Utopia – Motor yacht Utopia is a 65′ trawler yacht built by Offshore Yachts. With her spacious interior and huge exterior areas, including an extended swim platform, she is a great choice for anyone looking a luxurious yacht perfect for staging waterspouts and adventure.
Southern Belle – is a 65′ trawler style yacht, built by the increasingly popular “Outer Reef yacht”. This sturdy, well built yacht is a fine example of a live aboard, long range trawler style yacht.
Felix – Motor yacht Felix is a very modern, warm and relaxing yacht with a very open plan layout, with a top speed of 21 knots and lots of open deck space, Felix will suit many types of owner.
The three boats I have for you today are all trawlers, all around 65 feet, all great examples from pedigree builders. They are five to seven-years-old, the oldest being 2007, the youngest from memory is 2009. This is the brief roundup of the reviews that we have for you today. If you want to go to the full-length reviews with all the descriptions, photographs, we run through the brochures, just below is the links to the reviews. If you see the tabs up on the side here click on one of those, and that should take you to the reviews.
Utopia
Let’s get stuck-in. Like I said, they’re all trawlers today. This, the first one, is called Utopia. It’s from a company called Offshore. Offshore are built in Asia. They have two facilities, one in Singapore, the other in Malaysia. In fact, all the three today are all built outside the US to US specifications.
Multiple builders now are going over to Asia or Taiwan, China, simply because the labor rates there are a lot lower. Not as low as they used to be so the profit margins are reducing a lot within the last few years. That, also, represents the quality of the boats that’s coming out of these facilities. They’re no longer substandard labor and techniques that they use. They’re just as good as you’ll see here. It’s generally the labor rates are slight cheaper over there. A lot of European builders and a lot of US builders are going over there.
Back to Utopia, 64.5 feet long. The beam is 16-foot 10 inches. It’s a little bit narrower than the other ones that we have for you today. You do feel that on the interior especially with this style of boat, with it being a full walk-around deck. You lose a couple of feet on either side of the overall width anyway. The interior space feels a little bit narrow, not much because the other manufacturers the side companion weighs a generally slightly wider. They do play without here. The speeds that they get out of this whole are really quite high-style boats, 17 knots, cruising 21 knots maximum. That’s still from a fairly low horse-powered engine, the Caterpillars that they have onboard.
It’s a fiberglass hull, a deep V construction. We’ve seen before some of the fly bridge, raised pilot-house. Express cruiser manufacturers also use this deep V-style hull. Some of them use a stepped version of that. It’s a very good sea-going hull. They have great performance in bad weather, so good option there. It does raise that draft up a little bit. I know you see the draft on this, but it is in the full brochure.
In fact the yacht packs that we have for all these three boats today, they’re available. They’re already done. Click on the “Yacht Pack” button that’s over on the right hand side of the screen. Leave the name of the boat and your email address. We’ll get that off to you right away. That goes through all of the photographs and the detailed descriptions, and how it’s a full specs in there and how are some other bits and pieces of information that we slip inside this, some insider information.
Back to Utopia built in 2007 by Offshore. As I mentioned, Offshore are built in Asia to US specifications. This is three state rooms, two of the boats we have today are three state rooms. The one that we have that is a four is built by Outer Reef Yachts, another great manufacturer. This one three state rooms sleeps up to eight though you have some higher occupants in some of the cabins, like we’ve seen in [Malo’s 00:04:34] before, that fourth cabin is quite often setup with a big queen bed in the center and two single beds up high us. They do still have that overall occupancy in less number of cabins.
As I mentioned Caterpillar engines, all of the boats we have today are Caterpillar engines, fantastic options. Especially for these boats that are designed to go further-a-field. Wherever you pull into, if you have any kind of issues, Caterpillar technicians are everywhere. It’s very simple engines work on as well. You can get work done on them wherever you may be, as opposed to the high-powered sometimes that MAN and MTU engines. Not so much with MTU these days. They are a bit more widespread. Certainly some places you’ll pull into with those high-powered engines, you might come across difficulties finding parts and labor. The asking price on this is $1,445,000. That’s in US. Great boat! It is here in Florida and available to go and take a look.
Southern Belle
The next boat that we have for you today is called Southern Belle. This is the Outer Reef that I’ve mentioned a couple of minutes ago. Outer Reefs are a great (laughs) sturdy well-built boat. They have a fantastic state of the art yard in Taiwan. More than any other manufacturers that I know, Outer Reef have a real true and dedicated following. You’ll find that owners of Outer Reef yachts will generally buy and sell within the company. They’ll buy the first one. They’ll use that to trade in on another. They have great relationships with the clients there the guys at Outer Reef.
