Experience with these Monohulls

[boggie]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

BTW We have a Futuna 57 here - for anybody into alu and high-tec look her up. Interesting - I believe Lombard design. Looks fast, looks efficient, and strong.

I was a bit surprised to see her decks are actually GRP ... something I thought about along the lines of why so few builders mix alu with plastic. I like this idea and looking forward to see how it works out.

b.

I searched for some aluinium builders like :

Allures : ----ALLURES Yachting--------------
Alubat : Alubat - des bateaux en aluminium Ã* vos mesures

Try to have a look.

I red some articles about aluminium boats , the main advantage is shock absorver resistance against any container encounter that you can have on deep sea, and dealing with heavy weather. Maintenance costs are lower than fiber glass.

[SouthernComfort]

neilpride,

The Morris you show is their S&S design. The Chuck Paine designs are very different and blue water.

Morris 46 | Morris Yachts

[Curmudgeon]

Why is maintenance of aluminum less? What about issues related to galvanic corrosion?

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by SouthernComfort

The Morris you show is their S&S design. The Chuck Paine designs are very different and blue water.

Okay, that is a beautiful boat indeed, but it's a design like they built yachts 100 years ago, very conservative.

loa is 46 feet but lwl is only 34' !! It is never gonna be a fast boat. It's ballast is roughly 1/3 of the total weight which I find a bit light for a boat with only 34' waterline.
It has a tiny main sail and a huge genoa. That is not easy to handle for a couple crossing oceans with it.
The varnish work is gonna kill you when you sail into the tropics.
Where are you gonna put the solar panels and a decent dinghy? You can't put an arch or davits on that, it would turn it into a mix of old and new.
It's water tankage is okay but diesel it too low.
I will put this boat in the same category as the Hinkleys, pretty pictures for lovers of the past, great for stealing the show in marina's or inviting business guests.

The Fortuna, van de Stadt, Atlantic etc. are modern designs combining performance with comfort and to take anything that the old designs can take plus some.

cheers,
Nick.

[boggie]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Why is maintenance of aluminum less? What about issues related to galvanic corrosion?

I red this aricle on document from a brasilian university that i. They defend the aluminioun because you don't ve to worry with eteorition problems with the fiber glass, and with resistance is much betterto any impact, they compare andgive the exemple whythe aviation uses the aluminium. More than this i realy don't know. Buteems to be quite logic.what do you think?

I believe that's because the way that each part of the boat is joined and treated. I dont know much abou it. But tha galvanic corrosion might be a concern.

[Curmudgeon]

Morris reinforces its glass hulls with kevlar-- stronger and lighter than aluminum. In fact these hulls are probably bulletproof-- literally.

[Hampus]

This discussion turned very black and white. I could say that all American cars are crap because my Ford Focus is a piece of shi*. I know ofcaurse that they aren't. They are however very different from european cars. The same goes for boats.

Personally I like american boats, not all of them, but I think the general ideas are sound and good. Then again, so are most EU boats.

The original question however isn't as simple as that. You can't just ask which is the better boat without specifying model, year, intended use and price.

/Hampus (a european who likes american boats but sails a taiwanese built boat designed by a canadian living in the US)

[James S]

For me the classic look and feel of the boat is part of the romance of owning a boat.
Not for the sport of it and not for the transportation..

[neilpride]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Morris reinforces its glass hulls with kevlar-- stronger and lighter than aluminum. In fact these hulls are probably bulletproof-- literally.

You smoke??? ?¿!!?'? Just kidding,,,,

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Okay, that is a beautiful boat indeed, but it's a design like they built yachts 100 years ago, very conservative.

loa is 46 feet but lwl is only 34' !! It is never gonna be a fast boat. It's ballast is roughly 1/3 of the total weight which I find a bit light for a boat with only 34' waterline.
It has a tiny main sail and a huge genoa. That is not easy to handle for a couple crossing oceans with it.
The varnish work is gonna kill you when you sail into the tropics.
Where are you gonna put the solar panels and a decent dinghy? You can't put an arch or davits on that, it would turn it into a mix of old and new.
It's water tankage is okay but diesel it too low.
I will put this boat in the same category as the Hinkleys, pretty pictures for lovers of the past, great for stealing the show in marina's or inviting business guests.

