I am not sure how many of our readers are from the northern tier but here in Maine the rain has been relentless this month and perhaps you can sympathize. Before long it will be July and the sun has been MIA for weeks.
So last Tuesday when the sun came out it was indeed our good fortunewhen Peter Janssen of Motorboating Magazine came to Portland to sea trial the new Sabre 40 for what we hope will be a September issue. The sun was brilliant and if you are a Mainiac, this was one of the days you live for.
Sea trials can be mundane if all you do is power and fuel tests so I decided to give Peter the 50 cent tour of Casco Bay. Stops included many of my favorite anchorages at Jewel Island, the Goslings, Little Whaleboat and French's. We passed by Pumpkin Knob and Pound of Tea and other islands with equally great names. Our stop over was South Freeport and the Harraseeket River where we found delicious lobster rolls at Harraseeket Lobster and Lunch.
Oh and I almost forgot, we also docked the boat with ease at Brewers, South Freeport using the joystick controller and cruised to and from our stopover at 27 knots while experiencing sound levels at 76 Db (ridiculously low for a 40 foot diesel power boat). We discovered that even with the large Webasto sunroof open noise levels did not increase so we were able to take some sun and cool breeze while underway. Lobster pots were no issue. The boats sports car like handling allowed us to steer around the pots with ease. And this year the lobstermen are replacing all of their gear with sinking line so even if you do run one down there is very low risk of snagging one on your prop. With the counter rotating props on the Zeus pods the line would just be chopped if you did snag one anyway.
So here we are three days later. It is raining again and I have asked the design office to start work on a production version of the ark. It may be the next big thing in recreational boating. Hopefully it will perform as well as the Sabre 40