I love it when I buy a product and I know exactly what has gone into its creation. I love it when I look at a piece of furniture and find more to it than immediately meets the eye- when you remove a drawer and find beautiful dovejoints on the carcass, or when you dismantle an amplifier and find immaculately hand-soldered components and a neat, well-conceived layout. I also love honesty in design. I love when the inner workings are expressed as a vital part of the whole. I admire when the oily bits are seen as important as the shiny bits. At the recent London Boat Show I was delighted to come face to face with a boat which very definitely wears its heart on its sleeve, while offering welcome relief from white fibreglass that dominated the show. Anytec are a Swedish company I had never heard of, but based on the photo above, I’ve already decided that I rather like them. “Our goal is to build the worlds best experience machines in aluminium, designed from the ground up to let you meet all possible challenges you might face while on the sea.” “Experience machines“.  What a fantastic category of thing that is. And the latter half of the mission statement above, well, that’s what a boat is all about, surely? And to do that while being outrageously fast adds further gloss. Of course, all I can do here at the boat show is go by physical appearance. So let’s take a look and judge for ourselves. With no cloak of paint with which to disguise deficiencies, the 747Cab bares its very soul. Everywhere you look is evidence of a team of people putting a lot of care and effort into assembling something they really care about. Even better is that perfection hasn’t been attained. The welds aren’t robot-precise, instead they’re distinctly human. They’ve been performed by Men. Everything on an Anytec is welded; there are no troublesome bolts to eventually rattle themselves free, so you’re looking at a rigid structure which will go on taking punishment for as long as its soft fleshy pilots can stand. With 300 Yamaha horses leashed to the transom the 747Cab is said to be a 50 knot machine. The emphasis is not on luxury, it should be said, rather safety and extreme fitness for purpose. The occupants have plenty of sturdy handholds against which to brace themselves, the helm seat is gas-damped to absorb slam and the windscreen wipers are there to prevent high-speed collisions rather than to allow a picturesque vista. Mind you, there are cup holders. Of M400: “Our patented surface treatment is used on all our boats. M400 strengthens the material, gives the boat a fantastic surface while preventing oxidation.” This seems to be some kind of magical polish which never wears off and represents the only “…mmm, right” that I can see anywhere on the boat, either in the flesh or on their very well presented website. But, hey, why should I doubt them? I guess it reflects my years of cynicism over “Diamondbrite” and similar profit-heavy showroom delights. Anyway, the 747Cab is reputed to be extremely seaworthy, very fast and as durable as you need it to be, but right now it works for me as an object of desire, pure and simple. (All images copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2016 apart from 2nd down used without permission from Anytec)