Luxury Yacht & Speed Boat

Tagged ‘Ocean’

Australia-based Riviera Yachts is known state­side for its line of convertibles, but the builder made a big splash at last year’s Fort Lauderdale Internation­al Boat Show with a two-stateroom, 36 foot express. Now, to appeal to those with bigger families—or more friends— Riviera has upped the ante with the three-stateroom 4700 SportYacht.

The 47-footer takes her kin’s concept of one-level living and expands it. The resulting flexibility of the saloon-helm area is outstanding: Aft, a glass and stainless steel door folds away, and the bulkhead’s expanse of glass flips up and latches firmly into place to the hardtop. Read the rest of this entry »

When introduc­ing the 57 Su­per Sport five years ago, the big news at Oc­ean Yachts was her innovative hull con­figuration. In the pursuit of better effi­ciency and course tracking and a gen­tler ride in rough seas, naval architect David Martin configured her running bottom with some innovative twists.

Most notable, she has just a single pair of longitudinal strakes (not the usual two pairs), and the strakes aren’t paral­lel to the center line. Instead the sharp­ly down-angled strakes are farther a­part at the bow than at the stern, a fea­ture Martin introduced in order to im­prove lift and to straighten the flow of water into the props. Combined with an exceptionally deep forefoot to soft­en the ride in heavy seas, the strakes help keep her dry while stabilizing the hull in slop and chop. Read the rest of this entry »

Similar to ACR’s ResQFix PLB, McMurdo has introduced a GEPIRB (GPS-equipped Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) that’s smaller yet supposedly performs better.

The 1.5-pound SmartFind Plus ac­complishes this largely by using LEDs for its strobe, which along with automatic seawater activation, built-in flotation, and longer trans­mission life are what distinguish EPIRBs from PLBs (plus the fact that some models come with an automatic float-free mount).

Note that Simrad has also introduced a compact GEPIRB in the same price range and that both companies also offer GPS-less models, but those will typically take longer to de­liver less-accurate position information to the SAR authorities.

Sunseeker’s latest 37M Trideck Yacht, all 121 feet and 180 tons of her. This is a yacht with  four big en suite guest cabins, an improbably large, full-beam owner’s suite, and an upper lounge/bar that seems almost as generously proportioned as the main saloon below. The sheer quantity of internal volume available for the accommodation seems to be the result of some cunning sleight of hand, as if it has been borrowed from a bigger boat.

Although there has been some clever lateral thinking, the idea has come not from bigger boats, but from the smaller sport cruisers that have been Sunseeker’s stock in trade for decades. At a stroke, simply raising the foredeck has given the owner’s suite the best of both worlds: the width of the yacht’s full beam, combined with the light and window area of the main deck. In spite of first impressions from outside, the fore­deck slopes upward from the bow to the wheelhouse windows and is reached from each side deck via a set of steps just for­ward of midships. Read the rest of this entry »

The big consumer electronics company Cobra has gotten serious a­bout marine VHF, introducing both this feature-packed handheld and a Class D DSC fixed radio. For instance, the $170 HH425 and the $190 F80 are each sub­mersible and backed by three-year warranties.

Both also offer a “rewind, play again” feature that space shots like me will find handy—a built-in memory chip records the last 20 seconds of whatever breaks squelch on the channel (s) you’re monitoring, giving you a second chance to catch a call.

The 425 also includes a full 5-watt GMRS (a.k.a. “family radio”) transceiver, along with goodies like privacy codes, individual caller rings, and VOX (hands-free) operation. That means that with a couple of inexpensive GIVIRS handsets, perhaps from market leader Cobra, you’ll have a sophisticated communications network for use around a ma­rina and beyond (unlike VHF, GMRS is land legal).

You can even set up the 425 to scan both selected VHF and GMRS channels simultaneously, though a little man­ual investigation is required. In fact, most of the 425’s features do entail some oper­ational complexity, plus I found its ergonomics clunkier than more conventional handhelds, like the Icom M34.