14.6m Steel Pilothouse Cruising Yacht

Ocean going live-aboard cruising

The clients for this project came to NZ to buy a second hand steel cruising yacht and after having a look at was available opted to build a new yacht and incorporate in it all the aspects that they were looking for and minimise the compromises that they would face with buying second hand.

The choice of steel was made for the usual and most obvious reasons of strength and durability. With modern treatment and coating systems the question of high maintenance for steel vessels can be addressed with confidence and with careful building and attention to detail no more work should be required than what would be expected on any other vessel of this size and style.

A very detailed brief was supplied to the designer and builder which has made the task of designing and planning a relatively straight fwd exercise.

The clients will be living onboard the yacht and plan to cruise the Pacific after launching and finally end up in the Med. where they are currently based with their existing boat.

One of the challenging aspects of the design was to incorporate a hard dodger. This is something that usually gets added later or treated as an after thought during construction but for this project had to be included as part of the overall design and made to look right on the drawings.

The hull and deck structure has been CNC cut as a kit and assembly went very well with very few problems or errors. This saves many hours of labour and speeds up the building process, the design is required to be more or less complete before construction starts with most aspects of fitout locked into place early on in the piece. Big savings can be made with this process if more than one boat is built as it is a simple matter of ordering another set of parts from the steel supplier and assembling another hull, a bit like building a model aeroplane.

A 100hp auxiliary and 1500L of diesel gives the boat a long range under power with approx. 60hp required to achieve hull speed in smooth water.

1000L water capacity is augmented by a water maker, included with the live aboard comforts is the genset, washer/drier, microwave, TV/video and all the other electrical gadgets that are considered the norm on modern cruising yachts.