SANLO RENZO - SL96A

Sea trials of custom-built boats are often short-lived affairs, so when the owner of a Sanlorenzo SL96A asked editor Hugo along for blast across the Channel, he jumped at the chance

- Hugo Andreae

Big boats are expensive things to run.

Every hour at sea costs money for the fuel, crew and engine time. So perhaps it's no surprise that most media sea trials of 80-100ft craft tend to be fairly brief affairs lasting an hour or two at most. There is only so much you can learn in that time, especially when there are a dozen other journalists fighting for their time at the helm. But every now and then we get the chance to do something altogether more involved, a proper sea passage that really shows you what a boat is capable of. This is one of them and it's all thanks to MBY reader and contributor John Wolf, who kindly invited me to accompany him on a cross-Channel passage aboard his Sanlorenzo SL96A, Match.

CAPTAIN AND CREW

We meet at Swanwick Marina on the Hamble where John and his crew are fueling up and preparing the boat for the 120nm passage. I say crew but in truth it's just a solitary first mate for this trip as John captains the boat himself. He's also the navigator, chief engineer, purser, build manager and part-time designer. Having owned multiple boats prior to this one, he knew exactly what he wanted and spent hundreds of hours specifying every last element of Match, from the exact slab of marble used in the bathrooms to the size of the Sleipner curved fin stabilisers and the number of 22in Garmin MFDs on the bridge (five). Needless to say he is something of a perfectionist, albeit a very modest, generous and surprisingly relaxed one. Good job too, given what it costs to top up those 10,350-litre tanks!