CR2800 Modern Boating Magazine - Whittley - #1

WORDS & PHOTOS IAN MACRAE

In February last year I finished the final leg of the first Australian Offshore Challenge — a powerboat rally from Hobart, across Bass Strait, to Melbourne. I have many mental pictures from that memorable trip, as we tackled conditions that varied from dead calm, to a 4m multi­directional chop, to a full blown gale in the middle of Bass Strait — thunder, lightning, 60-knot winds, horizontal rain and a complete white-out with visibility down to 5m. And when you're on the open ocean in a 24ft half cabin it really hones your boat driving skills quickly.

But it was the sight of a Whittley 660 Cruiser (crewed by Grant Kinkead and Brett Murphy) disappearing behind 7m swells only to punch out the other side, that reinforced my already glowing opinion of these top Australian boats. In the article I penned about the trip I named that boat the "wave-piercing caravan". Here was a true-blue 6m family cruiser, designed for extended weekends away, out in the middle of Bass Strait in a gale, battling it out with the best of them. To me it drove home just how good the Whittley hull and build quality is.

Recently Whittley released another excellent boating caravan — the Whittley 2800 Cruiser. She's a 28ft, cruiser (BMT weighs only 3236kg fully loaded, so she can be towed by a 4200 diesel Landcruiser easily), making her an ideal family

floating home away from home. '

Whittley have used plenty of innovative thinking to keep this boat's tow weight down and one of the cleverest is the cockpit dining table. When you look at it in place it looks like a very solid and heavy piece of timber, were in fact it has a PVC core, which makes it extremely light. It stows when not in use in a locker in the cockpit roof, and because of it is lightness it doesn't pose a problem when you're getting it up or down from this locker.

It should also be noted that Whittley's stated hull length is the true centreline length and does not include the bowsprit or swim platform. The LOA listed in the specs panel (29ft 1in) does include the bowsprit and swim platform.

This cruiser has it all, from a high performance hull (albeit one that uses trim tabs for optimum performance and there's nothing wrong with that), to an electric sunroof. The tabs come into play, because this Whittley has a relatively narrow beam (2.5m to keep her within legal towing widths), compared to her length, and the tabs ensure the hull's stability.

During this test it took me a few minutes to sort the trim tabs out and to get used to the subtle adjustments required for an optimum ride. Once sorted I gained a new respect for this boat's ride — in quite rough conditions I might add. But like getting behind the helm of any boat for the first time; they all have their own idiosyncrasies and it helps if you have the