Sirena is quickly making a name for itself when it comes to building fast, modern trawler yachts. Could the 68 be its best model yet?
Some boats just feel right from the moment you step on board. Whether it’s the choice of materials or the cohesiveness of the layout, there are times when after the first few paces around the bathing platform and cockpit you suspect that the boat you’re standing on is well sorted. The Sirena 68 is one of those boats.
It should be good. Not only does it share a hull with its excellent predecessor, the 64, but Sirena called upon the expertise of two powerhouses of the naval architecture world in Dutch studio Cor D. Rover and Argentinian Germán Frers. Both have designed for the superyacht sector so maybe it should come as no surprise that the boat feels 10ft longer than it actually is.
The tone is set at the stern where there is a hydraulic bathing platform so large that you could mount a decent tender on it and still have plenty of space to move around, and a suitably tall door set into the transom that opens to reveal a crew space that will no doubt be the envy of crews living aboard almost every other 70-footer. We often say that crew cabins on boats like this could qualify as guest cabins but here it truly is the case. Headroom is excellent and with an attractive galley and mess area it’s so much more than just a couple of single berths and a cramped bathroom.
Crank open a watertight door to find the engineroom, which is immaculately engineered and laid out in such a way that access to daily service items on the Volvo Penta D13 blocks couldn’t be easier. This is a Category A semi-displacement cruiser with a fuel capacity of over 5,000 litres. It means business and you can tell as much from the quality of the engine installation.
DRIVE TIME
We caught up with the boat during the Cannes Boat Show so, as is the way with these things, there was little time to appreciate the machinery before it was fired up and we were fighting our way out of the harbour with the throng of other craft on their last sea trials of the day. Testing from Cannes always throws up unique circumstances, the most obvious of which is the number of people on board. The Sirena is certified to safely carry the 14 people, including journos and crew, that we had on board but I would bet that it won’t host that many the majority of the time. And this being a press sea trial most of those bodies were up on the flybridge, huddled around the helm in order to harvest the performance data pouring out of the MFDs. Despite the extraordinary load the 68 had to deal with on its top deck it coped impressively well, even if the top speed was a little down on the yard’s quoted 28-knot maxi
