Superyacht skipper rapt with Protector’s new high-speed luxury tender

by Mike Rose on 24 Jun 2015 Superyacht skipper, Paul Bickley, is full of praise for the latest Protector RIB from Auckland, New Zealand manufacturer, Rayglass Boats.

Paul Bickley, skipper of the Monaco-based 53-metre superyacht, Latitude, recently took delivery of Meridian, a luxury multi-purpose custom Protector 38 with a new Hydro V hull.

“Meridian is everything we thought it would be,” he says. “Good looking, magnificently finished, very comfortable and, most importantly, soft riding at high speeds, even in rough waters.”

As Latitude’s tender, Meridian will be used as both a tow boat for water sport activities and as a luxury “limousine”, ferrying the owner and guests to and from the shore in comfort.

It will also travel between cruising destinations under its own power, rather than by being towed.

“This means being able to handle long passages in often rough water,” says Paul Bickley. “We cover over 7000 nautical miles in a summer and some of our voyages, Monaco to Turkey for example, are 1700 nautical miles.”

That is unlikely to pose any problems for the new luxury tender, thanks to its new Hydro V hull. A significant refinement of the company’s already legendary hull shape, the new Hydro V hull has been designed to match the new breed of powerful, fast outboards — and to ensure an incredibly soft, comfortable ride, even at fast speeds and even in quite rough conditions.

Powered by a pair of just-released Mercury Verado 350hp supercharged, four-stroke outboards (the first of these new models to be fitted outside of the United States) Meridian also features an increased fuel capacity to cope with her long rough-water passages.

Paul Bickley says choosing a Protector for Latitude’s tender was easy.

“Latitude’s owner is also a keen yacht racer and has run Protectors for all of his campaigns. He admires the way they always perform flawlessly and the fact our Protectors handle everything we throw at them.

“The build quality is always exceptional and the Protector team are very accommodating when we need something specific.”

Rayglass Protectors are internationally renowned as the world’s best RIBs and can be found in most parts of the globe — Europe, the United States, Scandinavia, Russia, Asia and throughout the Pacific — where they are successfully employed as patrol and rescue boats, as support vessels for racing teams like Artemis, as fast pleasure cruisers and sports fishing boats, and as superyacht tenders.