The Fortuna, van de Stadt, Atlantic etc. are modern designs combining performance with comfort and to take anything that the old designs can take plus some.

cheers,
Nick.

I think that you will find the Morris boats to be quite contemporary below the waterline. But if you don't like the 46, then don't buy one. If you want waterline length, get a Morris 45, 48 or 51, all of which have sugar scoop sterns hence much longer LWLs in relation to their overall length.

The Morris 34 I crewed on was very fast in light air, feather light helm, nice motion in a chop, utterly predictable, easy to sail. Down below everything was in the right place. The interior was like fine furniture. Just a sweet boat. Too bad I could never afford one.


We were talking about quality, not styling, weren't we?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

I used to admire HR up to somewhere when they started to make Frers hulls. Somewhere at that time they also "modified" (???) the interiors. And that's where I lost heart for them. I would not like a half-million Euro of a boat where the cabinet door latches remain in your hand, or even worse - in the locked cabinet (which may be holding your VHF, EPIRB, a bottle of rum, or whatever you consider most precious in any given moment). So what - shall we destroy the cabinet now ... this VERY pricey cabinet???
b.

Wow, I'm not inviting you on my boat. Chances are fairly high that on any given day a cabinet latch may come off in your hand , although the cabinets themselves are very beautiful indeed.

All of this is of course a matter of taste, but personally I love the HR's, particularly the Frers ones, and I think they're worth the money. The Frers ones can point and get out of their own way, unlike the tubby pre-Frers long-keel ones. They are all immensely strong, seaworthy, and beautifully made.

And anyone who discounts European cruising yachts has never been on an Oyster. Wow. They are amazingly beautiful, and beautifully engineered and built. The newer Rob Humphreys ones are not as beautiful to look at as the simply gorgeous Holman & Pye models from the 1990's (e.g., Oyster 485 or 55 -- floating sex).

Americans (I'm a Yank myself) make decent production boats, but the high-end American cruising boats are distinctively retro in design and layout (Hinckley, Shannon). They're gorgeous, but not so practical if you're planning to put on a lot of miles. The Island Packets do not appeal to my taste. They have a high-end price with a distinctly lower middle class standard of finish, and they are real tubs to sail with their long keels and barn-door rudders.

My own boat, a Moody, is a compromise, like most people's I guess. She is extremely good below decks, with an extremely well-thought out arrangement plan and lovely cabinetry (despite falling off latches), good sea berths, great engine room, a very cleverly designed convertible passage berth/laundry/workshop into which the engine space opens, and an excellent u-shaped galley for easy cooking in a seaway without a strap (best galley I've ever seen on any sailboat of any size, better in fact than in some houses I've lived in). She has a great cutter rig and an efficient bulb-keel underbody and sails great -- fast, stable and weatherly. Some aspects of quality are not up to Oyster or Swan standards, however, and she has poor ventilation, and like most Bill Dixon designs, she is not breathtaking to look at, kind of flabby in the butt and otherwise rather bland and appliance-like to look at. But she's mine, you know, so I love her anyway. Also, she did not cost Oyster or Swan money, i.e. millions.

As to mass-produced boats, I think there are good options both among American boats and European boats. I don't know Bavarias, but I have chartered Beneteaus. They are great for what you pay. Some of the finishing details are annoying (laminate cabin sole; crappy plastic ports and hatches), and they have limited tankage for long-distance work, but some of them have wonderful sailing qualities. Perfectly good option, especially for coastal/weekend use.

Anyway it's useless arguing about these things -- purely a matter of taste, and sailboats more than almost anything else you could think of. Only thing I can say is it is very much worthwhile to know something about boats made in other parts of the world, besides your own.

