€1.4 Million Classic Yacht Tour : 1966 James A Silver 23 Metre

We are in very much the classic area of the Palmer Yacht Show. Some beautiful boats here and the one I'm going to take you on board is this gorgeous motorboat. She's called Silver Chevalier and she was built by the James Silver Yard in Scotland in 1966. She's older than I am, that takes some doing! But yes, an absolute beautiful classic and a very very original feeling. She's made out of mahogany. I'm going to take you on board and give you a tour. This is very different to the kind of stuff that we normally show on Aquaholic and very very interesting and rather lovely actually. I'm quite taken with this and right away you know this is just it's just gorgeous isn't it? It feels like we've entered the set of the Swallows and Amazons or something like that. Just fantastic. So this is your main outside area. We've got the bimini as you can see overhead to give us a bit of shade. We're going to take a wander around all of the decks but I'm going to take you inside first of all and we'll take that in. So the first thing we find is the wheelhouse. What I like is everything just feels so original. They've not loaded it up with modern stuff. We've still got the original sailor VHF radio for example. Look at this. There's a stabilizer on this one. Switch gear over here and then these wonderful old Morse controls and this wheel. Just brilliant. Interesting fact about this yacht is the fact that she's changed hands since 1966 twice. She's only had three owners. Incredible. These are clear view screens so what they used to have instead of wipers was these spin at ultra high speed and it means that as the water hits them it just gets flung off. It doesn't stand a chance and so you always have a clear view no matter how much spray or rain or anything else is getting across there. That's fabulous isn't it? Let's head on down and I'll show you the rest of it. Again it all feels so wonderfully original. It's very very Hercule Poirot isn't it? I am not a silly little Frenchman I am a silly little Belgian. I think he once said. That was the worst impersonation ever of Hercule Poirot wasn't it? Congratulations you heard it here first. This is a bit of storage in here and then we've got two guest cabins and the owner's cabin. That one there. Look how original this all feels. This is fantastic isn't it? A bit of storage and a sink in there. The heads is the day heads basically but it's shared also by these two cabins is in here. Again the sink tucked away in behind there and then there's a little hip bath and a shower. If we come back again there's another guest cabin very similar style of thing here with a little sink and then again there's a bit of storage. I'm going to do that one. Look at these light switches. It just feels so original. You know you can't help thinking this is you know how it came out of the yard and then back here so this door here is through to the owner's cabin. This has its own ensuite that's tucked away in here and again the hip bath and the shower. That is character isn't it? What a lovely spot. What a lovely boat. Storage across here. Nice little seat there to tuck yourself away etc. You wouldn't be tucking yourself away with your mobile phone when this boat was built would you? You'd be tucked away with a good book in any possible way. Let's come right back. Fantastic. Look at the skylight above us here. Brilliant. Okay let's come out of here and we'll head forward. The crew domain is forward. You really do feel like you're a step back in time with this. It's magnificent. Curious to see what's in here. Oh crockery. These look like they slide out. Brilliant. Lovely lovely lovely. Down here then this is pretty much all crew area down here. So the galley is the first thing that we come across. A couple of slightly more modern things. Is this the world's first Miele dishwasher? It could be couldn't it? And then we've got microwaves put in. Of course this sort of stuff wouldn't have been put in in 1966. This has had a little bit of modernising and rightly so. You need some decent facilities down here. Other things we've got down here then. The crew cabin is down here. I'm not sure what this is. It's a hoove or something. Washing machine? Maybe. Must be mustn't it? There's another appliance for the forward which I thought was a washing machine but perhaps that's a dryer. Anyway it's not got too hung up on washing machines. There's a crew cabin here. That's the captain's cabin. There's storage in behind there. And then forward again. That's what I thought was a washing machine but is in fact perhaps a dryer. And that may be right. A nice little area here. More refrigeration. Another microwave. There is another heads in here. And a shower in behind there. And then forward again. You can accommodate another two crew in here. There we are. Fantastic. There's access to the chain locker in here. Excellent. Okay let's go and look at the motors. There's an access here so you can come straight out from here up onto the deck or take a wander around and you'll see the other side of that shortly. And this is down to the engine room. And I guess that this has been upgraded. I don't think that would have been what was original in 1966. I might be wrong but my guess is that's probably had a bit of upgrading. Check this out in here. These are a pair of Cummins diesel engines. Look at this. I don't know if these are original but I'm going to guess they probably are because they certainly look it. And the engines of this period were notoriously unstressed. They weren't turbocharged and ringing every last drop of power out of them. They were just heavy duty diesel engines so they could well be. Not a fast boat of course. It's a gentleman's cruiser so you cruise at a very gentlemanly 10 knots. You get 11 knots flat out and you've got about 800 miles of range. Isn't that lovely? Fantastic. Back out of here then. Look at this. Let's go and take a turn around the decks shall we? There we go. That looks like a sight gauge for the fuel tank. I think that is. Fabulous. This is something a bit different isn't it? Look at that. Not short of character is she? Okay we'll come back round here and take a wander up the front. This is a boarding steps. A boarding steps? These are boarding steps. So they fold through 90 degrees so they're flat and then they lower down at an angle and you can bring a tender alongside and walk up the steps. Open that rail there and walk in onto the boat. And if we head on forward we've got this lovely bow area. These steps take us up onto the coach roof. There's some bathing up there. This lovely mast as well. Fantastic. Back here we've got the horns. We've got the radar and we've got the searchlight up there as well. Love these big vents. This is this area that we saw that comes up from the crew cabin. Remember that ladder that went up? You can come out onto the deck. That's the way you come through so that top bit slides forward. These doors open and you step out. And then a couple of steamer chairs. Have steamer chairs ever been more appropriately deployed than that? I don't think so. And then we come right up to the bow here. That's fabulous isn't it? Just superb. Let's take a last look back. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So there you go. Something very different. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that one. Massive thanks to Camper and Nicholson. They organised this tour. Massive thanks of course to you guys for watching it and we'll catch you on another one of these real soon. Take care. Bye bye.