450: Lagoon 450

[yeloya]

I had the opportunity to sail for couple of days on a new 450 and just wanted to share my views for those who are interested in this boat..
(I am not selling a boat, hence, I will try to be as candid as possible)


The first thing that strikes is the exceptionally high boom to give a space to flying bridge. Handling the main sail is a real task, I am 6ft 4 and quite fit but climbing up to the level of the mainsail sheet was scary to say the least. However, the constructor and designer must be aware of the difficulty, hence, they have couple of a system that keeps you from doing this exercise often:
-if the main is stacked somewhere, there is a line which comes from the top of the sail to the helm, pull it and it's over..
-the reef positions are installed and ready on the sail. All you need to do is to winch the two lines. (I don't think you will need often reefing anyway. See below sailing..)
-The only real problem is to pack the sail when you are not using it. Then you need to climb to the mast, fall in and crawl inside the lazy bag and work it out.

The finish is acceptable for this size and make. The layout of the boat and the space you get is the best part of it. Lagoon has always been good at this department and the 450 is no exception.

The one I tried had 2X54 HP Yanmars, felex-o-fold 3 blade folding props and at 2500 rpm flat sea gave us 8-8,1 kts. At 2.100-2.200 that would be around 7-7,2 kts. The engines are quite, particularly if you are sitting on the flying bridge. Manoeuvrability of the boat is good and although Lagoon has put a rear camera that you can watch from the chart plotter on the flying bridge, there really is no need for it.

Sailing... Well there is actually where the problems start. The boat is around 18 tons (as opposed to 10 tons of Orana 44) and yet the sail area is significantly smaller. Nevertheless, the boat sailed much better than I'd expected ; 17-18 true, we did around 6-6,5 kts at 50-60 degrees. Below 10-11 kts of true and w/out spinneaker it's not worthed to try to sail. When we took the wind from the aft beam, we did 7-7,3 with the same wind force. The boat was handling perfectly small swells and sitting on the flying bridge under these conditions is exceptional.
I cannot immagine however to sit there when the conditions are bumpy, cold and with the wind on yr nose. (You have a chart plotter replicator and remote control auto pilote inside)

Overall, it was a very different experience after sailing all of the FP range and being for the first time on the Lagoon; these are simply two different concepts. If you are chartering or making mostly coastal sailing and in good weather conditions, Lagoon seems to be a better option, too much space to lay down, flying bridge, etc. If you are a keen sailor, then maybe not. The handling of Lagoons under sail is a bit chaotic; hundreds of lines running everywhere, electrical winch switches under feet, plenty of steps everywhere. I wouldn't like to be on this boat on nasty weather and at night, particularly with short and/or uncompetent crew.

Appearance is a matter of taste, but FP range seems to me better looking as well. Pricewise, Lagoons and FP's are pretty close to each other.
I think Lagoon has also a longer list of options that will suit everyone's taste.



Cheers

Yeloya

[timandchanel]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up

[Palarran]

Yes, thank you Yeloya.

I had a new Lagoon 560 anchored next to me a few months ago. It looked like a dog for sailing but was an awesome floating party platform. Way better then mine!

Well, it should be as I'm sure it cost about $1m more. But, the one feature that was totally kick ass was the dingy lift. The captain drove the dingy around and onto a platform that was submerged. It then lifted him out and up while he stayed on the dingy. Way cool in my book.

I thought the bridge deck clearance looked low. How was the 450?

[yeloya]

We didn't have enough swell to judge the slamming under the bridge, however, the clearance didn't seem problematic to me.
Moreover, the bridge has no protrusion whatsoever, so there shouldn't be
any issue. (My Orana has one to give space to king size bed which is great. Nonetheless, the slamming on this specific point in a bumby sea is taking some of the joy of sleeping there..So, nothing comes free..)

560 is obviously another class, haven't seen yet any in real. One of our boat owner is negotiating to buy either a 560 or a Sunreef 58 to put on charter. Maybe next year I can tell you how does it look like

Cheers

Yeloya

[Vento]

Dear all,
I just spent 30 days and covered more than 2,500 miles on a new Lagoon 450, cruising from France and the Baleares and I'm quite impressed by this boat.
My impressions are somehow different, at 2400 revs the 2x54's with folding props made 9.1 knots on flat water and 8.6 with waves, 1x54 @ 1800, our economode, made 6 with 5.5, like a swiss watch.
The boom is really high, packing the mainsail inside the lazybag straps requires some throwing technique but there's no need to climb into the bag, you can lower the boom a lot since there's no vang.
I'm really affraid of highs, so the fly was something I was scared of, but after this trip I would invite my kids to be with me, even at 45 knots gusts and heavy seas (we got a 30 hour headwind beat at Gibraltar Straight...) its comfortable and feels safe (there are some attaching points for our harness if you need to be there, but most of time we were inside), climbing to it is very easy and safe, the new access is perfect and totally different from the 440 or the 500. But port manouvers (I made more than 20) in short spaces are tuff and there must be someone downstairs to call distances and help, its impossible to see the sterns from the fly or help with the lines.
Sailing is good, our baby was 23 tons fully loaded, so no big expectations with speed, but with 15 knots of wind it starts moving and we could make 10 knots runs very often with 20 knots of wind, more wind more speed, we toped 14 with 30.
Brigdedeck clearance is almost nill, but when the boat slams the waves its different, the waves runs the hull bow to aft and it feels like longboard surfing, the energy is dissipated. The boat slams the same as others catamarans I sailed (440, Leopard 46, 47, Catana 50...) with head waves.
On our delivery to Spain we sailed 1,700 miles in 250 hours, speed was average 6.8, VMG 5.6 including 10 hours of motorsailing. Once we hit the Med we sailed other 800+ miles, with 120 hours of combined motoring...
I can say this is a good boat, of course there are some issues I would attribute to bad commissioning (reef sheets excess chaffing, furler screws falling off, generator alternator failure, etc).
Hope any interested can enjoy my experience.

