CRUISING ABOARD MORITZ - PART 1

Envoy is in Lefkas Marina for the northern hemisphere winter while we're home for the New Zealand summer, returning next month.

It's early February, nearly three months since we left Envoy and after such a break from boating we're ready for some more, happily accepting an invitation to join long-time friends Morris and Gail Watson for a few days aboard “Moritz”, a Maritimo 48 motor yacht in Auckland's superb Hauraki Gulf.

Maritimos are upper end of the market planing motor yachts built in Queensland's Gold Coast. 
The company's owner, Bill Barry-Cotter, is well experienced in the marine industry and formerly owned Riviera – also builders of popular planing motor yachts. We presume the brand name is inspired by Maritimo Island, one of the Egadi Islands located off the north-west coast of Sicily where coincidentally we visited in 2014.

Moritz is a big volume luxury boat

We meet Morris and Gail at Half Moon Bay Marina and quickly settle on Moritz – not only have we been aboard previously but Morris and Gail have cruised aboard Envoy with us in the Aegean Sea. In fact they're also meeting us this year for a week in Sicily.

Being a weekday there are no other boats around and the sun is shining with little wind as we cruise sedately down the Tamaki River sipping a cold welcome-aboard beer.

Moritz is a luxuriously appointed big-volume boat with two staterooms, two having en-suite heads and bathrooms plus a third cabin with bunks that doubles as a utility room with a built-in washer/dryer ( a great feature aboard a cruising boat). The saloon has plenty of seating and a generous sized dining area while access to the huge flying bridge area is by an easily manageable staircase rather than the glorified ladder that many boats have.

The staircase to Moritz's flybridge is way better than the ladder we had on our last boat

Full walk-around decks give great access for crew duties, while a huge cockpit and boarding platform give ample space for outdoor entertaining and fishing. Previously I've been one of about 18 people aboard Moritz for a day's fishing without the boat feeling over-crowded.

Apparently there's a trend away from flybridge vessels to sedan style, but I honestly find this difficult to understand unless a buyer is really particular about a sportier appearance or has an issue with air draft. Flybridges work really well on larger boats providing much greater usable space and storage space for the same length, vastly improved unobstructed visibility and reduced engine noise at the helm. Advocates of the sedan style say it's nice to have all the crew in the same space, but I believe it's a much greater plus to have an additional and separate area of space. Another factor is that when seas are a bit rough, it's less claustrophobic and all looks a bit better looking down on the waves from on high.

Moritz's flybridge is perfect with full headroom, just the single helm position (in my opinion additional helm stations below add unnecessary expense and take a lot of space), glass windows (vinyl clears have restricted visibility in rough conditions and don't stay pristine for more than a couple of seasons), plenty of comfortable seating, a small fresh water sink and refrigerator, and easy staircase access.

With a flybridge like this who'd want a sedan style cruiser?

Some critics of flybridges also cite their additional windage, but in fact windage is generally not a problem applicable to boats (it has negligible effect compared to the drag caused by water) except perhaps for some inexperienced skippers encountering high beam winds in marinas and let's face it - most boats like this have twin engines and bow thrusters making maneuverability a breeze. Moritz even has stern thrusters! Incidentally for the technically minded hull drag caused by water increases at a phenomenal square of the increase in speed.

I do agree that flybridges don't work so well on smaller vessels (less than about 40ft) as their seating and headroom is too low, access is more difficult and vessel stability can be impaired by a higher centre of gravity.

This trip is also interesting to us for another reason. We're starting to think about what sort of boat we may buy back in Auckland when our Med adventures aboard Envoy are completed and so far all motor vessel options are on the table including conventional shaft-driven planing boats.
Moritz's twin 670hp Cummins diesel engines purr away driving their shafts with minimal vibration as we clear the channel and increase rpm slightly to 930 giving a still-sedate speed of 9.2 knots and fuel consumption of 14 litres/hour for each engine.
We're in no hurry and like many owners of fast planing boats Morris sees no benefit in going very much above displacement speed and then getting a bumpier ride and greatly increased fuel consumption. Later we're cruising at 1090 rpm providing 10 knots and 18 litres/hour.

First stop is Motutapu Island's Station Bay which is perfectly calm with only three other boats swinging at anchor. For me it makes an enjoyable change to be crew rather than skipper and not have tough decisions like deciding where to drop the anchor and how much chain to deploy. Morris and Gail are long time cruisers, originally aboard sailing yachts and we have the utmost confidence in them.

Leaving Motutapu Island's Station Bay

Planing boats tend to have a different sound at night compared with their displacement cousins as wind-driven wavelets hit their planing strakes and make a little bit of noise, but we're used to this from our former days of owning planing boats so it's no problem.

Next Blog we cruise to Waiheke Island and the Coromandel Peninsula.