EDITORIAL

Boats of the Year and adventure

This month, you’ll find an exciting boating-adventure story on page 92. Penned by Peter Robson, it details a trip north to the Arctic Circle, along the treacherous, nearly trackless and ever-shifting Mackenzie River. Harbor hopping it ain’t.

The vessel for such a journey? An Aspen Power Catamarans model co-captained by one of the most adventurous boatbuilders we know, Aspen’s president, Larry Graf. As Graf will tell you, if you ask (and even if you don’t), a proa cat affords extreme efficiency, shallow draft, and more reliability-enhancing redundancies than one can shake a towing contract at.

More than that, the Aspen was selected by our team of editors, the world’s foremost powerboat experts, as one of the five finalists for the 2019 Boat of the Year. And the Aspen is not the only Boat of the Year finalist or awardee to achieve great things. While not every Boat of the Year has proven a champ, most of them have done quite well. So, under the banner of shameless self-promotion, enjoy the following sampling that details the laurels earned by some other finalists for Boat of the Year.

2002: Donzi 38ZR. One of the most sought-after V-bottom high-performance boats on the water, this ocean racer was designed around a next-generation ventilated hull, which ran in six national championships, plus four world championships, and counting. It also was featured in the movie Bad Boys II.

2005: Intrepid 475. This quad outboard-powered 45-footer delivers luxury and performance. Sure, it can get you to the fish too. A decade and a half later, it provided a template for the designs currently dominating the marketplace.

2017: Sea Ray 400 SLX. This boat showcased Brunswick’s new Fathom-E system, a ship’s systems battery bank that replaces an internal combustion genset aboard and adds tons of connectivity, at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Brunswick chose the 400 SLX—a boat we chose as Boat of the Year—to show off its latest technology.

2019: Solace 345. Find it—and the five 2019 finalists—on display at a boat show near you.

As [Larry] Graf will tell you, if you ask (and even if you don’t), a proa cat affords extreme efficiency, shallow draft, and more reliability-enhancing redundancies than one can shake a towing contract at.