BOAT TOUR: The Sailing Family's OUTREMER 51 Blue Water Catamaran

if you're like us and you enjoy the sailing part then i think you need to skew toward a more of a performance cat and this is the ultimate g'day i'm brent thorne from multi-health central and we've got a very special guest here with us today at the marina it's seth and the family from the sailing family in ultramare 51 that has crossed halfway around the world and now here in sydney harbour we're going to meet with seth to give us a special tour through what a real blue water cruising catamaran looks like on the ultramare 51 so let's go and take a look hey bran hey seth you might have uh come on let's do it all right show you the bump all right so sir why don't you tell us briefly how you ended up here in sydney harbour on the back of an ultramare 51 i mean it's a great question i don't know how we did it either to be honest um it was never our plan to even come to australia but obviously we bought the utremir 51 we actually bought it almost three years ago in the united states uh we're the second owners of this boat it's seven years old but still in great shape and uh we bought this boat and wanted to sail around the world you've previously come out of a lagoon catamaran many years ago you did this you know as a test run uh when you're younger and on your honeymoon which is which is pretty cool so how did you end up going from a lagoon into a ultramare 51 quite different choices of boats completely different boats and i think the answer that is we were we were uh rude by the appeal of the lagoon you know which is a lot of living space and a lot of comfort kind of comfort first um you know that's what a lot of the charter cats and the we call them condo morans it's not a derogatory term it's actually it can be if that's what you want if you want a condo on the water that's what those boats are for but what we learned was for us anyway sailing around the world you sail quite a lot actually and you're only sailing around the world uh shocker and you know you want a boat that actually can perform a boat that you feel safe in about that uh you know when when you eventually get into that squall into that storm that you're going to come into that you feel confident about and a boat that you feel safe putting your three kids on board um and then a boat maybe that you enjoy to sail and have a little bit of fun with as well and so uh you know the spectrum of boats kind of goes from you know phantom joe and lagoon and and leopard kind of all the way up to where we are today and on the katanas the utromers and the sea winds and the you know the chris whites and the gunboats you know there's that spectrum and i there's no right or wrong i don't think but for us we learned a lot with that first boat that we didn't like and when we came to do this again we wanted to find that boat that was right for us and for us that pushed us really more towards the performance category there's lots of great boats and that that category seems to be exploding because i think a lot of people are kind of figuring that out there's a lot of other people out there like me kind of talking about the advantages and you know we we couldn't be happier being in a performance cat than we are we time and again we have been uh so grateful that we're in this type of a boat awesome so of that category i guess of the performance boat so what was it about the ultramare that spoke to you as your as your choice of boat that's a great question um we love this boat this was there this is a 2014 so this is the first year that they kind of um they've they upgraded their 49-foot model the 49-footer was a multi-hall of the year award-winning boat but then they just improved quite a few more things with this model a lot of it was interior design kind of bringing it up to sort of modern very european scandinavian design very clean very light woods very light uh walls um but but more than that uh just the small improvements to the boat as well just a little bit they extended the transoms a little bit give it a little more water line a little bit more speed through the water a little bit more weight savings uh improvement and uh we just we just love this boat so uh when we looked around at all the boats were out there we did we did look we looked at katanas we looked at um a chris white boat we looked a little bit outside of that spectrum and antares we looked at a bunch of brands but ultimately it came down to this type of a boat for a lot of reasons maybe if we walk around a little bit i can show you some of the reasons why specifically but this boat sort of ticked all the boxes with us yeah awesome well why don't we do that let's take the opportunity for you to actually show us through the boat and uh you know point out i think particularly of interest that this is a true blue water boat because you're living on it and you've crossed half halfway around the world now so let's let's have a look well we don't go far either because i think the first first thing we loved about the boat was just where we're sitting because it's so protected a lot of cats just this is clean you know flat floor off to the back and this boat as you sit here in this cockpit you feel very safe no one's falling off the back of this boat and for us again with three young boys aboard you want to make sure that everyone's safe and so this cockpit felt super safe for us and you're right that's big high you know transom here you've got all your main sheet and traveler and everything out the back you don't sort of come anywhere near it do you yeah yeah the traveler as well you know it's not on the coach roof so from just a strength perspective this is a much better way to control your mainsail but also just build a more robust boat and then you can also see these curtains that we have you know these curtains are fantastic they drop down completely around us so when it's raining or it's cold we can drop all these curtains and then this room stays dry and warm and and again safe there's no way you're getting off the boat if the curtains are drying so our boys actually sleep underway they love it one of the things they love about passages is that we let them sleep out here so uh rhys sleeps here and hail our nine-year-old and our 10 year old sleeps over on that side and we let them listen to an audio story on on as they're kind of falling asleep because they're helping me with watch and they love it they love sleeping out here and we're perfectly happy with them doing that underway because of how safe the boat is [Music] come on inside let's take a look inside um this is the the salon and the trimmer 51. um normally you have a table here but we actually love leaving it dropped like this uh turns it kind of a bit of a sofa and then it's actually a night berth as well so when we're underway we're just talking about where the kids sleep you know i can