Don't let the whimsical name fool you: This Goldfish 38 Supersport is an uncompromising, high-performance RIB built for speed and serious offshore capability
Goldfish is such a wonderfully unlikely fish to name a high- performance boat after. Piranha, maybe; Barracuda, sure; Stingray, absolutely. But Goldfish? Better yet when the boat in question is such a hunkered-down, pared-back RIB that you could imagine the SBS using one to storm an island.
Powerboat racer Pål Sollie is the man behind the Norwegian company and the boats are his designs, built uncompromisingly and to a very high standard with just one thing in mind: high performance.
My introduction to the Goldfish 38 Supersport was in 2018, when I was invited to the Goldfish rally running from the South of France to Corsica. Unfortunately, the weather was too rough to make the crossing comfortably, so we improvised and ran the boats along the south coast instead.
But first we had to take the 38 Supersport from its home port of La Napoule to the mustering point of Le Lavandou, about 50 miles west. We met in the early evening and discovered that the batteries were flat.
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A couple of hours passed while an engineer was found and new batteries sourced. By the time we set off down the narrow estuary, time was short and a stiff breeze was rattling the tree branches.
Beneath the aft sunpad lay a pair of Mercruiser TDI 4.2 litre V8 370hp diesel engines in a staggered configuration. Staggering them, rather than fitting them side by side allows the engines to be positioned closer to the centreline and therefore sunk lower into the vee of the hull. Unusual on a leisure boat, as it takes up more room, it’s common on raceboats. As is the deep-vee, double-stepped, narrow-beam hull.
Staggered V8 engines sit low in the deep-vee hull, contributing to the impressive handling and seakeeping
Once clear of the estuary, the speed rose in tandem with the huge rooster tail of spray from the semi-surface sterndrives. While 40 knots felt like an easy canter across water choppy enough to produce a few white caps, once around the headland the power went on and things got a lot more serious.
With the drive and trims set just so, 50 knots came and went, the boat absolutely smoking across the Mediterranean, feeling utterly rock solid. Still, the speed piled on incrementally, until the GPS SOG readout was nudging 60 knots. It should have been frightening, but the Goldfish felt super stable and absolutely built for purpose – because it was.
Just one hour later, and with the sun now below the horizon, we were easing into Le Lavandou. Frankly, if you’d wanted to do that exact trip any faster, you’d have needed a helicopter. At that exact moment, the Goldfish 38 Supersport was the coolest boat in the world!
Goldfish 38 Supersport specifications
YEAR: 2018
LOA: 39ft 0in (11.8m)
BEAM:10ft 6in (3.2m)
ENGINES: Twin Mercruiser TDI 4.2 V8 370hp diesel
SPEED: 60 knots
PRICE WHEN NEW: €253,000
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