“The Largest Merry Fisher Ever Built“
Credits: Nick Burnham
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
This is the brand new Jeanneau Merry Fisher 1295 Fly, and “1295” refers to the length, which is about 13 metres long, so just over 40 feet. It is the largest Merry Fisher they’ve ever built, so it’s a big chunk of a boat.
EXTERIOR
We’re going to take you on board and give you the full tour, starting at the back here with these engines. Triple outboards on this one, Yamaha’s V6, 300 horsepower each, 4.2 litres each. How do I know that? It’s written on the back of them. But that’s giving the boat about 40 knots flat out. Cruising is about 25 knots. Range, you’re probably going to be up around 200 miles, somewhere around there.
We’ve got the canopies on the back that come off, so you can take those off if you want to. And then there’s this [roof] section at the top, which can be a Bimini, all that can come off as well.
“It’s the largest Merry Fisher ever built, with triple Yamaha V6 outboards, each featuring 300 horsepower and a 4.2-litre displacement.”
Another thing that we’ve got here is a drop balcony. We’re starting to see these more and more now. This will fold down, but we can’t do it at the moment because there’s a boat right alongside us. But, if you’re anchored, that folds down flat. You’ve got rails that drop into here [drop balcony], and that seriously increases your real estate. We’ll take a walk up around the front in a bit. We’re going to go inside first of all.
Big cockpit area here, side doors on here as well, which is nice. And because it’s outboards, of course, there are no engines underneath here [lazaretto]. So, if we open this one up, we will discover a pretty serious storage area underneath there. Look at that, it goes right back underneath there as well. Remarkable. And that’s not the only one. There’s more; I’ll show you when we go inside. Let’s drop that one back down. Pretty meaty gas struts on that one.
INTERIOR
And then we’ve got the sliding door here [patio doors], and then this takes us in. And being on a 40ft boat, of course, you’ve got quite a bit of space in here. These have moved on a lot from the Merry Fishers of old, little tiny ones. They still build those, but yeah, this is really extending the range upwards, and it’s nicely finished as well.
You’ve got this light finish up here [deckhead], for example, and on here [galley countertops] as well. And then the pale wood as well. That one there [storage under the countertop], it’s like that for a little bit of storage. Got storage down here [under the oven]. We’ve got a cutlery drawer in there [top of the oven], storage in here [under the sink], sink underneath here [sink covers]. Of course, it’s a gas hob on this one. And that one [next to the stove] is storage. *laughs* I thought that was going to be something interesting then.
“And being on a 40-ft boat, you’ve got quite a bit of space in here…plenty of places to tuck things away.”
Fridges are over here [across the kitchen bench]. So, drawer fridges. If you release the little catch, then you can open them. And then more storage here [next to the fridge]. So, plenty of places to tuck things away. It’s up here as well [overhead cupboards]. There we go. Let’s press on a little bit further.
Big dining area, seating area. Use it how you will. But also, you can see it’s on a high adjustable leg. You can drop that down as infill cushions to go on there, and you can convert that into a double bed. But actually, there are three cabins on the lower deck, so it’ll sleep six anyway. That takes it up to 8, which is pretty impressive.
TV comes up from here [next to the helm]. You can see how that just drops flat down when you’re not using it. And then the helm is over here [next to the TV]. We’ve got the side access door [next to the helm] on this one, so you’ve got plenty of ventilation in there. But also, it means from a manoeuvring point of view, you know you’re right here. You can stick your head out. You can see exactly where you’re placing the boat. They put the throttles on the side here as well [near the access door]. Joystick as well is here, where you can reach it. So, you could actually stand out on the outside and reach that. That’s very helpful.
Got the twin Garmin screens on this one. It’s got the Zipwake trim tab system as well, bow thruster. The engine instrumentation for the Yamaha outboard engines, VHF radio is here, searchlight is here, all the usual paraphernalia. And quite nice visibility because it’s quite thin millions about the place, that’s good. Obviously, when you’re out and running, you’d probably drop the TV away for obvious reasons. So you’d be able to see out a little bit better over there as well.
LOWER DECK
If we drop down to the lower deck, we’ve got a lobby area here. And I think we’ll head forward first of all. That’s [cabinet below the light switch] access to some of the service areas, wiring, etc. And then in here [forward] is the owner’s cabin. Very well-lit because you’ve got this window right the way across here [overhead]. There is a hatch up above as well, but we’ve got the sunbed cushions on there at the minute, so that’s not helping us very much. And these hull windows allow a lot of natural light into here.
“The dining table is on a high adjustable leg that drops down and converts into a double bed…this takes it up to 8 sleeps, which is quite impressive.”
