WILD WATER: TALENT SCOUT

摘要

It is a hot mid-spring Florida afternoon when I first lay eyes upon the Scout 425 LXF at the end of a long dock just off PGA Boulevard in North Palm Beach, Florida. The sun is beating on my forehead as the wooden planks creak beneath my feet, and the pretty center console shimmers in the middle distance like an oasis. Scout sure does do a nice job with its lines. The 425 flows from bow to transom with an easy, powerful grace reminiscent of the curved mouth of a bowhead whale. But at the end of this artful sheer line sits another set of masterpieces all their own - twin 6oohp Mercury Verado 600s. Vroom, vroom! In the past decade or so, market forces have pushed the demand for larger and larger center consoles. At the turn of the millennium a center console over 40ft would have been nearly unthinkable, but these days a 40-footer constitutes mid-range for some builders. (Scout itself has a 530 LXF that all but dwarfs the 425.) And in a feat of marinized symbiotic evolution, outboard engines have grown in size accordingly, perhaps most famously with the monsters produced by now-defunct Seven Marine, and now with these 600s from Mercury.