kind of nap here if elizabeth's on watch or vice versa but we're both kind of up here in the middle of the boat super comfortable right under the mast right in the middle of the boat and then you have everything you need here so we actually spend all of our time at the nav table you know i'll sit here you've got i've got my nav controls here with the remote so i can control all the angle all the autopilot controls on the computer we have an nmea connection so we run a time zero software which shows us all the charts but then also the wind data so we can with that we can we can actually uh download grid files and forecast with our particular pullers for this boat and predict our our course so all that data's here um wind of course temperature weather this is our battery control uh satellite phone and then of course we have our your vhf which is beeping at me and then a single sideband radio on this boat so everything's right here and having it forward-facing obviously you've got good visibility around you and you've got great visibility forward you can see you know where you're going you can look for lights you can just sit here comfortably under watch and control the boat from here excellent and so in the rest of the saloon we've got obviously your galley and yeah uh great galley three burners you know gas oven on this boat you can get electric i believe is an option if you wanted to uh two sinks you can salt water pump and fresh water for uh water management the boats all come with a water maker which does 100 liters an hour on 12 volts it's a great system um so we're really happy with with this boat what we're here talking about i guess your nav equipment and electronics what about solar batteries what's your power management system look like yeah when we bought the boat it came with kind of the stock solar setup which i think was fine for the original two owners but with five of us on board five kids opening the fridge and keeping the door open and looking in there what they went out and letting all the cold air out um you know we needed a little bit more power so we just we installed a larger solar array on the back and we put 500 additional watts on the bimini and this is a catamaran there's so much space for solar and we don't have a generator and we don't need one so we can run our water maker two three hours a day especially in the tropics um but even here right now you know we're at we're at 100 right now um the bat and we leave the inverter on all the time so we're constantly charging laptops and toys and and cameras and you know the the battery systems kind of finally the technology's there it's real simple and we don't even have lithium-ion batteries we just have agm gels so um it's a great system so that was 500 watts on the on the roof do you recall what you get out yeah we have 1260 on the davits and then 500 on the roof right okay that's what's up there plenty yeah so and uh so no gen set so as far as demands on your power system obviously you've got your your nav gear you've got your fridge and freezers um on this boat we actually have we installed an extra freezer so we've got the fridge in the freezer that you see here and then we added an extra angle freezer down below just so underway you know in a long passage we can fill it with chicken breasts and steaks and go excellent and then probably uh electric winches yeah that's true yeah we have electric winches this boat actually has four electric winches um and so underway you're obviously running your auto helm as well uh and then we don't have any wind but we do have a hydro generator which has been fantastic i was going to ask about that yeah so under passage maybe sucking a little bit more power well it's really at night so at night obviously your solar doesn't work um so the what i would say the hydro kind of keeps us where we are so during the day no problem at all with with running all the systems at once even underway electric winches and everything but then at night you know just to keep it things sort of topped up the hydro generator is really good and so earlier we talked about the hydro generator it's got this dedicated locker here on the back so this locker on the starboard side would be for the swim ladder but here it perfectly fits the hydra generator so this just comes out slides on a track on the back of the transom and then we drop that in the water and at night that keeps us powered up so this is the owner's haul on this one so we've got a queen-size bed in the back here um this boat bed i believe you on all the tremors you have a choice between kind of if you want it one way or the other um but we like this layout because you kind of keep your balance a little bit more underway um and then you've got the privacy door that you're standing right by there brent so that uh if you've got three kids on board nice to close them off sometimes and then elizabeth's closet i've been relegated to the other side and with the boys so this is all elizabeth space but you know tons of closet space here you've got you know four cupboards there another one there another one in the in the actual stateroom itself do you run a washing machine we don't run a washing machine so you you can put one in the other hall uh in the other shower but we don't have one on this boat uh so we just find uh laundry mats wherever we go they're they're everywhere in the world yep so here's the daggerboard casing um so a lot of people will complain that a dagger board might take up a lot of room in the hallway it feels like there's plenty of room here for us and and i'd rather have a dagger board and then in here of course is the the owner's head important for me is a tall i know i'm six foot three so quite tall and uh you know to be able to stand in the shower is kind of a nice feature all right so my wife calls this the hull of despair because my uh my kids are in here this is kind of their hall but um you know it's it's a mirror of the of the owner's cabin on this side so you've got another queen berth over here uh and all the closets and storage space and then on this hall instead of the owner's hall you have a shower here which we converted to a closet and a freezer and then this boat has the the bunk bed set up so uh one kid can sleep here and if you if you don't want this you can actually fold it up and just make it the normal twin that's up here so lots of sleeping space [Music] yeah so this is the helm on this boat we've got one electric winch in all intel gear and one manual the same on the other side and then another electric winch here in the cotton in the cockpit and you know the great it's a great helm it's protected in this case so this is an aftermarket bimini that that utromer put on a lot of owners are starting to choose to have this option because you obviously want to stay in the shade in the tropics but then even sailing here when it's been raining quite a