DAVE’S CUSTOM BOATS MACH 26 / MERCRUISER HP500 I BRAVO I

Their rousing Mach tunnel senes, knocked out in variations of 22 feet and 26 feet, has acquitted itself most admirably in that regard, and we’ve documented the stepped 0GB platform as one of the fastest full-sized hulls in creation. Fact is, we’ve caught the 22-foot on radar in excess of 100 mph several times (with a peak of 125- plus), and the 26-foot has run through our traps at over 110 mph.

As for the bownder version of the Mach, there are two schools of thought, each of which registers merit. Whereas one group would have no part in defacing the lines of the hard-deck version, another strain of family boater sees no sense in wasting all that deck displacement on fiberglass— especially when it can be converted into comfortable, stylish seating. The open- bow version commands a $1,500 premium over the closed-deck, accounts for about a third of DCB sales, and loses none of its style points in the transition.

T he Boat The Mach 26 open-bow is an eight-passenger screamer

with a comfortable and finely-detailed forward passenger section, a padded center- section that can be used for reclining in the

shade or as a super-sized storage area, and an expansive cockpit that has DCB’s edge-seeking signature all over it.

Our test machine was rigged up with

MerCruiser’s 470-horse (prop-rated)

HP500EFI, teamed with a Bravo drive running 1.5:1 gears and a 15x28-inch Bravo four-blade-—a popular and predictable setup designed to build reliability into an exceptional performance package. Dual-ram

hydraulic steering from WPM, Dana tabs (with Bluewater indicators) and a drive

shower assembly rounded out the performance elements. An In-Control foot throttle is a no-cost option (the side shift/throttle combination is also available) on all the DCB big-power setups. Trick Dana billet swim steps, hogged from billet and pewter- anodized, were add-ons over the slammed- out base boat.

Nobody uses the look of natural metal

to better cosmetic advantage than DCB, where pewter looms large these days. The clean, finished metallic gloss dressed switch panels that were cut to specified dash sections. Pewter-on-white bezels lent a rich tone to oversized, liquid-filled Gaff rig tach and speedo, and other matching gauges, which were spaciously spread over the port side of the Mach’s large, driver-friendly dash. The Dino wheel sported a matching billet extension, and a

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T here was a time when the family bowrider was viewed as somewhat of a grocery-getter on water, the liquid-launch equivalent of a wood-paneled station wagon. Today’s custom open-bow family boat is capable of a somewhat different stance—forward seating is no longer the exclusive domain of the meek.

Dave’s Custom Boats is one of the architects of this new era, in which a fully vested muscieboat can wear all of the trimmings of a dedicated family vehicle one minute, and explode into a liquefied locomotive the next.