420: Lagoon 420 Owners & Fans

[sailvi767]

The 420's have finally started arriving at the charter companies. I thought we would see a flood of owners reporting on their boats yet its dead quite. Could we get a couple of owners reports. I know there have been issues however an objective report of the good and bad would be nice to read since many of us have a keen interest in this technology for the future.
George

[sail2wind]

We were the first charter on the Martha R. Doug and Charlie were feverishly trying to get her ready for our charter. The staff at TMM were excellent and did the best they could do with limited knowledge of the electronic operations. The boat is beautiful, roomy, and excellent deck space. The four cabins with heads and seperated showers with excellent pressure was a real winner with the girls. I will preface the experience, Douglas emailed me explaining one of the battery banks might not have been operating properly. The electric motors were slow, 5 kts full throttle with following seas, or no wind. There was no apparent difference between full throttle and 3/4 throttle. Beating to VG against a 15-18 wind and 3-4' chop, 2.8 kts. full throttle. She does not get close to wind, best speed, from Dog's to JVD, broadreach in 18-20 winds, we got her to 6.2, on the wave down. Very nice boat everybody, the strangest noise is motoring out and the generator kicks off (not often), it amost sounds like the engine stalled, kind a weird. I will be talking to the brothers soon.

[sailvi767]

I believe the Martha R is the boat with the small AC unit. Was that unit able to cool the boat at night or did you have to keep the boat opened up. Would it in fact run all night off the batteries? Were those speeds off a GPS or the knotmeter. If they are off the knotmeter I suspect they may have been off. In 18 to 20 knots of wind you should have been seeing a solid 9 knots topping 10 now and then on a broad reach in a cat that size.

Thanks
George

[sail2wind]

The A/C unit was never installed, neither was the inverter. Keep dreaming on the 10 kts., maybe the tranducer was fowled. My hand held GPS, no GPS aboard Martha R?, was recording a little faster, maybe 1kt.

[db8us]

Originally Posted by sail2wind

The A/C unit was never installed, neither was the inverter. Keep dreaming on the 10 kts., maybe the tranducer was fowled. My hand held GPS, no GPS aboard Martha R?, was recording a little faster, maybe 1kt.

No GPS ? And only 6,2 knots in almost 20kn of Wind ?
Huuuu, strange stuff.

Michael

[northerncat]

so all those discussions/predictions about heavy catamarans earlier are now revealed to be real,
sean

[SeaKing]

The reports must not be too "glowing" or we would have heard plenty.

[ess105]

I am aware of 3 420s in the BVIs. Martha R and Knot on Call which I believe arrived together 2 weeks ago and the Horizon charter boat. Dignity is not there yet.

I don't think the Horizon nor Knot on Call owners are on this board.

Good meeting you at The Baths sail2wind. I'd be interested to know how these boats will perform when good sized sails are put on. I recall from our conversation, the head sail on Martha R is a 90%.

Steve

[sail2wind]

Steve,

Nice meeting you too. Did you have a good time in BVI, tough not to. When is the expected delivery date of your boat? Are you going back to BVI for her arrival? You can email me directly at coevan@msn.com if you have any questions. Evan

[Quiet Riot 420]

Hi,

The first charter of the Martha R is only telling half the story, and
I mean 1/2, as the starboard side battery charger was not in operation
at all during his charter, thus the 5knot motoring speed. This is
just what Lagoon said would be the speed without the bigger genset and
extra battery charger. I personally told him he was running on 1/2
power; I don't know why he made such a big deal out of it with his
posts of misleading info. As far as sailing, I did not get a chance
to sail the Martha R yet,( she went out for charter 4 days after
arrival) but the delivery captain said that he was hitting 10 knot in
about 22-24 knots of wind, and averaged better the 7 knots on some of
his 24 hr runs.

I have been very busy lately but will try to post some of my
impressions from the 4 days I was on board installing the inverter and
the A/C, which are not yet completed. We worked until 1:30 in the morning trying to get the air running, but something kept shutting down the circulation pump after about 2 minutes, an with only 6 1/2 hrs till we needed to be off the boat, we gave up and went to bed.

One other thing I forgot to mention about the figures posted by the
first charterer of the Martha R, because it was so rushed into
charter, the wind speed indicator and the speedometer did not get
calibrated, which the delivery captain had mentioned needed to be
done. So many of his reading were probably wrong and he didn't even
know it.

By the way, on Hull #11 there was no AC outlet at the microwave station.

Douglas

[ess105]

It's worth pointing out that the owner of hull #23 has been able to (electric) motor at 6.5 knots into choppy seas and 25 knots of wind.

[sail2wind]

Hi Steve,
Nice to meet you at the Baths. All in all we had a fantastic time in BVI, as usual. We had no idea of any kind of battery or power problems until we arrived in the states on June 29th and got Douglas' email dated June 25th. The Martha R is a beautiful boat, but she was not really ready for charter. The owners did the best they could with the time they had. I will not dignify going into details. I leave it to say TMM had an attitude that I chartered the boat from the owners, so whatever. They should have looked at me as a future customer. I have sent several emails to TMM and have not received any response at all. I will be back to the ilons soon. I'm sure someone will want my money.

[db8us]

And it seems the charter companies are not aware of the internet!
I thought about trying out a 420 in comparison to my 380S2 but with the mentioned experiences i will wait a bit.

[ess105]

Originally Posted by db8us

And it seems the charter companies are not aware of the internet!
I thought about trying out a 420 in comparison to my 380S2 but with the mentioned experiences i will wait a bit.

The charter companies very much know about the internet and this board. They also know that at this point in time boards such as this really don't make much of a difference on charter sales - particularly over the long run.

[ess105]

Originally Posted by sail2wind

Steve,

Nice meeting you too. Did you have a good time in BVI, tough not to. When is the expected delivery date of your boat? Are you going back to BVI for her arrival? You can email me directly at coevan@msn.com if you have any questions. Evan

Got back on saturday evening. Dignity is due in the BVIs at the end of this month. I'd like to get down to see her but the rest of my life gets in the way. It looks like next Feb now.