Silver Shark 580DC

Silverfishing family

A famous Finnish architect, Eliel Saarinen, once said that you should always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. And, I will add, a boat on the ocean.

It's here that the Silver Shark redefines the tinnie ride and puts safety on the top of the prospective buyer's checklist.

While, you could be forgiven for thinking that Australia has a mortgage on the omnipresent tinnie because, for many years, there was no other choice in the marketplace, today's global boating world has suddenly opened new doors and markets. And the wonderful thing about boating is that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Enter Europe's biggest Alufibre boatbuilder, Silver from Finland, no herring in the Seven Seas of tinnie manufacturers. Spawning an impressive 3000 boats a year, each based on an aluminium hull and then topped with a fibreglass deck for greater comfort than the traditional bum-numbing bench seat, Silver is out to redefine our notion of how a tinnie should perform.

Yet the Finns, I understand, aren't altogether different from Australians when it comes to how they use their boats. Fishing and family are the primary motives for floating your boat, which is why most Silver boats are designed to do a bit of everything really very well.

Take the aptly named Shark 580DC, a 5.80-metre dual-console boat and, a crossover trailerboat from an interesting range of runabouts, cabin cruisers and centre consoles. But while a cursory glance at the Shark reveals it's a bowrider, that most popular of trailerboat layouts for general-purpose use, there the sameness ends.

The Shark breaks the muffin-tin or cookie-cutter mould but shifting the helm farther aft where, it just so happens, the ride is smoothest in a boat. And in so doing, it creates a vast forward seating plan that, with padded backrests, lets a couple of adults kick back with legs outstretched. A bowrider on steroids if you will.

Meanwhile, as an aside, the flagship Condor model that we ran on the same day scored an Innovation Award at the last Scandinavian Boat Show. And if fishing's more your bent, the Shark also comes in a centre console version.

Meanwhile, consider the rig as tested as a base version of the Silver Shark. The outboard was spinning a 16in stainless steel propeller and it comes with hydraulic steering, thank heavens, as it adds considerably to the driving pleasure (more on it later).

Construction is something that Silver stands behind. The Shark has a 4mm hull bottom with 2mm sides and rigidity to stop metal fatigue and cracking derived from a fully welded box-section grid comprising 3mm aluminium crossmembers and longitudinals. A fibreglass deck is added to the hull and the void between the two skins is filled with foam.

Should the Shark be swamped, no worries, Silver says the boat is virtually unsinkable. In fact, it will float and remain level and upright, unlike many boats this length whose flotation results in them inverting. What's more, the foam provides sound insulation and the typical thump-thump associated with your run-of-the-mill tinnie was noticeable by its absence.

Another nice thing is the weight of the rig. Dry, the hull weighs 660kg and on road, up on its single-axle Boeing trailer with brakes, it tips the scales to 1295kg. And that's well within comfortable towing limits of most family cars. Launched and rearing to go, there's plenty to embrace about the moulded fibreglass deck. In particular, the Finnish-made Shark tinnie preys on the mindset of those who covet safety foremost in their family/fishing boat.

Yet it's a split rail so that, along with some non-skid on the deck, you can safely step off this boat onto the shore. And that I did just after a beach landing, proving this to be a handy boat for staging foreshore picnics with the family after your dawn fishing raids.

Interestingly, the padeye on the foredeck has been put there for the Finns, who typically chain their boats to the dock. More importantly, there is a good amount of non-skid underfoot, hardwearing PVC gunwales, and a lean look derived from the raked deckline, blue king plank and blue-and-white upholstery.

With dual consoles, the skipper and co-pilot are afforded a welcome degree of weather or, moreover, wind protection when underway.

Besides the generous bow seating, there are twin swivel helm seats and a full-width rear lounge for carrying up to five adults in the cockpit. Admittedly, compared with your usual tinnie, the Shark's cockpit is modest. But you can't have all that bow seating and not eat up cockpit space.

Thanks to a deep engine well, this is a doubly dry boat that won't ship water going forward and astern. Dry storage space isn't in short supply, either, with plenty of underseat hatches for stowing safety and personal gear, a dedicated underseat anchor locker in the bow, and two wet lockers in the transom corners that, with some aftermarket plumbing, could be turned into livebait tanks.

The co-pilot scores a glovebox, the skipper a moulded fibreglass dash with analogue engine gauges, plus there's room left over to mount navigation and/or fish-finding gear. The battery switch, access to the dash wiring and inline fuses, and footrests are all nearby.

As touched on, the Shark comes standard with hydraulic steering, which you will want with a 115hp on the tail. It also has a substantial 130lt underfloor fuel tank, good access to the sender and inline fuel filter, bilge with pump - though the Shark is self-draining - and plug-in aft navigation lights.

What's more, the boat has great access to the water via its non-skid topped aft decks either side of the deep engine well. And there is the requisite swim ladder. With a Fusion stereo with iPod docking, it's pretty much a just-add-water, optional electronics and fishing gear or inflatable toy kind of boat to go.

The accepted economical rev setting on any outboard, that is 4000rpm, returned 22.5kts cruise, which is fast but not so enthusiastic that the boat leaps out of the water. However, the ride above 4500rpm or 25kts became a tad jumpy without much weight in the boat.

Top speed was 37.6kts, though Silver says 40kts-plus is possible with, I am presuming, an 18in instead of a 16in propeller.
But what matters most on a family and fishing boat is ride comfort.

And in this respect, this boat performed atypically for a tinnie. There were no backbreaking thumps, no douses of spray on the face and, thanks to the four-stroke outboard, no fumes and little harsh noise to contend with. A fine Finnish, indeed.

LOWS