SPEED MEETS SMART
The Grand G980 is like a lovechild between a Tesla and a surfboard with a bit of an old dirty family secret from a Swiss army knife hiding in the closet. I have had plenty of rides of RIBs in the past, with varying degrees of amusement. I have also borne witness to the technical revolution within the marine industry, which has not only challenged my imagination but challenged my sense of worth as a commercial skipper. To that end, and partially to the latest sea trial, I have decided to hang up my lapels, as small ship captains are almost irrelevant – apart from ferrying boatloads of workers to and from their jobs or taking tourists out to have whale breath breathed on them. And you’d better watch that space too, as the latest from the Yamaha and Garmin marriage on the G980 tech will attest to.
The Tesla-style tech I am talking about is the ability to drive the charts, not like an autopilot which only goes in one direction. This thing tunes into your loaded charts and takes you down the channels from point to point. You just have to keep an eye out for other boats and obstacles, it’s not there yet as a complete ‘wake me up when we get there’ package, but bloody close to it.
NOT A BOAT THAT FITS NEATLY INTO ONE CATEGORY
I’ll admit the numbers stunned me. Over 100 km/hr, on water. And in something you can also anchor up, have six people around a table, sleep two adults in reasonable comfort, and navigate port to port on autopilot while you pour a drink. The Grand G980 is not a boat that fits neatly into one category – day boat, sports cruiser, fishing platform, overnight vessel and that, as it turns out, is precisely the point. It’s all of those things, sometimes simultaneously. And at 100 kilometres an hour, it gets between them very quickly.
WHERE IT ALL BEGINS
Dan Arscott, managing director at Grand Boats Australia, starts the tour at the stern, always the right place to begin and the Grand G980 immediately sets about demonstrating its credentials. Two generous swim platforms flank the transom, and the one to port hides a telescopic ladder inside the fibreglass not dangling underneath, not bolted on top as an afterthought, but slid cleanly inside the hull where it belongs. Undo the catch and it drops out with a handrail ready to go. It’s the kind of detail that tells you the people who designed this boat have actually used one.
Moving towards the bow, the cockpit opens into what I can only describe as the Swiss army knife of dining areas. Three seats run across the stern, each capable of folding flat to create a sun pad. Use all three for a full sunbathing deck or keep one up while the others drop down and suddenly you’ve got a reading nook at one end and a sun lounge at the other. The two tables, stored neatly beneath the seats, come out in sections – meaning that you can have one side up as a dining table while the other is flat as a sunbed – and when both tables are fully deployed you can seat somewhere between six and eight people around them, depending on your definition of personal space and how well everyone gets along. Sunshade ports are built into the super-structure and recess cleats push flush with the hull so there’s nothing to catch a line or a shin. The whole area is modular, configurable and genuinely thought through. Towing is possible with twin hooks near the transom connecting to a yoke and pulling skiers or a tube without drama. Whether you’d want to, is another question entirely. Two 350-horsepower engines and a water ski rope is a combination that has a well-documented history of parting ways with human shoulder sockets. Proceed with care on the throttle hand.
NOW YOU SEE IT
Step up to the helm and the Grand G980 shows you what it’s really about. The Garmin electronics dominate the dash, and these aren’t your standard chart plotter set up. This system will actually navigate the charts autonomously, plotting a course from, say, Runaway Bay to Surfers Paradise and running it without you touching the wheel. And if something comes up, another vessel, a sandbar, a momentary lapse of faith in the technology, yank the wheel and it drops straight out of autopilot without argument. (I don’t think it will be that long before the ‘wake me up when we get there’ software is going to be available in boats of this size.) The Williamson Turn feature on the Garmin is worth a mention too. (The Williamson Turn is a man-overboard manoeuvre used to bring a vessel back to its original track line on a reciprocal course. It is ideal for night rescues, poor visibility, or when the person in the water is no longer in sight.) In a dramatic situation like man overboard, or not so dramatic like a fascinator being blown away, one press of a button and the system executes a precise 60-degree starboard turn, sweeps all the way around to port, and brings you back to the exact coordinates to where you hit the button before putting itself in neutral and waiting for further instructions. That’s seamanship with a safety net, and it works.
MY DRUTHERS
I had two minor gripes at the helm. The windscreen has a kink at roughly eye level where it angles back, and at certain angles it plays tricks with the horizon, a slight optical distortion that you notice more than you’d like at speed. But Dan is onto this and a new design is already on the way. Then the seats, while well-shaped and secure, sit a touch low. At 6’2” my eyeline was clearing the top of the dash, which was fine, but anyone shorter might want a cushion. That said, the seats are snug and hold you firmly in place when you’re standing which at these speeds is often the better option.
