Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Yachting

01. IT SEEMS TO FLOAT The Legacy Machine Thunderdome ($280,000) is built with a hemi-spherical balance wheel. 02. NO, NOT STEEL… Tantalum versions are available. The metal’s name comes from Tantalus, a villain in Greek mythology. 03. DESIGN BRIEF MB&F told the designers to come up with “the craziest, most cinematic three-axis tourbillon ever.”…

COMMON WISDOM SAYS CATAMARANS DON’T LIKE SHORT, CHOPPY seas, especially the kind of maelstrom created when a north-running Gulf Stream meets a leftover northerly breeze. “Washing-machine sea” doesn’t quite describe it. ¶ But the Fountaine Pajot MY 40 power catamaran ate up the confused sea and then asked for more. Running bow on, beam to the lumps, this cat just licked her paws and seemingly smirked, “That’s all ya got?” ¶ The MY 40 I got aboard will be a liveaboard cruiser for an experienced couple. Frankly, I envy them. French charter cats can lean toward easy maintenance at the expense of style, but the MY 40 surprised me with both. It has tactile fabrics, including on the settees in the salon, and lots of solid, light-oak joinerwork. ¶ The…

I STARED AT THE PEARL 62’s image above, switching back and forth between placing my thumb over the flybridge and then removing it. The exercise, to my eye, displays lines that appear inspired by an express cruiser—but with the added function of a flybridge. That flybridge does not distract from her sporty look and instead flows with the yacht’s superstructure. ¶ Bill Dixon, who also penned the builder’s 80- and 95-footers, did the exterior design and naval architecture on the Pearl 62. Dixon drew motion into the yacht’s profile via the raked window forward, the curved glass reaching aft in the superstructure and the fiberglass line between the panes flanking the salon. That line rises up and aft, similar to the look of a wake breaking behind the transom. The…

Oftentimes, powercats end up looking like wedding cakes. They start wide at the base and narrow with each successive level. Making them look good is a real challenge. ¶ All credit, then, to Lagoon’s regular preferred creative partners, automotive-design legend Patrick Le Quément and VPLP, which respectively take the bows for exterior design and naval architecture on the Lagoon Sixty 7. It’s a catamaran that manages to unite elegance and functionality. ¶ The Sixty 7 and its sailing sistership, the Sixty 5, replace the outgoing Lagoon 630 Motor Yacht and Lagoon 620. Around 80 of the 630s were built from 2012 through this past January, and around 170 of the 620s were delivered in the 10 years since its 2009 debut. ¶ Usable space is the key evolution from old…

In 1982, an ambitious businessman in his early 20s set up a boatbuilding shop in Ajman, the smallest of the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed Al Shaali, a captain’s son, had a lifelong love of the water and fishing. The first boats from his shop, located north of Dubai, were 14-foot-long runabouts for the local market. Soon, there were cruisers and fishing boats in the 20- to 30-foot range. The Middle East remained a lucrative market for the company, called Gulf Craft, for many years. ¶ More facilities opened to handle new models, with nearly all disciplines in-house, but it wasn’t enough. Al Shaali knew that true growth meant tapping into new markets. By establishing relationships with dealers in other countries, Gulf Craft began building an international client base—except for the…

THE TIARA YACHTS 50 Coupe was built off the same running surface as the company’s 4800 Convertible. Optional twin 750 hp Volvo Penta IPS950 diesels powered the 50 Coupe we got aboard. Top-end speed: 34.6 knots. (Standard power was twin IPS800s.) Belowdecks is a full-beam master stateroom amidships with an athwartwhips berth. There’s also a forepeak VIP and two heads. ¶ The galley is aft to service the cockpit and salon. ¶ At press time, there were four Tiara 50 Coupes on the market, ranging from $895,000 to $1.19 million. FROM THE ARCHIVE “The design team has cleverly disguised her mass with a graceful reverse sheerline, an airy superstructure and a contrasting color on the topsides, which mimics the S-shaped sheerline of a sport-fishing boat and seems to lengthen the…

WAJER RUNABOUTS are a staple in some of the glitziest superyacht anchorages the world over. Now, the Dutch builder is upping the glamour ante with the 38 L, its first limousine model. The 38 L is a Vripack design with standard twin 350 hp Volvo Penta D4-DPs and optional twin 480 hp Volvo Penta D6-IPS650s (top speed is 46 knots). The boat can ferry as many as 16 guests comfortably to the dock. • Whom It’s For: With a 37-foot length overall and 12-foot-2-inch beam—and meant to be carried aboard—the 38 L is built for a superyacht owner who values the precision embodied in Dutch design. • Picture This: Your yacht is anchored in a stiff chop off Sardinia, and you have dinner reservations at 8. Nobody wants to get sprayed…

BY SOME estimates, three-quarters of the world’s charter business takes place every summer in the Mediterranean. And the stretch of coastline known as the West Med, including the French and Italian rivieras, continues to be the most popular region within this most popular place. ¶ The beauty of the West Med is that it changes constantly—and yet not at all. Many of the towns and buildings have stood for centuries but have evolved, say, from family chateaus into public museums. The Cannes Film Festival and Monaco Grand Prix continue to be the season’s kickof events each May, but they lure increasingly impressive superyachts and A-list stars. ¶ Antibes, France, is often used as the starting point for charters, thanks to the nearby airport at Nice and all of the yacht…