[Palarran]

Nice post Vento. Welcome to Cruisers Forum. I hope you will add some more posts in the future.

Where are you from? You can put your location in if you want under "User CP"

[DavefromNZ]

Thanks everyone for the info. I am really looking forward to delivery of our Lagoon 450 in January.

[Dakota450]

I chartered a fairly new 440 and am anxious to charter a 450. After spending 10 days on a 440 there were several little things that I didn't like that seem to have been changed on the 450. The only thing that I can see being a problem on this boat is the fresh water capacity. 92 gallons is going to be gone in no time if you plan on taking showers on board etc. The 440 has 240 gallons of fresh water capacity and with my group, we had to fill up 2 1/2 times during our 10 days. That's what happens when you take 2 teenage girls and your wife with you. I will need to come up with a way to either get more water daily with this boat or heaven forbid I put water restrictions in place. The latter will put an end to my charter vacations.

[DavefromNZ]

Yes my concern was also with water quantity considering there are 4 showers on board. The 450 comes standard with 350ltrs however with the comfort fit it is 700ltrs. Unfortunately when you select the watermaker it removes one of the 4 tanks and so becomes 525ltrs. Seems silly to put the water maker where a tank is with so much other locker space forward.

I am also concerned about only having 60ltrs hot water as I like a long hot shower in the morning! We are installing the diesel heater so it may be possible to change the hot water tank to a dual coil calorifier and run the diesel burner coolant circuit through that for rapid water heating.

[careka]

Originally Posted by DavefromNZ

I am also concerned about only having 60ltrs hot water as I like a long hot shower in the morning! We are installing the diesel heater so it may be possible to change the hot water tank to a dual coil calorifier and run the diesel burner coolant circuit through that for rapid water heating.

On our new 380 we have 2 diesel heaters, but it was not set up to be heating the hot wather, i will have to make it our self.

[yeloya]

All of the new cats are coming now with smaller water tanks compared to their previous models. For owner versions this shouldn't be a big issue as most of them is equiped with water maker. However, it is an issue for charter boats if there is no water maker on it. 100 liters of water in a 4 , 45 ft charter boat is not acceptable if there is no water maker..
Talkng about water heater, I have a 40 lt on my Orana and we all like the hot shower; never had a shortage...

[Dakota450]

I would assume that most charter boats will not have a watermaker. Probably too much for bareboaters to understand how to properly use it. I am planning on chartering an owners version 450 soon but the water issue is a real problem. Why would you want to charter a nice luxury yacht like that and then have to live like you are camping out in the middle of no where? Kind of defeats the purpose of treating yourself to a nice upscale vacation if you have to ration the water.

[brainmaker]

Vento - great post thank you for taking trouble, it is good to have real "Lots of mileage reviews" to read what works and what does not. I have done 2,500 nm on my lagoon 380 premium this summer and I was amazed after a lifetime of sailing, that nothing failed and everything worked as it should. Unbelievable but it impressed me from Lagoon. Or it must have been that this was the Cannes 2011 boat show boat and they knew that ;-)

Hi Careka/Dave - one of the first things I did with my 380 when still on shore, was have a good engineer rip out the silly little 25 litre calorifier, and put in a big 50 litre one. Standard calorifier is two coil 220v and engine. I put in the big one which had three coils - the third I linked to the eberspaecher hydronic. Put it on for 15 minutes and I have 50l of hot water for the shower, much quicker and quieter than engine, and saves engine wear and hours. Can really recommend doing this, I like anchoring for longer periods and because I have two solar farms (one standard lagoon above davits, one on bimini roof I had engineer install) I don't need to run the engine ever. After a first season in the Med, I do wonder why o why there are no clever systems to use the heat of the sun to heat the water in the calorifier .... guess it is a problem in cold climates as black tubes on roof might freeze. For all the Med sailing boats and big cats with big biminis I really wonder why there is no such system, whereas every house in Greece does seem to have it !

[brainmaker]

Careka - the good news is - it is dead easy to do the job. Just remove old calorifier, put new one in same place (plenty of space) then run two hoses from eberspaecher nearby into third coil, fits with hose clips. Not a big job and you will love it up there in that beautiful part of the world (want to do a boat swap sometime or if you need crew just call I will fly to you !)

[gonzemoi]

Hi Dave, my dealer is making the installation instead of lagoon and they said they have found a way to install it that allows you to keep the water tank. I am not sure which contractor they are using but I could find out if you want.

Gonzalo

Originally Posted by DavefromNZ

Yes my concern was also with water quantity considering there are 4 showers on board. The 450 comes standard with 350ltrs however with the comfort fit it is 700ltrs. Unfortunately when you select the watermaker it removes one of the 4 tanks and so becomes 525ltrs. Seems silly to put the water maker where a tank is with so much other locker space forward.

I am also concerned about only having 60ltrs hot water as I like a long hot shower in the morning! We are installing the diesel heater so it may be possible to change the hot water tank to a dual coil calorifier and run the diesel burner coolant circuit through that for rapid water heating.