A blast on a Riva 59

The Riva 59 we were going to drive   

Thursday 20 July was engine test day and we were invited to come along; clearly we accepted the invitation like a shot!. Sean and Caroline had spent days preparing their charge but, before their boss arrived, they needed to run up the engines, generator and other systems. That meant an early morning spin in the Riva 59 whilst it was calm and before the morning motorboat exodus from the marinas which creates waves from their wakes. Hitting a wave at speed apparently kicks up so much spray that it would double the subsequent wash down task; best avoided when they had other things to finish off. We happily complied with the request for an early start and turned up with enough time for a cup of tea before the engines were fired up.

The Rivière Giscle has a strict 3 knot speed limit but just one of the 1300HP engines on tick-over pushes the boat along at 8 knots. You also need about 6 knots for the rudder to work. So Sean used 1 sec bursts of power to get us moving and steered using asymmetric power.

Once clear of the river we could increase speed a little so the steering worked and it was off to wend our way through the superyacht parking lot.

On the way out we passed this superyacht that even had a fenced off basketball court on its foredeck. Well, if you like basketball why wouldn’t you have a basketball pitch on your yacht? [Ed: Maybe just ½ a basketball court; there was just one net.].

St Tropez looked great in the dawn light…

… but once we were past St Tropez and the anchorage Sean was clear to open up the throttles.

The turbos span up and we surged forward to over 30 knots. The yacht will do 48 knots but that wasn’t part of the morning’s plan, probably because the bimini would need stowing and also because the fuel usage was unnecessary to test the engines. We stopped for a short while to run up the generator (the debris in the river water can clog the inlet) and to check that all was well in the engine room…

… and then Sean gave Nicky a go at the wheel and we whizzed out to the eastern end of the Golfe de St Tropez to give the engines a decent run up…

… before turning in a big arc to head back. The really large sailing yacht pictured above lower left had an inflatable flamingo dinghy attached to its stern; not really what you expect to see bobbing behind such a huge yacht.

The early morning light picked out the wake beautifully and, just in time, Caroline remembered that we also needed to test the new 1000watt stereo speaker system. It passed the test, crystal clear despite the engine and wind noise!

But then it was time to slow everything down again. On the way back we did a quick circuit of BV tucked away in the corner of the anchorage. That gave me a good photo opportunity from a higher level than we normally see her from when we are in our dinghy, and then it was time to head back to the mooring.

Golfe de St Tropez, France