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Sidling up to the fuel dock at Miami Beach Marina is a fairly easy chore, unless you happen to be driving a great big motoryacht with a gorgeous dark-blue fiberglass hull, a displacement pushing 50 tons, and a price tag of approximately $3 million. Of course, should these factors top your list of priorities on any given day, a host of rather exotic boat-handling considerations must be taken into account—stuff like the constraining distance between the outer breakwall and the two inner ones, the even more constraining distance between the two inner ones and the fuel dock itself, and the nerve-jangling effects of tide and current.

Ordinarily, safely dealing with such details takes time—lots of it. Big boats usually move slowly while maneuvering in tight spots. So when David Marlow and his Marlow Explorer 72 materialized in seeming moments right in front of the dockmaster’s office that I was leaning against, I was stunned, and so was the fuel-dock attendant I’d been talking with while waiting to get onboard.

“Hey there, Bill,” Marlow’s voice boomed from the flying bridge, just as a gleaming quarterguard kissed a piling. A young fellow doing deckhand duty appeared at an access door in the bulwarks, lifted a wrist-thick oval handrail of stainless steel, and offered me a hand with my test gear. Other than a couple of short shots from the bow thruster, two more from the stern thruster, and the low background rumble of the mains, there was little else to announce the arrival of the big yacht.

I stepped aboard, shouting an all-clear, then headed topside, venturing through the saloon at a good clip and bounding the stairway at an even better one, all in hopes of observing first-hand how Marlow maneuvered the boat with such lightning precision. I didn’t quite make it, though. By the time I’d achieved the upper helm station, he was already well away from the fuel dock, squeezing the Explorer out between the inner and outer breakwalls, heading for Government Cut and the open sea. While casually working the destroyer-type wheel from a Stidd seat with a single bare foot, he modestly attributed the maneuverability I marveled at to a single factor: “Thrusters,” he grinned, extending a huge, workman-like hand in greeting.

Marlow’s appearance was salty. Tall, lean, and dressed in faded jeans, a blue knit shirt, and a baseball cap emblazoned with the Marlow Explorer logo, he looked like a diesel-powered version of Tristan Jones. As we headed offshore, a thumbnail sketch of his life emerged. Born one of 14 children at “Eleven Mile” oyster camp near Apalachicola, Florida, he’d gone to sea as a kid, working his way around the world on tramp freighters. After a brief, unsatisfying skirmish with law school, he fetched up in the recreational marine biz, a livelihood he’s pursued with gusto and a fair amount of success ever since. “My wife says it takes a woman to get most men’s attention,” he concluded, “but with me it takes a boat!”

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