[s/v Jedi]

Retro, let's keep it at that word, I couldn't come up with it so I used "stuck in the past". And yes, long keels, barn doors for rudders etc.: that's all history in the EU apart for one-offs for the people who like the classic lines.

And I checked the Morris site again and agree that the 48 looks much better. That must be a 90's design, the boom is twice as long with a nice big main sail and normal working jib. That boat would do much much better for ocean passaging.
It still looses 15% length at the waterline though so it's maximum speed is comparable to a modern 42 footer. (it doesn't matter how nice a boat sails, the lwl determines > 90% of it's maximum speed for displacement boats).
There's an aft-cockpit, that is good, and it's built in vinylester, great, no blisters.
The interior makes me feel like visiting my grand pa though; I like even the Hunter interiors better. But that is a matter of taste, not quality.
Fuel capacity is still a joke.

So let's step up to the 62, I can compare that to our boat, a 64. The Morris is > 16' wide while we are longer and < 16' wide. The displacement is 56,500 and that is a lot. We are 55,000 in full cruising load, incl. say 300 gallons of diesel and 400 gallons of water. And all we own is aboard.
The waterline is 55' down from 62. That is 7' !!! We are 64' waterline. Using the same formula, out hull speed is 11 knots and the Morris is 10 knots, that is a 10% difference right there.
The interior is much better, they went for semi-gloss or even mat and I like that. That nav station with two chairs is like a dream.
Tankage: 300 gallons for both water and diesel. Now we get somewhere. We have 400 gallons diesel and 600 (!!) gallons water tankage but at least we're not talking a silly 80 or 90 gallons for diesel anymore.
On deck, I see the first big BIG disappointment: there is no flush deck. That means giving up on strength or putting in a lot of weight to regain the strength after cutting open the deck. Second disappointment is the boom which is way much too high up from deck, making a furling system a must... but luckily they choose in-boom furling which I could live with. But you will need a bosun's chair to attach the halyard and that is exactly the reason I didn't like the Oysters.
Looking at the photo I must say they really took some of the looks from Sundeer, with the hull windows etc. We had a Paine one-off here in the marina that had Dashew written all over it and it turned out that the owner specified all those features after reading the Dashew books. It looked much like this 62' Morris.

But..... but, really, how old is this design? It is not as modern as my Sundeer and that was built in 1993 and quite radical for it day I admit. It looks like a 90's Oyster / van Dam Nordia design, which I happen to like.

So, I am convinced, changed my mind and agree that the Marris 48 and up are great boats! Now compare that to the Italian Wally I linked in an earlier post. Because that is how far evolved Italian designs are (Bruce Farr does the hulls by the way so they are not a joke and will outsail many racers). It is like comparing the Apollo missions with Starship Voyager.

So, is the Morris really the top of US build boats or is there more? Because I would still put an Oyster above it because they look just a bit better. Most of the boats from the list I posted before would be preferred by EU buyers when budget is not a concern.

About the Bene's and Jeanneaus: they have modern, high performance hulls. The problem is what they do with them after they get the hull from the designer. Some marketing droid will put a number of interior volume on the table that would fit a boat twice the length. So here comes the towering cabin top and it must sleep at least 8 or even 12 people so now it looks like one of those Japanese cocoon hotels. But they will still sail very well. When you are looking at those boats, you should take a closer look at the Bene First series, say the 47.7, in owners-layout. That is a very nice boat.

But still, my '94 Sundeer will show them her stern at an embarrassing rate ;-)

cheers,
Nick.

[bobfnbw]

Originally Posted by Hampus

This discussion turned very black and white.

/Hampus (a european who likes american boats but sails a taiwanese built boat designed by a canadian living in the US)

LMAO Hampus well said. Its a strange a wonderful world.

[Curmudgeon]

Well Nick, if speed is all that matters, get a multihull.

We understand that your Sundeer is fast. A Ferrari is faster than a Rolls Royce. Every boat is a compromise, just like cars.

[barnakiel]

Morris 51 - please send me one ;-)))

b.