A real quality-product, sturdy boat, 65-foot, bigger on the beam here, 18.5 feet is beam. You really feel that inside and you feel that in some of the cabins as well. Beautiful boat! All of boats actually have very high spec interiors, nice Teak and Holly maple. At Reef you use a lot of chestnut and walnut tones. This one, again, is 2007. It’s a fiberglass hull. The cruising speeds are a lot lower here. It cruises at 11 knots. I’m not up too sure what the maximum speed is, but it’s not really going to be anything over 14 or 15 knots is the cruising is 11, hugely, hugely fuel-efficient.
These yachts generally attract a more mature audience and more mature clientele. This is probably something that they’re going to spend a lot of time on and cruise around. If you go for a trawler-style boat typically you’re not concerned about getting there in a hurry. Nothing wrong with 11 knots! You see the horsepower’s de-rated in the Caterpillar engines there, any 705 horsepower. It is a long range cruiser that is evident in the fuel burns that they have. This is a four-cabin boat. They see it still only sleeps eight. Why I say only sleeps eight? That’s the standard that four cabins with sleep eight people. It’s nice to have two people per cabin, rather than those higher-occupancy cabins as we saw with the last boat.
A great option it’s here in South Florida. I think I mentioned already Outer Reef are built in Taiwan. They have a great facility there. We’ll see when we go through the photographs exactly how they lay it out inside. As I mentioned that you have a real loyal following Outer Reef. That comes from the proof in the putting (laughs) as we say in the UK. They’re very reliable boat and people appreciate that. It’s very competitively priced. They have a good reputation for it. This built in 2007, and the asking price is $1,650,000.
Felix
The last boat today is from another very well-known manufacturer. It’s Grand Banks. This boat is called Felix. It’s 65-foot, again the same as the other two. This is even wider, again, on the beam. You really do feel that in this boat at 19 feet 10 inches, almost 20-foot in the beam. This does have a good cruise in the speed, but in order to get that larger volume up to those speeds you can see that this is the highest horsepower out of the three boats that we’ve seen today. 1,000 horsepower, still with a Caterpillar engine, fantastic engines there as we’ve seen before. Always good to have those Cats when you’re going further-a-field and off the beaten track.
The draft here is five-foot four inches. It is the deepest in the draft that we have today. The other two, the shallowest of which I believe was Utopia is just under five feet, I believe Southern Belle the Outer Reef is around five feet, and this five-foot four. We’re not talking about huge variation there, probably around nine to 10 inches difference between the three of them. This is quite a big difference in the interior volume because of that increased beam.
Fiberglass hull, semi-displacement. The Outer Reef was also semi-displacement. Cruising 18 knots, maximum speed 21. Again it’s in South Florida. This is slightly younger, two years younger than the previous two, 2009 built by Grand Banks. Grand Banks actually started off in Hong Kong. They had their first yard there in Hong Kong. Still build in Asia, but obviously a much, much better and more upgrade hit yard than the original ones when they were building the predominantly wood boats.
Slightly higher asking price here, but Grand Banks is more of a well-known pedigree builder. The other two are very, very highly spec built boats. This they do charge more. They do build it to what they consider a high spec boat. The Aleutian Range has a great following. The asking price here is $2,495,000. That is representing the fact that it’s two years younger than the previous two boats. It is bigger volume as we see there with the 19, almost 20-foot beam. That’s partly the reason for the difference in asking price there. Again, the Grand Banks are premium builder that do generally charge more for their product. This is three state rooms, does have a crew accommodation there as well as great, great boat, beautiful on the interior. Have nice leather standalone chair and almost relaxed office chairs (laughs) in the main salon there. Fantastic option!
All of the boats that we had today are all in our yacht pack. We have one for each of the boats. In fact we have already created one for every boat that’s on the market. If there’s any boat that you are interested in and you’d like to see some more information, request that yacht pack. Click on the button on the right hand side of your screen, the “Yacht Pack” button and we’ll send that off to you right away. We do these reviews every week. If you’d like to get a quick notification of when we do the latest reviews, towards the bottom there be the first to know. Leave us your name and your email address. We’ll shoot a real quick email once they are up and available to see.
It’s the summer now. As you know, this is a great time for you to start looking at boats, see what’s out there, ready for the winter season, especially approaching the Ft Lauderdale Boat Show which will come up before we know it here. With that in mind, our weekly yacht tours are getting very busy. We do have slots open throughout the day. We do them every day, couple of times a day. Click on that “Weekly Yacht Tours” button that’s also there on the right hand side.
Let us know when would be the best day for you to get onboard, see some boats. It’s really the best way for you to really experience the boats and get a better idea of what you’re looking for. Let us know when would be a best time for you. I’m sure we’ll be able to fit you in. Thanks for joining me! Click on that “Yacht Pack” button. Full reviews are below. Click on them! I’ll see you in those full-length brochure reviews.
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