AMERICAN ADVENTURE
New Our Boats contributor Elliott Maurice joins the fleet with his Princess V48 and Axopar 25
Boating has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father’s passion for boating was instilled from the day I could swim and my early years growing up in Brighton where my dad would take me sailing on his Drascombe Lugger. My first boat, a small wooden pram dinghy my dad had bought in a sorry state and restored over a winter, really got me started. He would tow it behind his boat, so I got a feel for the water.
My Dad’s continuing love of restoring boats led to his purchase of a rundown wooden 1950’s speedboat. He had the patience to teach me to use sandpaper and involved me in some of the more basic tasks restoring the boat. After a summer of use in Spain, he sold the twin cockpit boat to a friend who sadly wrecked it, running it up on some rocks. After that we ended up with a small fibreglass cuddy cabin speedboat towed between the Costa Brava and home on the Thames.
The London Boat Show was always an event for me. I would take myself on the Tube to Earl’s Court and marvel at the Cougar race boats and bigger boats from Fairline and Princess, coming home with enough brochures to last me a year, Princess always being my favourite.
I did not continue with boating until I moved back to Brighton at age 24. Having spent three weeks on a friend’s Dynamic 62 yacht, we had sailed from Bequia down the Southern Grenadines to Carriacou. I was hooked, so my dad and I decided to buy a brand-new Maxim 2800 SCR, a high-sided sportscruiser with a single 5.7-litre Mercury V8 and no bow thruster.
Picking the boat up in less than favourable conditions soon taught me my first lesson – that motor boats do not drive like cars. In a strong cross wind, I was blown all over the place but miraculously avoided damaging anything. I managed to get out of Newhaven marina and into a foggy English Channel. My next lesson? Driving a boat in fog is completely disorientating. Thankfully the very basic GPS proved efficient at providing direction, better than I could manage steering using the compass. I finally got the boat into Brighton marina and a very sloppy docking manoeuvre taught me the most important lesson of all: I needed tuition and lots of it! Both my Dad and I signed up for Powerboat Level 1 & 2 at Brighton’s RYA school and I approached a local Yachtmaster for a further slew of oneto-one lessons on the boat.
BERTHING PAINS
Moving the boat to Port Solent for the summer proved an excellent idea, where weekends could be spent, with the Isle of Wight easily accessible and Portsmouth Harbour entertaining enough when rough weather made the Solent inaccessible. The boat, however, was a nightmare with its bilges constantly full of water and everything retrofitted by the dealer proving problematic. The radar was mounted on a piece of plywood pointed skyward and picked up nothing when planing.
Our next boat, a 10-year-old Bayliner 3250 flybridge seemed a better option. With twin 150hp BMW diesels the boat had plenty of accommodation, the flybridge helm and twin engines making manoeuvring a doddle. The larger cabin and saloon suited the UK weather but the BMW engines were problematic.
When my father retired, he moved to Marbella and after dropping the boat off in