The salty, briny water is dripping down the neck of my waterproof jacket and my spine feels as if it’s going to shatter every time the keel of the boat drops, with a sickening crash, down into a trough. And there’s a lot of troughs.
With the usual Murphy’s Law applying, the day I chose to go for a boating trip is not bright, sunny and calm. No, the waters of the Solent estuary are choppy, foamy and reflecting the grey, heavy overcast above. Despite all of this, I’m having some of the best fun, ever.
Which is exactly point, really. Although the Honda Four-Stroke Challenge racing series is a very serious event for the competitors, the boats are designed to function as pleasure craft during the off-season, so that the owners get full use out of their investment, not just a racing craft that has to be locked up during the winter months.
The boats are called Honda Sport Cruisers (there’s also a more extreme Honda Sport Racer, deemed too hot for a novice land-lubber like myself to handle) and although Honda supplies the 150bhp outboard engine, the rest of the boat is designed and built by Cougar Powerboats in Southampton. And that’s where things get really interesting.
You see, Cougar isn’t just some crowd who slap together some sheets of fibre-glass and lob a Honda engine onto the stern. Cougar is owned and run by a guy called Steve Curtis. Not familiar with the name? Well, if you’ve an ounce of salt in your veins, you will have. Steve is the all-time king of off-shore powerboat racing, the series with the huge, twin-cockpit boats powered by twin (yes, twin) Lamborghini V12 engines that skip from wave-crest to wave-crest at nearly 200mph. And Steve is a six-time World Champion at this, with the overcrowded trophy shelf to prove it. So going for a spin in a boat built by Cougar is a bit like taking Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari for a belt.
Thankfully, the Sport Cruiser lives up to its name. It’s an absolute piece of cake to pilot, even in the choppy waters we found. There are no awkward navigation devices to learn, no arcane start-up procedure. The Honda engine fires on the turn of an ignition key, and despite being out in the open, idles and revs as quietly and smoothly as your Granny’s Civic. Controls amount to a big throttle pedal, a steering wheel and a switch for adjusting the angle of attack of the engine. Apparently, that can help you gain extra speed on straight stretches and then, with careful adjustment, grant you extra ‘grip’ on corners. Sensibly, I ask my companion from Cougar, the aptly-named Alan Goodwin, to set it to whatever is the nearest thong to idiot-proof and leave it there.
From then on in, it’s just accelerate, turn and accelerate again. Well, it’s not quite that simple. The Solent is a crowded waterway and you have to keep a sharp eye out to avoid being run over by cruise liners, oil tankers and other pleasure craft. One salt-encrusted eye, too, which makes things trickier again. And then you have to be careful of wake turbulence, which can severely unsettle your own craft, make a note of wind direction and be aware of how it affects your steering… OK, so maybe not quite as easy as all that.
Still, the boat itself is ultra-friendly. With a deep-V hull it’s manages the neat trick of feeling impressively stable while still being incredibly agile. It feels, in fact, more than a little like a water-borne Civic Type-R, all revvy engine and sixpence-sized turning circle. Max speed is only around 80-90kph on the water, but when there’s no wind (or spray) protection, that feels more than fast enough.
For about STG£35,000 you too can get your hands on one of these boats, go racing for a season and then use it to go fishing or take the family out for jaunts across the lake. And get to rub shoulders with a multiple-world champion and his mates. And get to put ‘Racing Boat Pilot’ down on any forms you happen to fill in. Which sounds like staggeringly good value to me. Bring on that salt spray, I’m hungry for more…
Many thanks to Alan, Steve and all at Universal Honda Ireland for their help, without which, this feature would not have been possible.
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