Boat test for the 2006 Ocean 42 Super Sport with boat pictures, boat specifications, and boat test results. Includes pricing, videos, engine test reviews, and ratings for the 2006 Ocean 42 Super Sport.

Ocean Yachts mounts a big, standard Shakespeare VHF antenna on the starboard flying bridge cowling of the new 42 Super Sport, and when folded down to accommodate bridges and other low-slung obstacles, the darn thing hangs over the transom a good ways and tends to slightly complicate close-quarters maneuvering. Not that I’m complaining. Extra antenna altitude is generally good since it extends radio range, a biggie on vessels built to fish well offshore. But adding a five-foot skewer to the rear of a 42-footer when wiggle room forward is cut short by a bristling array of pulpits certainly puts a telling, if exciting, finishing touch to a sea trial.

Our Super Sport performed admirably, though. In fact, with Ed Morris of Florida Yacht Sales, Ocean’s dealer in St. Petersburg, Florida, relaxing in the copilot’s seat, which he’d rotated aft to watchdog the antenna, I smoothly twin-screwed the 42 in the little basin behind the dealership’s offices and backed her into her slip with about as much fanfare as a yawn would warrant.

Two factors contributed to this. First up came the wide, centerline notch molded into the upper edge of the cowling that fronts the flying bridge—it made it easy for a 5’11” guy like me to keep tabs on the 42’s pulpit while standing at the steering console. And then there was the 42’s extra-responsive propulsion system—a nifty combo of deep gears, big props, torquey diesel horsepower, and smooth but precisely detented Hynautic hydraulic engine controls. When teamed up with the billfish-chasing panache Ocean’s famous for, it facilitated backing the boat down Palm Beach-style, with my hands behind my back, my butt against the console, and my fingers effortlessly bump-ing the clutches into and out of gear. Never had to touch the throttles once!

Morris was as happy with the boat as I was. The wring-out we’d just returned from had gone as mellifluously as our maneuvering, despite the profusion of confused six- to eight-foot seas then roughing up the Gulf of Mexico. We’d started the morning on the comparatively flat water of nearby Boca Ciega Bay, where I’d recorded speed, acceleration, and other readings (and done a little fishing with the fly rod I’d taken along for the pure livin’ hell of it). Then we’d headed offshore.

Of course, conditions out there were too rough to run wide-open throttle, but I managed to do a little hard-charging anyway. In fact, while outbound in Pass-A-Grille channel, I went so far as to drop the boat into an eight-foot hole at something like 26 mph, a bone-jarring move that prompted me to ease off on the throttles and Morris to emit a faint gasp. We soon discovered, however, that the 42 could deal quite nicely with the closely spaced, steep mess of seas prevailing once I’d dialed her throttles down into the 1500-rpm range, a setting that engendered speeds between 16 and 18 mph.

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