Boat test for the Lazzara 92 with boat pictures, boat specifications, and boat test result. Includes pricing, engine test reviews and ratings for the Lazzara 92.

Dick Lazzara loves pods—pod drives that is. As I crank his new 92-foot LSX into a high-bank turn at 31 knots, he looks at me, extracts his cigar from his mouth, and announces, "This is the future. I don't want to build another boat without pods." Sitting at the flying-bridge helm on a crisp, clear fall morning, I couldn't agree more. I never want to drive another boat without pods.

Obviously I'm emotional. I'm having what a friend of mine calls "big, dirty fun" with a yacht that's a study in contrasts: big but agile, mannerly but exciting, cushy but athletic, complex but simple. As to the latter, she's got more electronic doo-dads than Bill Gates' house yet she can be handled—including docking and undocking—by any doofus. Volvo Penta's IPS joystick control is part of the reason, but so is the boat's uncommon flexibility. With minimal bow rise throughout the range, any speed is perfectly fine with the LSX 92 (although there is a bit of a sweet spot at 2000 rpm).

Not only is there no hump, there isn't even a bulge. No trim tabs to mess with either, athwartships anomalies being adroitly addressed by electronic Trac stabilizers interfaced with the IPS. Driving is point and shoot, thanks to Volvo's elegant fly-by-wire steering. Unlike many electronic systems that feel about as connected to the boat as a video-game control, this one has the feedback of a pure mechanical system. It's also relatively quick: about 31⁄2 turns lock to lock. I say about because Lazzara programmed in "soft stops" where wheel travel ceases—unless you add muscle, in which case you can get another ten degrees or so of "rudder". That might come in handy if you suddenly come upon a lobster pot. Or if you just want to have a little big, dirty fun of your own.

My enthusiasm for pods stems from what they let this boat do; Lazzara's is as much about what they let him do, as both builder and designer. And he is a designer. At Lazzara Yachts, projects begin not on some CAD screen but in Dick's head, where crazy ideas (like a four-engine boat) and not-so-crazy ones have been rattling around for four decades. Those that make the cut migrate to paper and only then to the CAD studio.

This is relevant because Dick Lazzara and IPS—at least in its multi-engine manifestation—have evolved together. He has the instinct for weights and balances that is key to a successful multi-engine IPS installation in which so much mass is so far aft. (The 92's flat running angles are proof of his success.) He also knows lamination. One of the problems with a multiple-IPS installation—especially the four-engine kind—is that by the time you cut those big holes out of the bottom for the drives, there's not much fiberglass left to hold the boat together. What there is on the 92 is maximized by a laminate developed by Lazzara. Such savvy explains why the 92 can be stiff as a piece of rebar and not have a single full-height internal bulkhead.

The absence of bulkheads creates an uncommonly open plan in which you can nearly look through the boat from fore to aft on the main level and gaze from the lower helm down into the galley and eating area. If you're walking forward down the hallway from the lower-deck aft master (which in a straight-inboard boat would be engine room), you pass port and starboard guest staterooms. Flip a switch, and the bulkheads on either side become transparent and you can look through the hull-side windows to the water. Indeed the 92's got more glass area than an aquarium, from hull-side windows in the master to an an enormous windshield, to what's basically a solid-glass bulkhead separating the saloon from the cockpit. Despite the plethora of polished zebra wood, this is by no means one of those traditional dark, yacht-clubby interiors.

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