We’ve got AV equipment in here [across the berth], and we’ve got a wardrobe [next to the TV], again, like so. Storage dotted about the place. It’s also over here and down in here [next to the berth], and there’s also an en-suite to this cabin. So, in here [next to the owner’s cabin door] is the shower, of course, and the loo is tucked in behind.
And if we come on back [lobby], the day heads is on this side [port]. Again, separate shower, toilet, sink, mirror. And then back here [lobby], there’s a cabin on either side. So we drop into this one first [port cabin], two singles, there are infills to make that into a double. And basically, that drops down because it goes back underneath the dinette here [saloon]. But it means you’ve got really good headroom as you come in, so you’ve got space to get changed. And then the floor drops away with it, so you actually got pretty decent headroom area here as well. Hanging locker in there, large windows again, fantastic.
Okay, we’re going to back out of there. We’re going to cross over, and we’ll find a very similar kind of thing here [starboard cabin]. That’s a little bit more headroom in this one. That’s very nice, very nice indeed. Brilliant.
Okay, that’s the lower deck, and that is the accommodation generally. We could go out this way, but we’ll go aft and around simply because that’s where my shoes are. There we go.
You can access up this side [port-side, side deck door] but the canopy is in place at the minute, but you can obviously undo that and get up around that way if you want to. There’s a lift-up section here [galley countertop], by the way, so that can make a nice little bar area if you want it to.
There’s a ladder up there to the flybridge. We’ll have a look at that in a moment. And then we’ll head forward this way [starboard] first of all. These are quite nice, deeply board side decks, actually. Got the sliding side door just here. Helm position, as we discussed a moment ago. And then this [foredeck rails] comes up as we step up, and that takes us up onto the foredeck.
“They have actually lowered the forward sunbed and transformed it into a seating area.
There we are. And this is nice because they’ve actually sunk the forward sunbed down and made this look like a seating area. If you compare it with a slightly smaller boat, you can see how this one’s [small boat alongside] very much up on top, and this one’s [Jeanneau Merry Fisher 1295] recessed. So it can stay in place there, and then there’s a step down here. And in fact, there are cushions that will go on here [anchor lockers] as well, so you can make this into a little conversation area. And in fact, you can even infill this centre section [space between the sunbed and anchor lockers], and you can make this into one absolutely gigantic sunpad if you prefer. I’m not sure you need anything bigger than that, but you can if you want.
Asymmetric deck, so this is a bit narrow on this side [port], still perfectly usable, but that takes us back to what we saw back to the cockpit. But the idea being, of course, you have the wide one on this side [starboard] that’s when you use 90% of the time, but this [port side] is there, so if you want to put fenders out or you’re cleaning the boat, whatever, you’ve still got a route down that side. But by keeping that narrow, you’re increasing the size of your interior accommodation, and that, of course, is more important than two massive side decks.
FLYBRIDGE
Okay, we’re going to come on back. Flybridge is the only area that we’ve not covered, so we’ll come right on back [cockpit]. There we go. Steps are up here, ladder, I suppose we should say, and that brings us up on top. And what we’ve got up here then is another great dinette area. What they’ve done with this is they’ve made this seat [seat near the flybridge helm] so that you can do this [tilt] with it. There we go. And now you’ve got forward-facing seating here if you want it. Or obviously tilt it the other way, and you’re increasing the size of your dinette. There’s a fridge up here [next to the dinette area], and there’s a barbecue and a sink as well. There we go.
Radar lives up here [above the barbecue and sink compartment]. We’ve also got antennas up here, nav lights, all that sort of stuff, all on that little stainless steel mast.
And if we come around here on the upper helm position, there’s the engine controls, joystick control, bow thruster, trim tabs, all that kind of stuff. The multi-function display, all the things you need to be able to helm the boat. And of course, up on top here, great view out.
And I’m curious as to what’s underneath here [the covered section on the forward side]. It’s still covered up. Ah, okay, there are cushions underneath here as well. You can just see them there. There we go. So that is sunbathing out across there too. We’ve had some pretty bad weather here at the show, so I think everyone’s being a little bit cautious about how much they’re uncovering. Yesterday we had beautiful sunshine when the day started and then suddenly absolutely pelted down rain. Everyone’s going mad trying to get covers back on boats.
SUMMARY
But that is about the size of that. That’s the new Jeanneau Merry Fisher 1295. Massive thanks to Morgan Marine. They got in touch with me, said this was at the show, said come and have a look at it. So I have, and I brought it to you guys to have a look at too. Let me know what you think of that one, and we’ll catch you on another one of these real soon. Take care. Bye-bye.
