A Match made in heaven
Even after five seasons, John Wolf’s love affair with his Fairline Squadron 78 shows no sign of cooling
Back in 2011, Boats.co.uk and Fairline persuaded me to order a Squadron 78, which performed beautifully. I loved Fairline’s semi-custom build offer, and it became slightly addictive. After cruising the new boat for just one season, I knew what worked well and what I should have done better, so I ordered another one, intending to push Fairline’s customisation to a new high watermark. They agreed, to the extent that they even changed the hull mould to add more windows.
Match turned out so well that 2018 will be my sixth season cruising her. Normally at five years I would change the boat, but I am going to keep Match until I find something I like better. Current 24m boats have many great features but lack some things that matter to me. Examples are longrange fuel tanks ( Match has 7,300 litres), professionally equipped galleys, stairs from fly helm to galley, effective flybridge windscreens, really good blackwater kit, swim platforms with fixed and hi-lo parts, and patio doors positioned for a large aft cockpit, even at the expense of a slightly smaller saloon.
So rather than buying a new boat, I have tinkered with various upgrades instead. When Garmin launched firmware for their MFD screens to operate two radars and their new broadband Fantom series, I ordered a second radar. It is a radome sitting above the open array and it’s nice to have the high power and fine resolution of the latter, and the clever features of broadband including colour-coded targets to tell me whether they are coming towards or going away from me. And of course losing radar at night would be a big deal, so a backup is comforting.
Then I had to change Match’s anchor. The Delta anchor supplied with the boat never disappointed but I bent it badly in a rocky seabed off Corsica. Lots of new-style anchors have emerged in recent years, so I thought I should try one. I liked the Ultra anchor on a boat I chartered in Croatia, and it is certainly the most beautiful of the latest generation, so I fitted a 60kg Ultra. I’ve been pleased with it, but I was with the Delta too.
Another upgrade was a new echo sounder. The Med is deep: in the Solent and English Channel, you almost never see 100m but in the Med, you pass that within a mile of leaving port and standard echo sounders stop working at around that depth. So I fitted a Garmin GSD 26 CHIRP sounder, 3kw with two enormous transducers. I can now see 2,000m! Not life changing, but a nice toy and occasionally I think I can see whales, though they might just be shadows.
The one failure on Match is the silver wrap on the hardtop. It looked great when new in 2015, but it cannot cope with the sun. It went streaky and dull within a couple of seasons and now looks a mess. Grapefruit Graphics, who fitted it, are working out a proposal but I think it will peel off to reveal the original white gelcoat underneath and I’ll just rewrap the sharkfins. Despite the great look of new vinyl wrap, I wouldn’t recommend it for a boat in the sun.
That’s small beer in the context of running a boat like this. Match has proved herself to be outstanding, and while I’ll look at new 24m offerings at boat shows, I somehow think I’ll hang on to her for a bit longer. John Wolf