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One of our V-drive inboard diesels conked out shortly after we had dropped off our passengers at Pier 66's fuel dock in Fort Lauderdale. The couple, potential owners of our test boat, a Molokai Strait 75 prototype called Hercules, waved gaily from afar as Molokai director/co-owner Jeff Druek belabored the Glendinning electronic engine control on the starboard bridge wing and then announced, "Bill, I've lost the starboard main. She's runnin', but I can't get her into gear—electronic glitch most likely. Mind takin' the boat up the river on one engine while I go below to see what's up?"
I thought it over. The New River's a long, twisty, tide-ripped, bridge-beset sliver of marine real estate—so narrow and packed with marinas and traffic in some places that there's hardly room for one sizable vessel to keep on truckin', let alone two meeting head to head. My mind flashed on a couple of particularly congested spots I remembered from earlier transits: Tarpon Bend with its blind S-curve; Little Florida with its swiftly flowing double-back loop; The Wiggles with its nerve-wracking series of crowded hairpin turns. Then my mind flashed on Druek's asking price for the trideck immensity of Hercules: $4.2 million. And finally I imagined the spectral headline appearing on the Sun-Sentinel's front page the next morning: "Disabled $5M Yacht Hits Tour Boat in New River—Capt. Bill Pike Not Adequately Insured."
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Funny what a guy'll do in a pinch, particularly when he tends to respond to scrapes and emergencies with a certain ill-conceived, illogical flair. "Go for it, Jeff—no problem," I replied, stepping back into the wheelhouse and making straight for the big teak wheel as Druek headed for the stairway leading down to the engine room.
What the heck? It wasn't like Hercules was a mystery to me at this point. I already knew she was a helluva boat, having just finished a sea trial in the open Atlantic. Granted, the ol' girl was no speed demon—75-foot vessels that tip the scales at 320,000 pounds (half load) and sport cruising ranges of well more than 4,000 nautical miles at approximately 7 knots (8.1 mph) seldom are. But she was solid, salty, and surprisingly agile, achieving a hull speed of 10.6 knots (12.2 mph) with a mannered linearity that was a tribute to her hull form's designer, Eric Sponberg of St. Augustine, Florida. Her turning radius at maneuvering speeds was tighter than bark on a live oak. In fact, with both engines in dead idle ahead and the rudders hard over, I'd discovered I could swing her end for end virtually within her own length. And, thanks as much to her considerable displacement as to her considerable draft of seven feet, she was far from a will o' the wisp in the wind, despite the sail area inherent in her lofty profile.
I had one concern, however. When teamed with a Nabla-style bulbous bow with a sea-splitting V underneath and a top slightly flattened and up-angled to damp pitching, the integrated swim platform at Hercules' stern generated enough trim-tab effect in deep water to impart a nose-down running attitude of -3/4 degrees at higher speeds. Would this characteristic expand and intensify in the shallows of the New River, particularly with only one engine on tap? Would the boat bow-steer, zigzagging back and forth unpredictably? Neither Druek nor Sponberg were overly concerned about the bow-down phenomenon, saying it was even more pronounced prior to an après-launch ballasting modification that put a little more up-angle into the bulbous bow and added a wide, lead-filled skeg to the after portion of the hull form, thus shifting the longitudinal center of gravity slightly aft and substantially reducing lift astern. Was the remaining -3/4 degrees really worth worrying about, particularly when it made its appearance only at speeds well above the normal operating rpm range of the boat? "No sweat—everything'll be fine," Druek yelled from somewhere below decks, just before slamming a big, heavily gasketed watertight door from Pacific Coast Marine.
The assurance, I'm happy to say, was spot-on. After nosing into the river, with red marker #20 nicely off to starboard, I soon eased Hercules past the Jungle Queen (a 91-foot Mississippi River-style excursion vessel kindly waiting on me just north of Tarpon Bend) with the robust authority of a fully operational twin-engine boat, not one with serious network difficulties. Then Hercules proceeded to track deftly through an ensuing straight stretch and turn smartly at the next corner, thanks as much to her 4'x5' barn-door rudders as to her fast-acting, power-assisted Wagner hydraulic steering (two and a half turns, lock to lock). I was constrained to hit the Wesmar hydraulic bow and stern thrusters only twice in the next few miles, once to resist the bow cushion of a megayacht charging past and again while waiting for the Andrews Avenue bridge to open. Visibility out front and to the sides was excellent from the helm as I continued motoring along. And I kept tabs on the traffic astern via the Elbex closed-circuit TV monitor on the dash. Even while sidling inelegantly into the shallows of the North Fork turnoff to avoid two boats towing an outbound 115-foot catamaran-type passenger ferry, Hercules maintained her composure, as calm, cool, and collected in the midst of a virtual South Florida navigational circus as she presumably is crossing vast, empty oceans.
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