BUYING A USED... FAIRLINE TARGA 50 GT
IN BUILD 2011 TO 2015 PRICE RANGE £350,000 - £500,000
STAR QUALITY: FABULOUS OWNER’S CABIN
Outside the world of exotic one-off design, it’s nigh-on impossible for designers of mainstream production powerboats to stray far beyond the norms and fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of a new boat. But in 2011, Fairline’s designers did just that. In doing so they were able to conjure a 50-foot sportscruiser that was genuinely different.
Back then, sizeable tenders had become a must-have, and high-low bathing platforms were all the rage, typically poking out four or five feet beyond the boat proper.
Fairline’s designers reimagined that orthodox arrangement, and instead engineered an integral tender launch mechanism that cantilevered out from its flush location, hidden within the platform. That allowed Fairline to extend the hull back to the boat’s rearmost extremity. The effect was transformational – Fairline’s designers suddenly had four or five feet of extra boat to play with.
Which leads us to four space-related reasons why a secondhand 50GT might be your used sportscruiser of choice. For a 50-footer, the 50GT’S crew cabin is terrific, easy to access, and with its small toilet and handbasin, far more spacious than the lazarette on, say, a Princess V52.
Nor has this compartment stolen any
space from the engineroom, which is easy to move around in – not a place where you’ll be obliged to employ a chimpanzee to carry out the servicing or daily checks. If the high cost of mooring pains you, it’s worth remembering that, because there’s no high-low platform, you would only be paying for a few inches over 50ft, whereas competing three-cabin sportscruisers with similar accommodation and space – even the hugely voluminous craft built today – are likely to be closer to 54ft.
Still, even if the appealing triumvirate of cheap mooring, a great crew cabin, plus a spacious engineroom doesn’t swing it for you, the 50GT’S trump card possibly will. In defiance of early 20th century 50ft-plus sportscruiser convention, Fairline sited the master en-suite cabin forward instead of amidships. The result is a fabulous owner’s cabin that most 58ft sportscruisers would be hard pressed to emulate. The joy is in the combination of single-level floor space to spare, and terrific headroom all around the cabin. Sure, competing midships cabins offered similar space, but the floor was invariably arranged on two or three annoyingly trippy levels. And while there was invariably a strip of reasonable headroom running somewhere alongside the bed, you certainly would not get the 50GT’S 6ft 4in (1.93m) across the full width of the cabin. Regardless of the exact dimensions, the 50GT’S master cabin feels way roomier than the midships alternative.
DECISION TIME
As Fairline’s current head of design Justin explains: “There were no changes to the layout or upgrades of any note during the five-year lifetime of the boat’s manufacture.” So there will be no need to agonise over the re-saleability of different versions of the 50GT; the standard issue three-cabin, twin heads, galley-up arrangement is the only incarnation. The gamut of hull colours – white, steel blue and sable – might influence you, but with vinyl wrapping now so easy to apply and reasonably priced, it’s a minor consideration at worst.
There were four big ticket optional extras which could be pivotal. Even though most of us with a tender or a love of watersports would consider it crucial to the workings of the 50GT, the ingenious hydraulic tender launch system was still a £20,000 optional extra. Fairline engineered a useful powered cockpit sunshade which was very neatly integrated into the rear edge of the hardtop, but some of the original owners may have baulked at its £14,000 cost.
Another £12,000 would have bought the electrically powered dropside windows that lie alongside the galley and the saloon settee (just the smaller lower oblongs at countertop level, not the main windows). When I first tested this boat on a warm breezy day in May 2011, I was
startled to find just how much difference they made to the flow of air through the saloon, even with the sunroof open. The crew cabin was an extra too, and it included the transformative glazing running across the transom. With so few secondhand boats of any type currently on the market, we can’t be 100% sure, but it does seem that most 50GT owners did splash out on at least the tender launch, the sunshade, the crew cabin and aircon.
Two great things that all 50GT owners acquire as standard is a fabulous helm position and an extremely free-flowing cockpit. It’s become de rigueur on many boats to squeeze in another small seating area forward, alongside the helm. Some buyers might consider the far slimmer chaise longue that Fairline has installed instead to be a bit idiosyncratic, but the result is a terrific and unusually wide dash and helm position with space to spare for all manner of instrumentation. Likewise, in the cockpit Fairline traded some seating for a second entrance to the bathing platform, and the result is a cockpit which never experiences a jam, even when it’s teeming with people. Fairline offered the usual dizzying array of optional extras (I counted 60, although some of these were either/or choices) but very few of these less significant extras could not be retrofitted, so they would be less likely to inform the buying process.
Engines are always a key consideration, and there were two principal choices. With the 670hp Volvo D11 on our original test boat, 50% fuel and water, plus all the extras that Fairline could conceivably cram onto it, I achieved a two-way average top speed of 32.7 knots. That compares with Fairline’s trustworthy test figure of 32.4 knots, achieved with 100% fuel and water plus a tender, suggesting that the shaft drive 50GT can handle additional load very well.
So expect 30 knots with the smaller 575hp Volvo D9. Fairline originally offered a 715hp 12-litre CAT C12 version, but none of the 17 boats built between 2011 and 2015 had these more powerful engines fitted.
COMFORT AND JOY
Tony Green bought the boat you see here, secondhand in September 2016. “So many sportscruisers have the galley downstairs, but it’s so much more sociable to have the galley upstairs in the saloon. We’ve had a dozen people up here in the cockpit and the saloon – you can even barbecue in the cockpit!” enthused Tony. Also, the clear-cut separation, with private sleeping accommodation downstairs and comfortable socialising upstairs, was clearly a deal clincher for Tony.
With family boating in mind, the 50GT’S terrific accommodation was key: “We even kept the boat in St Catherine’s for a while and used it as a London crash pad,” he explains.
Tony came to the 50GT via a Sealine SC42,
and by his own admission he’s a fair-weather boater, so his 50GT hasn’t been beaten to death by bad weather. He does test some of the key items when he first climbs on board. “All the big complicated bits still work fine, including the tender launch system and the passarelle and the cockpit sunshade,” he says.
Grant and Helen Charlton also bought their 50GT secondhand. “We wanted a good solid sportscruiser that we could use as a summer holiday home in Mallorca. We didn’t buy our 50GT just because of its forward cabin, but it was the feature that blew our minds – it made all the difference,” declares Grant.
According to Helen, “Even though the bed is huge, there’s so much room that we can both wander around the cabin without getting in each other’s way.” On the subject of the cockpit seating, Helen accepts that it’s not the most generous, but they have a solution – folding directors’ chairs that they store in the crew cabin and fish out when they have guests on board.
However, they don’t just sit in the marina sipping G&TS. Grant and Helen cruise all around the Balearics. “We often take the boat away on our own, so the galley-up layout suits us perfectly because we’re not separated by a flight of stairs,” says Helen.
Grant adds, “Neither of us is tall, but the seat and the helm are set very high, so under way the view from the helm seat is terrific. It makes us feel safe having such a clear view out, and it’s a real joy to sit here and watch the Balearic islands’ beautiful scenery slip by.”