, it's usually after my test, and usually because someone wasn't entirely satisfied with the outcome. When the document arrived and I realized I'd be at the wheel of a luxurious, 80,000-pounder that topped out around 38 knots, I had a feeling my experience would be different from all the others.

As it turned out, the top speed I got on test day was about 2 knots shy of what Masters and his team got during their evaluation, and yet I was anything but chagrined. Our 66 planed without hesitation, never pounded on any heading, knocked down every hint of spray, and heeled into full-throttle turns like a 30-foot sportboat. Quiet and comfortable, she was also brutally effective at squashing the three-footers like so much roadkill. This hull is so good at slicing and dicing, in fact, you forget you've got four staterooms and three heads underneath you. No wonder that despite her standard two-berth crew quarters abaft the engine room—but without direct access to it—the 66 was designed to be run by a couple.

Credit for all those knots goes partly to optional 1,550-hp Caterpillar C30s, which of course don't come cheap: 175 gph at full roar. But there's another cost: They're big—even for an engine room of this size. You must lay over them to add coolant to the outboard reservoirs, the air-conditioning compressors are buried beneath them in the forward corners, and I never saw the raw-water pumps, much less reached them, because the engines are so close to the forward bulkhead. I liked the engine-mounted auxiliary instrument panels, but they're at thigh level, and with just over a foot between the engines, you can't even squat down to read them.

PAGES:

1

2