- Silver Dream
Of the 528 Fairline Mirage’s built, the vast majority were outfitted with twin Volvo Penta AQ145 engines. These fast petrol powered boats, capable of around 25kts or more, represented what the class was really all about. But although most were fitted out like this there were some which were not. High speed running is only practical in the calmest of seas and the high powered petrol engines drink fuel like it’s going out of fashion. For this reason a small number of purchasers opted to pay extra and “downgrade” their craft to slower, noisier diesel engines. Diesels may be slow and noisy but their fuel consumption is somewhat lower, the engines will run practically forever, even at the upper end of their rev range, they are much more resilient to the damp marine conditions and diesel is a much less volatile fuel. Any fuel leakage on a petrol car drips onto the road and disappears - on a boat it fills the bilge with highly explosive petrol vapour just waiting for a spark to set it off.
Diesel Mirages are a rare thing indeed but some single diesels do exist. Twin diesels are almost unheard of, yet Silver Dream is one of those rare creatures. I know of two others, both in private ownership, one of which is actually a conversion of a former petrol boat (Artisan, pictured on the Fairline Mirage page) and lives on the Thames. The other one, Darting Kingfisher, is based down the river from where we based Silver Dream (her new owners moved her away to another system).
Silver Dream and Darting Kingfisher are both Mark I Mirages (pre 1982) originally, and still, powered by twin Volvo Penta AQD32A’s and capable of a theoretical top speed of around 19-20kts, though in practice we never managed more than about 17kts - but then she was over 30 years old by then.
Unfortunately, her last owner switched off the engines in 2002 and never returned. Finally in 2006 she was put up for sale after 4 years of being left to rot. The upside was she went relatively cheap for a diesel Mirage, the downside was that her new owner, me, was completely new to boating and devoid of any mechanical or electrical expertise. Prior to buying her I didn’t know Volvo made boat engines, had never heard of outdrives (or drive “legs” as they are often known) and had no idea about gel coats or epoxy or anything. And so the learning began.
In the end we achieved our goal of taking the old girl back out into the salt where she belonged, but those old engines were too heavy and simply no longer had the power to climb out onto the plane, thus restricting us to displacement speeds. As the Broads are an isolated system with no estuaries and a long way from any other rivers we really needed a faster boat to contemplate trips further afield - otherwise we were limited to a bit of cruising in our local area and then returning to port. Faced with so little proper usage the comparatively high cost of maintaining two very old seagoing engines and outdrives did not make financial sense and she was put on the market.
Despite being barely functional when we bought her lots of time and money ensured that she was a far superior boat when we came to sell her and it paid off, a deal being done just 3 weeks after she went on the market. But no what else…. she’ll always be our first boat.
