The Boats Behind The Grand Tour Presents: Seamen
While many of you aren’t interested in The Grand Tour leaving the car keys on the coffee table and instead looking towards boats, we can’t wait for Seamen to air this coming Friday 13 December. But while we’ve gone into great detail about what we’re expecting, we haven’t touched properly on the boats they’re sailing in this episode.
Jeremy Clarkson’s PBR (Patrol Boat, Riverine)
Used during the Vietnam War, this patrol boat is used for basic river patrol thanks to its low-draft and high speed. Clarkson explains to Hammond how it is powered by two V8 engines, both produces 350hp each. You can see a similar boat being used in the Hollywood motion picture, Apocalypse Now. This boat was apparently built specially for the show.
Richard Hammond’s Scarab
This high-performance power boat produces a total of 850hp from two V8 engines. According to Reddit, a similar Scarab with similar power will reach a top speed of around 60mph and run faster in choppy waters compared to still lakes and rivers. It’s usually found in the waterways of Miami where they’re used as tools for boasting.
James May’s 1939 Wooden River Cruiser
While we can’t find much information about this boat, but after a Google, they’re often described as antiques, and offer very little power compared to Clarkson and Hammond’s choices for this episode. Only offering one engine in most models, it is slow, but similar classic boats were sometimes used to pull water skiers in the official European water-ski championships.
So yes, while we have no cars in this episode, we have the trio sodding about and being funny as usual, and surely that’s something we can’t say no to? Episode 2 will bring back the cars, however. You can read about that here.