MY FIRST TRIP THROUGH DECEPTION PASS UNFURLED at almost 40 knots and likely shaved off some years of my life. This aptly named pass separates the northern reaches of Washington state’s Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island’s southern shores and is home to underwater rocks, strong currents and an often-piping wind. Fortunately, our skipper threaded the needle just so, but this didn’t stop me from silently wishing for a powerful forward-looking sonar that would buy him significantly better situational awareness and greater reaction time than our bow-mounted lookout (me) could afford. ¶ Now, nine years later, FarSounder’s Argos 350 system stands ready to help yachtsmen thread all sorts of nautical needles (but still not at 40 knots). ¶ The desire to peer beneath the waves ahead of one’s vessel is ancient…

U SAFE BUOYS ARE THE first self-propelled, ring-type lifesaving device. U Safe buoys employ dual turbines (think of PWC drives), which are enclosed within each of the hull’s two legs. The turbines can propel the buoys at almost 8 knots. ¶ The U Safe buoys are operated using waterproof (IP68) and buoyant joystick remote controls, delivering line-of-sight range via radio-frequency signals. A U Safe Buoy can retrieve a man overboard at speeds pushing 3 knots, or it can rescue two MOBs at a slower pace. ¶ While the buoys look simple, Nick Bice—U Safe’s commercial director and a veteran of two round-the-world Volvo Ocean Races—says the crux of creating the buoy involved figuring out the right technologies and software. “Every component is custom-made, including the printed circuit boards, batteries and…

YES, CAPT. JEAN-LUC PICARD FANS, that is nearly a real-life holodeck for a yacht. ¶ But, no, the team at DLBA Naval Architects in Chesapeake, Virgina, didn’t get the idea from Star Trek. Instead, the vision came from working with virtual reality for yacht design, according to Jeff Bowles, DLBA’s director. His team realized that, in a room about 12-by-12 feet with movable furniture, yacht guests could go pretty much anywhere their minds care to wander. ¶ So, in the firm’s new concept for a 147-foot explorer yacht, a virtual reality room is drawn on the main deck, between the galley and salon. ¶ “You can put on the goggles, and you’re on the beach in Cabo San Lucas,” he says. “If it’s a dreary, rainy day and you’re stuck…

IT HAS BEEN THREE YEARS since Massachusetts-based Imtra took over the Zipwake line of interceptors, and during that time, the team has been thinking big. In 2017, the Series S that Zipwake offered was for boats from 20 to 50 feet length overall. Now, Imtra has unveiled Series E, which expands the pitch-and-roll-controlling technology to yachts as large as 100 feet. ¶ “The major restriction is the amount of lift generation you can get out of a unit,” says Jamie Simmons, Imtra’s product manager for Zipwake. “The Series S has a millimeter stroke on it. You have the blade going straight up and down in the water column to generate lift. When it was down, that blade was only 30 millimeters from top to bottom. You can only generate so…

IN THE EARLY 1950S, A YOUNG MAN ENTHRALLED with his father’s boatbuilding company took over the family business. As sometimes happens when new generations step in, he wasn’t content to do the same thing his father, or his grandfather, had done. Strong ambition persuaded him to design and build pleasure boats, as opposed to the racing and commercial boats of the shipyard’s past. What’s more, he continuously wanted to outdo himself, focusing on creating motoryachts that were more than boats, as well as status symbols. ¶ While the young Carlo Riva succeeded in all of this after taking the helm of Riva, there’s perhaps no better example of his driving ambition than the period from the mid-1960s into the 1970s, when he launched three limited series of motoryachts. Not only…

Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class William Tadlock and his crew were watching a movie at Station Dauphin Island around 8 p.m. on January 15 when a distress call came in. A snapper-fishing boat had radioed for help from the island’s Confederate Strait. The vessel was on fire. ¶ By chance, Tadlock’s four-man crew’s 29-foot response boat was out of the water that evening for maintenance and sitting on a trailer. The men rushed the boat to a landing and backed her into the water just as more information crackled over the VHF radio: The three men aboard the fishing boat were abandoning ship. ¶ Tadlock, the response boat’s coxswain, revved the twin 225 hp Honda outboards. The vessel ripped off through the dark, glass-calm water at speeds upward of 40 knots.…

UNDERWATER LUMINOSITY OceanLED’s E7 (call for pricing) underwater light kicks out up to 11,000 lumens and comes in two color schemes: midnight blue/ultra-white or multicolor. E7 lights have a 90-degree top beam and 20-degree side beam, and are available with 10- to 50-degree angle options. Additional features include strobe-light mode, dynamic-audio mode, a rectangular beam pattern and multiple controller types. OceanLED, oceanled.com INTEGRATED GLASS Garmin’s line of GPSMap Plus multifunction displays are available with 7-, 9- and 12-inch screens ($900 to $2,900) and have full navigational capabilities. They also have much deeper engine integration than standard MFDs thanks to J1939 connectivity. GPSMap Plus MFDs also deliver Garmin’s OneHelm compatibility, which brings control of third-party systems onto the MFD’s user-friendly interface. Garmin, garmin.com DIGITAL TRANSLATOR Navigating on a personal computer requires…