FAIRLINE CARRERA 24
BUILT: 1989 PRICE: £24,950
LENGTH: 27ft 7in (8.4m) BEAM: 9ft 5in (2.9m) DRAFT: 2ft 6in (0.8m) DISPLACEMENT: 3.5 tonnes FUEL CAPACITY: 318 litres ENGINES: Twin Volvo Penta AQ151 146hp petrol engines
Is there any finer recommendation for a boat than the fact that this one was bought new in 1989 from BA Peters in Chichester and then simply kept forever? 35 years later it has finally come onto the market with a whole sheaf of invoices.
And amazingly, it’s all original, right down to the Seafarer 501 strobing echo sounder. It speaks volumes for the quality of these brilliant little boats that they springboarded the brand up into the seven figure price tag territory it now occupies.
INTERIOR It’s amazing to think that Fairline ever built boats this small, and in 1989, this wasn’t even the smallest, the Sprint 21 sat below it. However, the crucial point is that these boats were built every bit as well as the bigger models. It’s pretty spacious for its length due to a 9ft 5in beam and the layout is very straightforward, a converting dinette forward, galley to port, heads with shower to starboard and a crawl-in double back aft beneath the raised helm.
EXTERIOR The flat windscreen panes and a ‘bolt on’ flat bathing platform rather than one integrated into the hull rather date the design, as do the 1980s stripes and lack of a transom door, but actually this is still a well-proportioned and good looking boat. The cockpit is dead simple. There’s a raised helm with a double seat that flips over to give aft facing seating, and a bench seat aft. You can drop a cockpit table in to create an external dinette.
PERFORMANCE Fairline offered single and twin engines, from a solitary river-friendly 130hp through to a pair of 205hp V6 petrol motors. The twin Volvo Penta AQ151 146hp motors fitted to this boat were probably good for nighon 30 knots when new, although inevitably they are likely to have lost a few ponies over the last three and a half decades.
SEAKEEPING As authentically Fairline as the build quality, the hull was a Bernard Olesinski design, just like every other Fairline of the era. It’s quite a fat boat, so unlikely to slice through the chop like the proverbial hot knife, but it will certainly deliver a solid, dry, stable ride. The first owners obviously rated it highly enough.