“How does she compare?”
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
How does it drive? Is it comfortable and would you enjoy it? But how does she feel when compared to the big British Brands like Princess, Fairline, and even the new entrance to the market, the Pearl 72?
So pricing, it’s in the description below. You’re watching Dan’s Boat Life. Dan Jones is my name and welcome, we are almost welcome to the Pacific Ocean. We are just exiting Sydney heads right now. I’m just going to poke the boat outside and we’re going to go around and demonstrate what she’s like in a few different conditions; offshore into the swell, across and down, and then we’re going to go find some protected water just over there. We’ll run the boat right up to full speed and see what she’s capable of, and then at the end of this video we’re going to take her to our Anchorage and demonstrate some slow speed manoeuvring. I’m going to transition from this helm to the upper helm—to the fly bridge and we’ll also try out the yacht controller. So, let’s get into it.
Right now, we’re sitting on 1700 revs, got a fuel flow of 136 a side. We’re running the 1550 V12 MANs and going into some swell right now. So, I’m going to just start to reposition myself so we’re taking that swell head on. I’ve got a little bit of trim down on the interceptors. We have the Humphree active stabilisers and they are set to “on”. I’m going to leave them “on” for the whole drive because why wouldn’t you on a boat like this? And also because we’ve got some plates and bowls and things still set out from the Boat Show and I don’t want them to fall over.
“It’s equipped with MAN V12-1550”
Okay, here we go into some swell. So maintaining 1700 revs, giving us 17 knots GPS speed over ground and I will increase that just a tad but we’re not actually going to wind the speed up until we actually start to go down swell which we’ll be in a second. We have a very moderate waves today just coming in from East to Northeasterly direction. The wind is actually Northwest right now so it’s probably 15 gusting to 20. We’re going to be seeing 25 plus later today. That’s why I’m hugging in around these rocks because it’s difficult to fly my drone in strong wind.
Alright, just adjusting our course there. Very quiet, incredibly quiet actually, that’s my first takeaway when I compare this to the British builds that I have tested and the Italians. I’ve still got that back door open but it’s incredibly quiet. There’s no need to raise your voice and long periods at the helm, if noise is something that you care about, well you don’t have to worry about it on this one.
You do have a bit of a loss of visibility from this pillar just here [starboard]. Every boat in this category is going to do that. So, it’s just one of those things. If you want the visibility, go upstairs. So just pay attention. If you see me looking around that’s what I’m doing. All clear—I’m going to start turning, still at that 1700 revs and I’m just doing a wide turn now and we’re going to take some of these swells on our beam and then we’re going to go down swell. We’re really only dealing with half a metre, short period sort of wind. Whatever was left over from the day before I suspect and now getting messed up a bit from the Northwesterly, so, not much at all. A little bit of ground swell but we’ve certainly seen it a lot worse. This time of year when you get the predominantly offshore breezes, you don’t get the large swells unless a system has blown in.
Okay with stabilisers on, I now have the swell coming in from my port side, port beam and hopefully you can see through this camera the Horizon, it’s pretty level, that’s comfortable! Let’s give it a little bit more speed now. So I’m going to increase those revs. Those V12s do sound good—what I can hear of them from up here.
Okay, coming through 1800 revs, I can feel some of those waves going underneath the boat. Fuel flow sitting at 180 now and that’s a steady 1800 revs. Now I’m seeing a speed of 18.8 knots and now we’re going down the waves and we have the wind on our starboard bow or starboard beam depending on what it’s doing with these rocks. Here we go, the boat feels a little bit more lively now. Just popping up and over some of those waves. I haven’t seen any water coming over the gunnels, it’s quite a dry ride so much and so far and you should see that on the drone shots.
And now we’re sitting on 20 knots down swell and 1845 revs just there. Consumption has gone back down actually to 165 a side. So let’s just give it a little bit more. I’m finding it very comfortable to stand. if I wanted to transition, I’ve got the bolster which I can flip down. I think if I was sitting like this, I would have the autopilot engaged and I would just do this on longer journey. So if I was doing a Sydney Harbour run, I would probably opt for the standing position cause I feel like I have more control from the standing position on my short runs and knowing what Sydney can be like on a Saturday or Sunday and you got to fight with multiple boats, I feel like I would personally enjoy that a little bit more. I do like having the throttle exactly where my throttle hand wants it to be. It’s set back from the wheel, so it’s really comfortable. And looks like I’ve got thruster control just ahead of that which we will play with when we get back into protected waters and obviously my yacht controller is there as well.
All right, let’s just give it a little bit more speed. Feels like you got quite a few turns from hard lock starboard to port on this wheel and she’s a predominantly bigger wheel which you would expect on a 72ft of a boat. So okay, 2060 revs 230L aside, now we’re moving, 23 knots. This camera should tell you—the bow raise from when we hit the plane to now, It’s about consistent, there’s moderate but the visibility is still fine and I would know because I’m only 5’7.