FUEL AND THOUGHT
The manoeuvrability of this boat deserves its own paragraph, possibly its own chapter. Twin 350 horsepower engines plus a semi-speed bow thruster — and that last detail matters. Most bow thrusters are binary, on or off, one speed, take it or leave it. The Grand G980’s thruster can be feathered up and down, giving you proportional grunt as the situation demands. Combine that with the joystick control that ties the thruster and both engines together, and you can walk this boat sideways into a wind, just like larger modern vessels — and you have to stop and remember this is all in a 10-metre package. The alternative is to split the throttles and work it old school, which is also entirely possible for those of us who like to feel like we’ve earned the berth. Either way, the grunt is there in quantities that border on the irresponsible. Two 350s don’t leave you wondering whether you have enough power, they leave you wondering whether you have enough restraint.
BENEATH THE SURFACE
Down in the cabin, accessed through the bow entry rather than a poky side door, the Grand G980 is refreshingly honest about what it is and what it isn’t. Coming in from the bow makes a real difference in a boat this size — it opens up the entry and gives you room to actually turn around once you’re down there.
The berth is genuine. Fill in the centre piece and two adults can lie down in reasonable comfort. Dan and I checked this, in the interest of thorough journalism, and I can confirm there is adequate room for two lofty grown men without the sort of accidental intimacy that ruins road trips. Headroom is nearly enough — an inch or two shorter and I’d have been fine — but nobody is going to be spending long afternoons down here. That’s not what the boat is for.
The toilet is, as these things go on a boat capable of cracking 100 kilometres an hour, strictly an emergency proposition. But there’s a philosophical argument to be made here – any vessel capable of getting you to a marina at that kind of pace is never more than a few minutes from a proper facility. The dunny on the Grand G980 is chiefly there for the ladies and for moments of genuine urgency. It does its job. Move on.
THE COOK’S TOUR
The galley carries a gas hob, which is functional but not, in my view, the best use of the space. I’d pull it out, free up the storage underneath for a pair of fridges loaded with the essentials and run a portable barbecue off a canister on the deck. More practical, less permanent, and you’re not carrying a fixed gas bottle around on a boat doing triple-figure speeds. But that’s just me.
ANCHORS AWAY
The anchor well, tucked just below the bow sunbed cushions, is just below a small flap of cushion and you can watch the anchor come up from all the way back at the helm.
ALOFT
The roof, roughly two and a half metres of solid, flat superstructure — is sturdy enough to carry paddleboards, roof bags or, if you’re the type of person who anchors at cliff bases and rides mountain bikes to the summit, a mountain bike. I am not that person, but I appreciate that the Grand G980 doesn’t judge.
WHERE IT COUNTS
Out on the water, the Grand G980 makes its case emphatically. We weren’t on the Broadwater at 52 knots — that would be a conversation with the water police rather than a sea trial but in a full-lock turn at that speed, there was zero cavitation. The hull simply gripped and swept through the arc without a wobble, a skip, or a moment of uncertainty. A big wash from passing traffic? Completely dry. Not one spit of water aboard, front to back.
DRY UNDERFOOT
One of the many features of this Garmin Yamaha nuptials is the fish-mode function, which locks the transom to GPS coordinates and the boat holds that position while the bow swings freely with the wind and current. At speed, in turns, in wash, this is a boat that handles with considerably more composure than its performance figures might suggest.
SAVED FOR LAST
The rear sun deck is the Grand G980’s final trick and it’s a good one. The seats flip down flat, transforming the stern into a clear, open path from the cockpit directly to the swim platform so no hurdling over folded upholstery, just an easy step with no squeezing past people, a wide and easy step down to the water. The Grand G980 is, when you add it all up, a boat that refuses to be one thing. It’s a day boat, a weekend boat, a fishing platform, a water sports machine, a navigation system that increasingly helps drive itself, and with the seats down and the tables out a surprisingly civilised place to have dinner. Whether you’re threading through the Seaway at speed with your hair on fire or swinging at anchor with eight people around a table and a portable barbecue doing its best work, the Grand G980 handles both ends of that spectrum with more composure and more grace than seems reasonable for something with this much horsepower on the back.
SPECIFICATIONS
LOA 10m
Width 3.4m
Recommended Engine 2 x 350 HP
Boat Weight 2350kg
Fuel Tank 600L
Water Tank 105L
PERFORMANCE DATA
RPM KNOTS L/PH
1000 5 9
2000 10 24
3000 25 54
4000 37 80
5000 47 125
6000 54 243
