I’ve sea-trialed my fair share of Marlow Explorers over the years and it’s my observation that there’s at least one general aspect they all seem to share, even the comparatively techy ones like the 70E we tested recently on the Manatee River, not far from Snead Island. Well beyond the high-falutin’ construction techniques and numerous other futuristic developments, there’s always lots of traditionalism evident just about everywhere. And when you think about it, this state of affairs is probably just an natural outgrowth of the personality of the honcho and founder of Marlow Marine, David Marlow. Indeed, the guy’s building some of the most technologically sophisticated yachts on the planet these days, and there’s more technology on the way over the next few years. But hey, besides being a technophile, Marlow’s a deeply traditional person with a sailboat-racing pedigree, a biography that includes running boat yards and working on shrimp boats in Mexico, and a couple of deep, cultural taproots that hark straight back to the old-style Florida commercial fishing villages of Apalachicola and Cortez where he grew up.

So is it any wonder that poking around a Marlow Explorer tends to both push a person toward the future (from the technological standpoint) but concomitantly pull him back toward earlier, simpler, and perhaps more romantic days when boats looked like boats, inside and out, thanks to louvered-teak cabinet and locker doors, chromed reading lights crafted in Denmark, fiddles on flat surfaces to keep stuff from rolling off in a seaway, anchor windlasses with hefty wildcats and screw-type break-bands, and thick teak-planked decks reminiscent of the old, square-rigger days?

No, I don’t think so. And if you look at the pictures shown here for a minute or two, I’m guessing you’ll wholeheartedly agree.