“There’s reduced visibility from the main helm on the starboard pillar. For better visibility, switch to the flybridge helm.”
I can play with my interceptors just here on the Humphree Control and let’s just have a little play with that, let’s just see if that drops the bow even more. Okay, that does and you know what? That actually gave us a speed advantage of about half a knot. So, we’re just getting some of the stern of the boat out of the water. So, I’ll leave that on that setting until I increase my speed when we get around the corner.
220L a side right now. 2070 revs, okay clear all around. It’s Friday today and it’s still winter so the harbour is not too bad. I’m going to be doing a sweeping turn. Once I get in on the inside of South head, we’re going to do a wide open throttle before we then do a moderately fast turn and just talk to you about what we feel.
So now we’re getting some wind chop coming in exposing itself to the boat here on starboard but no water coming up that I can see. You’ll obviously see that on the Drone as well. Let’s increase that speed, oh yeah. Okay, now she feels like she’s starting to boogie. With the stabilisers, the heel angles are very minimal. So from a guest perspective, you’re hardly even going to lose any drinks off the table right now.
So, I’m now at 26.7 knots I’ve got a rev setting of 2200 and I’m burning 256 a side. I’m going to raise those interceptors in a second and increase my speed. I’ve just got one Sea Ray here and I just got to work out where he’s going before I make a call on where I’m going to go cause I don’t want to annoy him. Okay, I’m just going to show my intentions and go to starboard. There we go, now let’s give it some speed. You do notice those extra turns on the wheel. Okay, raise those interceptors, increase speed—28 knots, 2350 revs, 294L a side, clear, clear. I’m going to run this way, he’s on port and I’m clear up ahead. Okay, let’s go wide open throttle. I can see 29 knots, that’s foot to the floor. I’m going to have some waves coming on the bow in a second. In about 3, 2, 1 and up and over them at 29 knots.
Now, I’m going to play with the Humphrees, I’m just going to retract them and see what happens. That bow really raises there—29.3 knots and now I’m going to lower them a little bit and see by flattening the boat out, does that give us any extra speed? Often you will find that on a style of boat like this. Look at that, 29.4, 29.5, yeah! This is cool! Oh man, honestly this is the best feeling—cruising around on big boats, burning Diesel, and making miles, who wouldn’t want to do this on their weekend?
Okay, I can see 29.6 knots. We are in windy conditions, I’m wide open throttle. I’m just going to give it a bit more trim down see if that gives me any more—29.7. I’ve got to come off the pace there now. Okay now, I’m just going to hold a moderate speed and we’re going to just hook into Chow Bay. We’ll just see how that feels in terms of a heel angle. Yeah, you do notice those turns, I guess it’s just something you get used to. I don’t see that as a negative.
Just plenty of boats that I’ve driven before and you just have less turns on the wheel. I suppose when you think about it, having the extra turns may give you a greater degree of control and also the wheel itself is quite easy to turn there’s no resistance. It’s almost toy-like. Okay coming in at 25 knots, my fuel flow is sitting at 244, I’m going to come back to a more sensible speed.
SUMMARY
Well, I hope you enjoyed that guys, I hope that was valuable to you. What an interesting experience! I’m starting to notice a few trends in the boating world. There are a lot of manufacturers in what we could perhaps call “The New World” popping up and making some really cool products and this is definitely one of them. That was a lot of fun, that’s really enjoyable to drive and I think for many of you looking for that classic big boat experience, you’re definitely going to get it on this Majesty 72.
Is it as refined and as good as the Princess and the Fairlines? Well, not exactly. They probably have a little bit of work to go. Is it the same price? No. Can you put it straight into charter in Australia and make it work for you? Yes.
So when you start to think about boats like this and then also the Pearl which is made in China, I’m seeing some serious competition and some business cases for boats like this in our Market because you can make them work for you and they do everything that they say they’re going to do. So it’s good looking, it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s easy to drive and it’s got a lot of space which is basically what you probably need in something like this.
“It’s good looking, it’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s easy to drive, and it’s got a lot of space which is basically what you need in something like this.”
So guys, if you want to get a detailed walkthrough of this boat, I’ve already done that. I did that at the Dubai International Boat Show so I’ll link to that video on the screen right now. Don’t forget to support the channel. I have a Patreon, please give it a like, share it with your mates if you enjoy this content. I’m really working hard to bring as much valuable information as I can to you guys. I genuinely want to save you time. So if we can avoid you having to travel around and spend too much of your time looking at multiple boats, if you can whittle it down to one or two on my channel, then that would be a great thing and I’d be super happy to hear that we’ve achieved that for you. Anyway, you’ve been watching Dan’s Boat Life, my name’s Dan Jones. Onto the next adventure, can’t wait to see you in the next one. Thanks guys!
