The fastest boat of the show!

What was the fastest boat of the 2016 Sydney International Boat Show? Hang on to your hat, we reckon we found it.

Taking centre stage on the Mercury stand at Glebe Island was a Force 21s with a Mercury Racing 1350 QC4V for a top speed of 130mph or in layman's terms almost 210km/h. And that's with some skiers out the back in race mode.

Dressed in TR MarineWorld and Mercury Racing livery, with a custom-matched trailer, the Force 21S ski race boat will compete all over Australia in the Superclass.

"You can go from my factory near the Colo River to Brooklyn [downstream on the adjoining Hawkesbury River] for a meat pie in 15 minutes," quipped Force boatbuilder Rod Bickerton.

"It's got Mercury's latest fly-by-wire digital throttle and shift, so the gears just drop in and out seamlessly.

"The engine is twin turbocharged, the boat has 420lt of fuel, and carries 500lt of water ballast. There are carbon fibre seats and so on, but the hull is vacuum bagged using foam sandwich construction," Bickerton, who was on the Mercury stand, said.

The 1350 is a V8 featuring Mercury Racing’s exclusive 9.0lt quad-cam four-valve (QC4v) cylinder block and head. Mercury says the intention was to provide big power with luxury-car-like driveability.

The DTS system features one-touch Smart Start and automatic throttle synchronisation, as well as shadow mode for triple or quad engine applications (where two throttle levers operate all engines).

Zero Effort Digital controls are designed to provide an intuitive control experience – precisely signalling driver intent to the potent powerhouses.

The 1350 on the Force 21S is coupled to a NXT6 low-drag race sterndrive and acceleration is obviously snappy but also smooth with the digital throttle and shift. More on the 1350 Mercury engine and Force boats here.