Irrational decisions
I like to think I’m a rational being. I take decisions based on facts rather than emotions and try to work out solutions using my head rather than my heart. But for some reason all that goes out the window when it comes to bikes, boats and cars.
I decided to buy a new motorbike the other day, not to get my knee down (I’m too old for all that) but to get to work. I booked test rides on a number of thoroughly sensible BMWs and Hondas that were cheap to insure, comfortable to ride around town
and blessed with silky smooth engines. Then I made the mistake of wandering into an Aprilia showroom and was cajoled into taking a test ride on something called a 750 Shiver. It has the turning circle of a bus, the luggage capacity of a bumble bee and a vee twin engine that pops and crackles like a blaze at a fireworks factory. It’s totally unsuitable but I now spend every waking hour trying to justify paying triple the insurance premium on the Aprilia simply because I love it.
I mention this only because I suspect a lot of people buy boats for much the same reason. They start off full of good intentions
about the features and functions they need but end up falling head over heels for a boat that, for some reason, just does it for them. The Sealine F46 is destined to be one of those boats, not because it suffers from any of the Aprilia’s issues (it’s actually very functional), but because it stirs the emotions like no other flybridge I can recall.
You can read David Marsh’s admirably objective boat report of the F46 on p52 to find out the many perfectly rational reasons why you may want to buy it and the few equally rational reasons you may want to think twice, but something tells me that when you
walk on board the boat at the Southampton Boat Show (and you must go aboard it to appreciate it) all his good advice will be forgotten. You’ll either want it so badly you’ll write the cheque there and then or run for the hills wondering what on earth Sealine were thinking.
It’s a brave move. The styling alone has set the MBY forum alight and divided opinion with the surety of a meat cleaver, but as Oscar Wilde once said: “There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”
