Hunton Gazelle XRS28 Formally Owned By Lady Arran

Where do we start with a listing like this? The History Hells angels is a Hunton gazelle xrs 28 built in 1988 by the legendary Jeff Hunton. For those of you that know Hunton boats, Jeff himself was a successful racer in the UKwho took his passion for racing and blended it into the boats he built and sold in everyday cruisers. Jeff was successful in many boats across the fleet he sold establishing a solid base and pedigree for his boats. 1998 saw the birth of Hells angels a power cruiser boat that lured Lady Arran from retirement to re-enter the power cruiser class in her 70's, where she raced the boat for 3 years in a number of races before permanently retiring from racing.
Lady Arran herself as a racer held the record for being the fastest woman on water and was legendary and highly respected on the race scene. As part of the cruiser class in the mid 80's the requirement was to race a standard cruiser but under race conditions - this include a strict criteria for the classification even down to ensuring you had a hamper on board filled with the appropriate list of plates, cutlery , and cups ! This requirement and coupled with her passion for speed led her to Jeff Hunton and the choice of Hunton to see her complete her last few years racing . One question that everyone ask is the name - no we are not affiliated to any chapter, it was more to do with Lady Arran's humour for the name of her grandchildren - Hells angels. On lady Arrans retirement the boat continued to race for a number years when a number of the old racers bought the boat and continued to race in Guernsey, round the island, Poole bay and Cowes Poole Cowes.
After her retirement circa mid 90's the boat was converted back to a power cruiser - this was after all what she was built for. The transformation of the boat underwent a new identity and Lady M was born sporting a new blue interior and paint job. Fast forward to 2019 and over a cup of tea and chat about the up and coming Cowes Torquay 60th anniversary and a chance spotting of the Hunton on classifieds board, discussion around entering the classic class for the race saw the team going to look at a very sad looking shell of a boat with no engines, drives, interior, and left outside a workshop where she had stood for a number of years the following day with a deal being struck for her. With limited time before the race reality finally hit us as to the work required to get her ready for the race. Reliability, performance and originality in mind we had made a plan as to what we needed to do.
The Boat New engines was the order of the day and the selection of 2 new Mercruiser 350 MPI 300 BHP where purchased this matched the original engines first fitted but just updated and improved the original carburettor version Replacement from the original Alpha drives saw new Bravo ones fitted with new housings and shields. The upgrade from Alpha to Bravos drives eliminated any reliability issues know to be the Achilles heel on the boat. With the wait for the engines, we turned to the body work, structurally the boat was 100% just blue! Wanting to recreate the boat she once was we set about rubbing her down ready for a new paint job , much to our surprise we found the original paint underneath which we worked with and spent most of lockdown sanding and polishing the gel coat to what she is today ! Being the big solid girl she is we needed to think about moving her around - this proved to be no mean feat in its self, trying to find a trailer for her to fit.
We managed to secure a R6 SBS tri axle trailer. The final piece of the jigsaw was the interior, with some pictures of the original layout we managed to replicate as close as possible her original scheme. With everything finally coming to plan then saw covid hit the race season for a second time and a postponement. 2021 finally saw the old girl put her dancing shoes on and compete in a number of races that year to become the class 4 Ukopra season champion - not bad for her first outing. The boat handled some tough condition in her stride and never missed a beat with the roar of the engines to power her on through the water with ease.
Cowes Torquay 60th & Cowes Poole Races 2021 with Commentary. - Bing video 22mins 31 secs will show the footage of the boat. Facebook Hunton Gazelle powerboat XRS28 restoration project It is due to a change in circumstance for the team that we have the unfortunate regret to have to sell P-8 Hells angels. She is very well document and progress and extra photos/videos of the boats restoration can be seen on the Facebook page. The boat would make just a simple family cruiser if wanted, or could easily be let loose at the weekend if wanted to go and race.
Everything is there in the boat with the new crate engines (circa 25-50 hours at most) new drives pumps trailer etc. All worth far more in parts then the boat as whole! We have set the price of this boat realistically (and at a considerable loss to us), althoughwe as a team need to move on we would like to see the boat passed on as a going concern and hopefully kept as a decent cruiser or continued to be raced as a boat with such a history it would be a shame to just break her up for parts . I will Reiterate this boat is of going concern, would i get in it tomorrow and race it,without a doubt and have no problems in knowing the reliability of it . Is it a Sunseeker you going to lounge around on sipping champagne on in Monaco - not quite , it will need some work doing to it as it is 34 years old ( although she is very photogenic on the water ).
She is not for the faint hearted, and is a lot of boat to handle with the power, but equally she will be more than happy to just rundle round as you want. If you have any questions i m sure there will be! Please don’t hesitate to ask. This boat is listed elsewhere and could be removed at any time.