Which One: Voyage 38 or Moorings 380 ?

Which would you choose and why. The Voyage/Maxim 380 or the Robertson Caine/Moorings 38? Almost no difference in cost.

Thanks for any help.
Dan

[Jeff]

Can you say a little more about what you're planning to do? Charter? Purchase?

Where you're planning to sail? Coastal? Offshore?

Thanks for your interest. We are a family of four (w/6&9 yr old). We will be cruising the Bahamas, Central America and South America for a couple of years. So both coastal and offshore.

[Jeff]

Ah we're in the same boat (ba-da-bump, never get tired of that one!). We're looking for a boat for similar cruising territory and then perhaps beyond for our family (age 4 and 6)

We've looked at the Maxim and the Leopard 40 (not sure if you're meaning this boat for your comparison). I've spoken to a Maxim 38 owner who is very happy with his. In fact he's owned 2 now (a Voyage 38 and a Maxim 38). The only complaint he has is that it does slam in choppy seas.

On the Maxim, I was looking at the Vector K version (http://www.africancats.com see the 395).

j

[ireaney]

This is the second post where someone has said that the Voyage/Maxim 380's slam badly, any Maxim owners that can expand on this or do they have comparisons against other similiar sized cats they may have sailed - and at what wave height do they experience bad slamming??

[svAlegria]

We have a Voyage 38 after having chose it over the R&C. We are very happy with our decision. After having made an open ocean passage on a straight rhumbline from BVI to Charleston, I experience no more slamming than other cats it size. The Voyage has a tremendous amount of storage compare the the R&C. Look at the R&C's only one cabinet in the galley and the Voyage 4 burner stove and your wife will be convinced which way to go.
Dan

[The South African]

Hi
I still dont know which R&C yacht we are talking about here. The Leopard 40 is a 39ft yacht. The Leopard 38 is no longer manufactured. I own a Leopard 40 and she has 6 cabinets in the galley (in addition to the huge storage area underneath the saloon seats, which is also close to the galley area). I cannot talk about long passages and a 4 burner stove yet. The Leopard 40 has a two burner but we hardly ever have both on, maybe we are not good cooks though. We do use the Microwave quite often though. (We have a 6kw Northern Lights generater on board)
Pierre

[billyehh]

I have just purchased a Voyage 38 after a 2 year search for the right boat. It has the requirements that I want for long term cruising. It sails reasonably well and is fun to sail. Most of the systems are relatively easy to get to for maintenance. There is a separate owners hull for privacy. It has a excellent galley with both a fridge and a top loading freezer. The aft teak platform makes a perfect place for diving. It has a huge amount of storage which is a mixed blessing since more weight means less performance. Since it is in the eastern caribbean I do not need AC, hence no generator.

[sv_makai]

Our boat Makai is the Voyage Maxim 380 and we love it. We spent over 2 1/2 years sailing in the Souther Caribe and South AMerica. Over 8,000 NM plus the 7,800 delivery on the bottom as all Voyage yachts are delivered.

It is a bit noisy in rough weather but actually quieter than some of the cats with a higher bridge deck. many other cats we have been on and friends have commented that anything on the saloon table gets violently thrown off in weather as the bridge deck bounces. We have not experinced that at all and we spent 3 days in bouncy 12 footers going from Turks to PR.

The real advantage of the lower deck and profile is the abiltiy to point higher into the wind. We sail at good speed at 35 apparent(of course it can be faster to crack off a few degrees around 40 ish). We can sail inside all of our cat friends and crusing mons and stay tight with many of the performance cruisers.

I know no one likes to sail to weather but I was amazed at how oftem we sailed close hauled.

We looked at the Leopard as well as many others and at the time we bought there was a $100K difference in price and many comments on the inabiltiy to point. Now that they have been nominated by CW the prices seemed to have adjusted to the fact. As the CW review and ourselves it came down to personal preferences on layout. Not construction, The leopard, Admiral, MAxim had very little differences in quality.

Beside all of the above, we love the boat, the way it looks, and the way it performs. I don't think you could go wrong with either.

[sailvi767]

One thing to keep in mind. If you are looking at either a Voyage or Moorings boat coming out of Charter the Voyage boat will have received much better care. I currently own a boat with Voyage and the Moorings. The Moorings does a good job with cosmetics but is not so good with major items or even routine oil changes. Voyage does an excellent job all the way around and it shows in the resale value of their charter boats.

[Tropic1]

Seeing that there are so many owners of Voyage/Maxim 380s responding here I thought you may be able to answer a few questions for me. I just purchased a Maxim 380 and spent a week on it delivering it to it's temporary storage/refit location. There were a couple of things which didn't show up in the survey or when I inspected the boat. The refrigerator and freezer appear to sweat behind the dinette back cushions and on the counter top above the freezer. Has anyone experienced this issue and how did you resolve it? Does anyone know how to adjust/lubricate sliding door (when you open it lifts off the track if you’re not careful). Are there any other things we need to address during our prep work. We looked for a couple of years talked with several owners and found the Maxim was the boat for us (although the shower in the Moorings 380 was decadent!).

[sv_makai]

Makai did sweat as well. It was an easy fix. We took a couple of battens cut them to length so they would not protrude above the seat back an taped them to the seat back. This provided enough space for air to circulate and keep it dry.

While in the Caribe we added a thick inulsator on the counter top overlapping the freezer lid. The seating occurs because of the temp difference between the lid and air. This eliminated the sweeting and improved the cooling of the freezer.

Most freezer units will have the plate on one side that will freeze and the food furthest away will not be quite frozen as heat wicks in through the walls. We also attached a computer muffin fan, swtiched and connected to the freezer power source so that it ran all of the time, but could be turned off. They draw very low amps and we never noticed the draw.

The advantage is that the cold air circulating kept all of our frozen food solid as a rock. Though it can increase amp consumption slightly we never noticed it as the it allowed us to reduce the temp settings. Most people turn the freezer to its coldest setting to keep all of the food froze, but this woks the freezer unit hard and longer. Increasing the temp setting probabably offset some of the increased conusption.

It is a great boat and I believe you will get much satisfaction from sailing it.

[mason_jj]

Hello there,

My family and I are in Florida (from Ontario) to view a large number of catamarans and one of our favorites is the voyage 380. However there are none for sale currently in Florida. So I thought I would put the idea out there and see if there are any happy owners that might want to show (or sell) their boat to us.

Not sure if this was the best place to post this message but I thought I would try anyways.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Brogan007]

I know this is a little off topic, but would anyone care to chime in on why I never seem to see the MaineCat 41 included in any of these "what liveaboard cat to choose" discussions?
Maybe there's just not a lot of them around?

[fastcat435]

Up to hull number 23 the load carrying capability was not very good and the bridge deck slamming a bit much at times after hull 23 the hulls where widened giving the boat increased payload and the complete roof was raised with 40 mm giving more headroom all around.One ft was added to the sugar scoop and a walk thru was made from hull 15 or 16.
Before hull 23 there is hardly a difference between a maxim and a voyage besides maybe the options, voyages where used in charter schemes while the maims where mainly used as private boats having more options and where used a lot less. after that hull number all where delivered as maxims as far as I am aware so later maxims after 2003 are better ones