Sea Ray SLX 310 OB | Vicem 46 IPS | Robalo R180
The Sea Ray SLX 310 OB comes with standard dual touchscreen helm displays and a tower with articulating Bimini system. She has seating for 17 while underway, and her twin 350-hp Mercury Verado outboards produced a top speed of 53.4 mph in our tests. Sea Ray also builds this boat in a sterndrive model.
The Vicem 46 IPS is a Down East-inspired cruiser with a hull made of durable, easy-to-maintain fiberglass and composite. The interior areas all display outstanding joinery in teak and mahogany, including intricate inlays and high-gloss finishes. Her two-stateroom, two-head design makes sense for coastal-cruising owner/operators to have guests along for the ride.
The Robalo R180 is an entry-level center console, but she has a good helping of features for fishing and dayboating. She draws only 11" (0.28 m), allowing her to fish the shallows. Her 18-degree deadrise and hull weight of 2,150 lbs. (975 kg) mean good things to our test captain.
The 357 Alpha 4V from Mercury Reman is designed to be an inexpensive direct replacement for V-6 and small-block V-8 engines in a sterndrive packaged with an Alpha drive. The extra displacement of the bored-out block means more torque for better low-end power and quick acceleration. The rebuild gets a year of factory-backed maintenance, and two more years are available.
The 21'7" (6.61 m) beam of the Fountaine Pajot MY 44, allowed by her twin hull design, gives the salon the feel of a much larger yacht. She has three staterooms and three heads below, and the flying bridge helm station gives the captain the best seat in the house for extended cruising. Twin 435-hp Volvo Penta IPS600s give her a range of about 475 NM at around 10 knots, but her top speed in our test may surprise you.
Bavaria Yachts, located in Giebeistadt, near Wurzburg, Germany, announced recently that it was going into financial restructuring. Bavaria is the largest boat builder in Germany and has marketed its sail and powerboats in the U.S. for a number of years.
Although most boaters never knew him, Jeff Napier, who died earlier this week, worked as president of the industry association (NMMA) for nearly two decades to lift the U.S. boating industry up from a cottage-industry mentality to one on a footing with a profile far greater than its relatively modest annual sales would indicate. Perhaps he is best known for his fight against the 10% Luxury Tax imposed by Congress for partisan political reasons. The tax put 30,000 boating personnel out of work and effectively shut down some great names in boat building such as Trojan, Pacemaker, Uniflite, Tollycraft, Jersey Yachts and many more.
We got an inquiry from a BoatTEST.com reader asking the following questions: “Does Boston Whaler have a dealer in Western Australia? And would the Boston Whaler 230 Vantage be available there?” The Boston Whaler 230 Vantage is a dual console boat from the venerable builder’s line of “do-anything” day boats. So does “do-anything” include doing it in the southern hemisphere, Down Under, with its keen boating culture? If YOU have a question about a boat, engine, or any aspect of boating, we'll try to answer it…click here.
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