“Better, Cheaper, Faster”
Credits: Dan Jones
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
For those of you considering a Mediterranean style day boat but perhaps don’t need the accommodation or don’t want to spend as much money, this Italboats 32GT S, S for Stingher I believe, is a potential option for you. Keep watching, and I’ll explain.
Welcome to Manly! We’re in Sydney, if you didn’t already know that, and you’re watching Dan’s Boat Life. My name’s Dan Jones. Subscribe if you haven’t already. So, I believe some of you want the speed, convenience, volume, space, and sexiness that a Mediterranean style day boat provides but you don’t need the accommodation – that’s an important one – if you don’t need the accommodation, you can spend a lot less money. I’m talking like a third of the price of what some of those Med-style day boats cost that you see on my channel and get something like this.
“Italboats 32GT Stingher, is a potential option for those considering a Mediterranean style day boat.”
The power-to-weight ratio on something like this — we’re running the twin 300s, and we can go up to twin 400s, and it can even take a single V12 600, it’s incredible. We got 50 knots just from these twin 300s on this boat, 1,900 kg. So, if you want to see it driving, that’s a separate video. We’ll do that at the end of this demonstration, and you can click on the link and see what you think.
But this is cool, and I think what I’ve been left with from my 5 hours or so today playing around is this is one of the best ribs I’ve tested through chop. So, I’ll leave that point with you if that’s important to you, of course.
BOW
Now, come on. I’ll show everyone the bow. It is stinking hot today, so just leave a like if you appreciate these videos ’cause I’m sweating my ass off. It’s the middle of summer here in Sydney, so we’re making it happen, but we’re struggling a little bit ’cause it is quite hot.
So, the design up here is quite cool. We have a bow roller, which exits below where I’m sitting. So, that’s for the anchor. The anchor operation is nice and neat. You can actually just see through here [anchor locker] how that whole thing works. So, we’ve got our Lofrans’ Anchor Windlass. We have a remote, but we can also control it from the helm, and it just goes out underneath the bow. But we can also pick up moorings, and we have a second bow roller, a cleat, and we have a more beefy cleat just there [anchor locker]. We’ve also got some fair leads on either side. Also, note that this Flexiteek, not real teak, is going to be useful for boarding people on and off the front. If you’re going into, Watsons Bay or Manly and you need to pick some up from a dock, a fixed dock, that’s really good, particularly if you’ve got the bow thruster because this is a long boat, she’ll have a little bit of windage, not much ’cause it’s low, but I think a bow thruster is going to make your life a lot easier if you get something of this size.
“There’s plenty of storage space underneath the sun lounge cushions for safety gear and other items.”
So, I’m underneath the typical sun lounge set up..note the colour, by the way. What do you think about the colour? I think it’s really cool. So, leave a comment in the description below, tell me what you think. I think I’ve seen enough black boats now, and I like this army green, NATO green? Let’s call it NATO green with emergency orange. I’m going to call it that. So, we’ve got the beige cushions just here [sun lounge], underneath me, there’s lots of storage. We have one big storage hatch underneath us, which will be great for all the safety gear if you need easier access. We have storage on either side here and here [port and starboard sun lounge cushions], and that might be better for bags and bits and pieces like that, and quite a deep storage underneath my feet.
TOILET
But come around and have a look at the all-important toilet. So, I am going to open this [toilet hatch] one up, and I’ll step in. So, I think you’d probably go backwards ’cause you’ve got to step on port and then you go down on starboard. And this is like somewhat of my stature at 5’7″. I’ve got enough headroom. You have an opening sea window on either side, port and starboard, so you can vent this area. And when you’re on the loo, it’s actually just offset on one angle to port, so you actually do feel like you’ve got a lot of space in here. It’s all light fibreglass. We’ve got Flexiteek on the floor. It’s drained, it’s just simple. Nowhere to wash your hands, I know. So, you’re going to have to go and wash your hands at the back of the boat, but at least you’ve got the toilet ’cause now it’s a true day boat, and the ladies will be happy to join, particularly on the colder days.
Now, for those of you with helicopters, yes, they’ve thought of you. This [lifting points] is where you attach the straps and the quick release. So, if you need to move the boat from the harbour to your lake house and you can’t be bothered trucking it, chopper it over the hills, just go for it. I would love to see someone doing that. And if you are, can you call me ’cause I’ll come make a video of it? I think that would be so cool.
“You have an opening sea window on either side, port and starboard, so you can vent this area.”
HELM
Come on and focus on the helm, and we’ll talk about what’s going on. First observation, compared to the 28GT, which we’ve also been filming today, this windscreen is a little bit lower. So, yes, you might lose your hat. Just factor that in. Put it away, turn your hat around. It is something that you’re going to have to think about. It does, for someone of my stature, provide me protection for my eyes and my face, but if I get up any higher, I might lose my hat. We’ve got this cool carbon finish. We’ve got a facility for one large Furuno display on this one. We’ve got the Fusion. This [next to the fusion] is actually phone charging. These are really useful for day boats like this because they hold your phone in place ’cause you do bounce around from time to time. We’ve got all our boat systems here [below the fusion and phone charging], anchor up and down, all-important, and our bow thruster on port, throttle just there [next to the steering wheel], that’s the new Mercury throttle system, key and your emergency is just in the middle. I would recommend using that most of the time, not all the time, but it is something to factor in.
