A peach of a powerboat

The Wooden Boat Shop at Sorrento in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay has a reputation for building the finest traditionally-built wooden launches in the country, so when it combined with totally-modern yacht designer Andy Dovell it isn't surprising that the result was magic.

Tim Phillips of WBS took Dovell's design for a modern 44-foot timber launch and produced a beautiful and functional boat that is equally at home being used for a Sunday afternoon picnic, or cruising from Victoria to the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Dovell is best known for his very fast, lightweight racing yachts but for Phillips he penned traditional lines that hark back to the most beautiful launches of the 1930s.

Christened Efficient, the WBS 44 has a beam of 13ft 6ins and masses of room aboard. There is a galley, a fully-fitted bathroom and sleeping accommodation for four.

Being timber from the keel to the top of the mast, Efficient is not a light vessel, weighing in at 8.5 tonnes, so Phillips chose Yanmar's lightweight 6CX-530 engine mated with the new Yanmar KMH70A transmission to power the new boat.

The engine, a 7.4 litre in-line six-cylinder turbocharged diesel, pushes Efficient to a top speed of 27 knots at 3000rpm, while she cruises comfortably at 19 knots at 2350rpm. On a recent run from Portsea to the old Coast, Efficient averaged 16 knots while consuming only 37 litres of diesel per hour. With four individual fuel tanks holding 1200 litres, the launch has a range of almost 500 nautical miles.

On that voyage, Efficient encountered 30 knot winds and big seas off Newcastle but shrugged off the buffering conditions.

Phillips says the fully-electronic engine's control system on the 6CX530 coupled to a CD screen ensured the dash layout was clean and provided a multi-function readout of all the engine's management data.

The lucky owner is planning to cruise Efficient around the Bass Strait islands as well as future trips to Queensland.