I have been away from the keyboard for a week. The first few days were spent in Boothbay Harbor with 250 of our closest friends at the Sabre/Back Cove Rendezvous, an event that marked and celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Sabre Yachts. I'll get to that in my next post but today I am so excited to tell you about the sea trials of the Back Cove 30.
I spent Sunday afternoon, Monday and part of Tuesday doing a sea trial with Peter Jannsen of Motorboating Magazine. World-class photographer Billy Black was along to shoot the boat and the story. Also with us Designer Kevin Burns whose work on the 30 has been exceptionally well received by the public and the press alike. I used my own boat as the photo boat and Kevin and Peter spent their time on board the Back Cove 30. You'll read about our trip in an upcoming issue of Motorboating. Today I want to show you some images and tell you the facts about her performance.
Underway she had a top speed of 26 knots and a very comfortable cruise speed of 20 knots. At cruise she had a sound level (without aft enclosures) of 83 Dba and she consumed an estimated 11 gallons per hour. Over an extended period of use in Rockland then again during our sea trials with Motorboating she averaged a miserly 4 gallons per hour when combining slow speed cruising and full throttle testing.
The most common comment was that "she is a huge 30 footer" and "she feels like a 35 footer underway". Her windshield remained dry in some very tough ave conditions and her running angles remained below 4 degrees of bow rise. Conversation on the helm deck was very easy with sound levels well below older designs.
All in all a great success and a model that we feel confident will propel the Back Cove brand for the years to come