It’s not an adjustable wheel. It’s a fixed wheel, and you’ve got adjustable seats. So, if you’ve got a huge belly, yeah, it’s going to be a problem. I suspect if you have a boat like this, you’re probably fit and muscular or skinny and good-looking if you’re a lady because everyone’s looking at you. So, just factor that in. But If you need to sit down, that’s what it’s like. That’s actually quite comfortable, but if you got short legs like me, you got nowhere to put them. So, I would do that at times and then transition to the standing for high speed because I do really enjoy at a super-fast speeds, locking myself in like this, specifically putting my feet on the footrest because I can push myself back into this what is now a backrest and I’m locked in, Now at this position, that’s when the windscreen comes into its own because I’ve actually lowered my line of sight, and it’s much better.
So she has a little bit of bow raise on initial acceleration, but what you do, you just give it some, and then it’ll settle down when you get to about that 23 knots. And this is what you see, and it’s quite manageable. So, that’s an enjoyable experience. And then the passenger on the starboard side has the same setup as the skipper.
“Compared to the 28GT, this windscreen is a little bit lower.”
In terms of space to move around, you feel those 32 feet now, you do have quite a lot of space, so if you’re doing the whole raft-up situation, stepping off, this grab handle here [helm] is going to be useful if you need to exit, and also just reaching the side decks from a single-person operation point of view is quite doable.
DINETTE
Now, as some of you have already noticed, yes, we’re missing some cushions. That’s possibly a fault of the boat because they don’t have leading-edge bolt rope tracks. I would think about that. So, some cushions have gone. I don’t actually know when that happened, but yeah, that’s something that happens. So, this table here is in lunch mode, but you may see a hinge here [edges of the table] and some drop-down leaves. That is not designed to increase your lunching space. That is actually designed to spin around, drop down, unfold the leaves, and it becomes a base for a beautiful bed. So, we can be in the sun, or we can deploy the sunshade, which just has two easy straps that go forward, and then everyone is protected all the way forward to the helm. And you could leave that up in a reasonable amount of wind and a sensible speed. I would not have that up at 50 knots. Okay, so 23 is probably going to be okay. Just factor that in. And you probably do want the sunshade off when you’re going fast and having fun because your visibility and just the wind in your hair experience is probably what you’re going for on a boat like this. That’s what you get.
Come around, and let’s just have a look at this little lunch spot here [across the table]. So, that [lid] pops up there. We’ve got a flat surface, single cold sink, we got the fridge, and some more storage. You can do a hot plate, an electric barbie but that would be off batteries, and then you’re going to need the shore power.
Okay, let’s have a look at the seating area. I’ll just sit down for some perspective. So, you are going to get six people with no problems around this table and more. And remember, because it’s a rib, people can sit on the sides, and it’s quite comfortable. Underneath [starboard dinette seat], we’ve got access into our battery switches, on the other side [port dinette seat], we have the electric pump for the tubes, and underneath me just here [middle dinette seat], we’ve got the three batteries. So, we’re going to have the bow thruster, crank, and house batteries. We’ve also got the holding tank down there for the toilet, and you can evacuate the holding tank into the sea via a button. So, that’s doable.
“So, you are going to get six people with no problems around this table and more.”
TRANSOM
This is your ski pole just here [near the outboard engines]. I’ve actually got a couple of speakers and a downlight overhead, and this is neat, a little gate just here [starboard transom], that’s cool. So, that makes life a lot easier. Come out the back, and let’s have a look at what we’ve got out here. We’ve got these extendable platforms on either side. So, the hull finishes here. These look like bolt-on fibreglass jobs, so they extend. Just factor in when you’re coming into a dock, you would prefer not to hit that [extendable platforms]. I guess this grab handle is a swim handle, might give you a little bit of protection, but try and factor that in when you’re parking. I guess that’s why you have the bow thruster.
There’s some ventilation, we’ve got a drink holder there [next to the access door], we actually have phone charging in a very sensible spot just there [next to the drink holder]. That’s handy, so nobody has to go forward. We’ve got a shower just here [port transom], we’ve got a four-step telescopic swim ladder, another grab handle to pull yourself up, a couple of decent cleats, lights are LED all around, white light up here [overhead], and I can see LED navigation lights on the side.
SUMMARY
Not much to it, really. That’s the whole idea about something like this. If you are a time-poor person, if your kids want to have a bit of a sports car, or you want to have a bit of a sports car to run around the harbour on, just go and be social, and if you want a boat that doesn’t really hurt the hip pocket on service and maintenance, if you have perhaps had an inboard stern drive boat before or any inboard boat with complex systems, something like this with a couple outboards, we’re just talking a couple grand to servicing. We’re not talking 20 grand and that’s in Australian dollars. So, it is the style of boat that you can stick on a swing mooring, you can have it in a marina berth, you could have it in a rack and stack ’cause it’s going to be light, easy to crane. So, you can just use it when you want to use it and forget about it the rest of the time.
So, if you’re that sort of person, if you have other things going on in life and you perhaps don’t want to chuck a million dollars out of Mediterranean day boat into something like this at maybe one third or a fraction of that cost gives you almost the same experience without the overnighting, well, then that’s when you’re going to have a lot of value or see a lot of value in something like this 32GT.
Anyway, what do you think? I want to see your comments. Let me know. Always get in there and communicate with me. Don’t forget to subscribe and support the channel, guys. I do this for you. I’m independent, no one’s funding me. So, I really enjoy and appreciate your help. My name’s Dan Jones. You’ve been watching Dan’s Boat Life. If you want to see the test drive, that’s coming up right now, separate video to this. Click on the link on the screen right now. You’re all legends.
