ARK SEN 85

With the promise of being the 'ultimate long range explorer' we've been hankering to test the Arksen 85 for some time. Did it live up to the boatbuilder's robust adventure credentials?

- Hugo Andreae finds out

Arksen is not your typical boat builder.

Look on its website and you'll find it sells everything from £160 technical T-shirts to blinged-up Land Rovers and climbing expeditions to Everest. The only thing unifying them all is a thirst for adventure.

Boats are a big part of that, and a personal passion of Arksen's tech entrepreneur founder, Jasper Smith, but more as a means of delivering the ultimate off-grid adventure than as the end goal itself. None more so than this 85 Explorer, its flagship model and the foundations on which the entire brand was built. Inspired by the legendary aluminium FPBs pioneered by Steve and Linda Dashew but reimagined by Arksen and redesigned by Humphreys Yacht Design as a more luxurious but no less capable transoceanic motor yacht, it is claimed to be the 'ultimate long-range explorer'.

FULL METAL JACKET

The build specification certainly goes some way to backing up that claim. Constructed from 70% recycled aluminium (20mm thick on the keel, 12mm below the waterline and 8mm above) by the Wight Shipyard on the Isle of Wight, its build has more in common with high speed ferries and military patrol craft than a traditional GRP leisure yacht. Robust enough to cruise through ice floes and with sufficient positive buoyancy to recover from a knockdown, it goes well beyond the normal requirements for a Category A RCD rating. The superstructure windows, for example, are 25mm thick so they can withstand a direct hit from a wave; the vault-like external doors are clamped shut with multiple lugs to keep them airtight; even the lower deck accommodation is divided into three watertight compartments in case the hull itself is breached.