T

he Galeon 460 Fly has quite the party trick,

though it’s arguable as to whether Yarmouth,

Isle of Wight is the best place to display such

a thing. Yarmouth is a quaint, traditional

harbour where a harbourmaster in a Dory

meets you on arrival, there is an annual

festival of gaff-rigged yachts and, until

recently, visitors had to lash their boats

between piles as pontoons were considered cheating. So when,

at the push of a button, the sections of bulwark either side of the

460’s cockpit slowly folded down to provide a pair of balconies

suspended over the water, it didn’t come as much of a surprise

that no one batted an eyelid. As we slotted the stainless-steel

railings into the balconies, the harbourmaster lead an ageing

Hallberg-Rassy past us at a distance of about 3ft, and neither

captains’ gaze strayed our way.

Not the right audience perhaps, and I must admit that at the

outset, I thought these folding balconies had the whiff of gimmick

about them. Having now seen them in action, I’ve completely

changed my mind. With a beam of 14ft 4in

(4.37m), the 460 is already broader than the

Prestige 460 and Sealine F430 but with the

platforms down, the amount of genuinely

useable space in the cockpit almost doubles.

The effect is spectacular.

The 460 is the smallest boat that Galeon will

fi t the balconies to. They are a £40,000 option

and, due to their weight, you can’t have them

with the smallest twin Volvo Penta 435hp

engines. However, the mechanism is gratifyingly

simple, with a lot less to go wrong than you might think. A set of

stainless-steel hinges allow each platform to pivot downward and

they are raised and lowered by a single hydraulic ram, controlled

by switches in the cockpit. The mechanical gubbins are no more

complex than those of a passerelle and far less vulnerable than the

mechanisms of a hydraulic bathing platform that spend their lives

submerged in saltwater. Lowering the platforms takes a matter of

seconds but once you’ve slotted in the fi ve railings on either side,

it’s more like a ten-minute job. The yard doesn’t recommend

travelling at speed with the platforms down but if you’re

mooching around the corner at displacement speeds, it’s fi ne.

These wing-like appendages are just the

beginning of the clever stuff going on in the

cockpit. The aft saloon windows on both sides

slide forward creating a bar area complete with

stools on the port balcony and a bench to

starboard with a two-way backrest so you can

sit, drink in hand, and gaze out over the water.

There’s more: the clever cockpit doors, built

in house by Galeon, split and then slide to

one side to leave a totally unencumbered route

between cockpit and saloon. The aft section of

The aft saloon windows slide forward creating

a bar area with stools on the port balcony and

to starboard, a bench so you can sit, drink in

hand, and gaze out over the water

Our top speed

on test was

29.1 knots

The platforms

transform the

boat at anchor

BOAT REPORT