bit here in sydney and we've been pretty happy to have this this protection so it keeps us dry and out of the sun but yeah you can control everything here this is where we raise the main and control the main sheet control the general sheets uh we have separate leech and luff reefing lines uh so we can we can even reef the boat going downwind and uh you know every all the all the lines come back here we have no reason to go to the mast actually at all unless we're you know flying a kite or hoisting a spinnaker so you're saying before that you know this boat suits people who like to sail you like to do a lot of sailing so why don't we talk a little bit more about sail choice and maybe how you've got the sail set up on the boat sure uh yeah well the the first thing kind of the utromer dna brand thing is this so if you love to sail and you know i used to race kind of keel boats and you want to have a tiller so here's a tiller seat and it's got one on each side uh so you can sit here you can look at your telltale as you can you can trim right up to the point where you're pinching up wind and control the boat from here and there's even a lever that disconnects the steering wheel so you can just have direct connect uh control manual control to the to the rudders you can feel if you have a weather helm so there's not many catamarans of this size or you can do that so it's kind of a fun really fun feature especially when racing [Music] so there's really three places to control the boat from and then up front we've got all our sails so up here is the my favorite part of the tour this is kind of all the sails and sail planning and i mean the first thing you notice right away is just a huge trampoline so this just tells you it's a performance cat i think our lagoon had you know a tiny one meter trampoline in comparison and what that does is it just brings all the weight aft because you really want the weight under the mast as best you can so all the fuel the batteries and all the weight is kind of centrally located under the midship part of the boat and then these this obviously the length of the water line gives you speed uh and then also removes a lot of that hobby horsing effect that catamarans are kind of famous for so they kind of say you should buy a cat over 44 feet or so because that kind of is where that sweet spot is but at 51 feet this boat really is quite comfortable underway and then sail wise we've got a rather large mainsail square top mainsail this boat has this day sail option so this is a carbon longer on and what that allows you to do is it gives you the strength to put in a stay sail so this is a hanked on jib that goes to the self tacking track right there behind you brent and it's just a small small sail that keeps the center of effort you know right in the middle of the boat again so if you're heavily reefed or you're going upwind you know this boat will kind of quickly get you know likes to go 10 knots so if you've got 15 knots of wind all of a sudden you've got 25 knots of apparent wind and you should be reefed you shouldn't have a full general out and if you want to pinch and still sail comfortably you want to reduce sail area but keep the sail area in the center of the boat and so that's what the state sail does that's a great feature and then the other thing with the with the carbon launcher on is you get the 110 genoa so our jenna will come all the way back to here to these tracks so that this this is actually trimmed right now for kind of up wind sailing so that the jenna will actually come right to about here so quite a big head sail on the boat and then you can imagine on a reach or a run that extra sail area really you know helps you get that boat back up to 10 knots even though you're kind of going with the wind so in wind conditions um your stay sail option when would you be flying that typically so i won't lie it's it's not the easiest sail to rig and hoist and bring back down so we really kind of only rig it when we're going offshore and we're expecting you know headwinds but if that's if we're ever going offshore in those conditions we try not to but if we do it's happened unfortunately more than you'd like uh then we rig it and it's ready to go and and if we find the wind is you if you can actually feel again with the helm and and the tillers you can feel if the boat's you know out of balance and that's when you think okay i need to reef or i need to you know reduce some sail area so he's like talking like 20 knots plus 15 knots plus uh well actually on this boat um the reefing plan is the first reef is at 18 knots the second reef is 21 knots and the third reef is about 24 knots i find that that's probably on the conservative side and what we've learned over time as all owners learn is you know when you when you reduce sail area and you're still kind of going the same speed you were before but you have less sail out then that was the right time to reef so we find 18 is probably right for the first reef the main is so big and the first reef doesn't take out too much we actually find almost always when we even put up the sail we kind of almost start with one reef automatically uh just because the bokeh does kind of quickly get up to those apparent wind speeds uh but then with the stay sail you know that again if we're if we're going up when and we're over 20 then you'd want the state sail option so you know if the apparent winds are 23 25 again it's really simple if it's you know typically it's 15 knots of wind out there in the in the tropics and in the trade winds and if you're going upwind at all you know you're quickly at you know over 23 24 25 knots of wind yeah but typically the genoa i imagine gets gets used a lot oh the general the genoa is great and you know obviously it's on a furler as well so you know it is infinitely reefable itself you know if from a pure standpoint you don't have the best shape if you if you furl it so that's why you've got the stay sail option uh but you can for all the general as well just if you needed to quite quickly reef you could do that yeah and the stay sail in terms of the actual uh stay that it's on that's removable right yeah so that um you know especially racing and tacking with the general upwind you want to be able to get that out of the way so that the general can tack around so that you can ease the block down here with this yellow line and that entire stay sail forestay comes and attaches back to the mast so you can you can put this you can stow the sail in the sail locker you can get this the stay sail four state out of the way uh it's just like you know any other boat you've ever sailed on but without the station okay and what about extra styles uh so the extra sails this boat came with i think a great sail plan it's got a reacher or gennaker a lot of people call it a code zero but it's really kind of a really flat cut sail and then it's it's got the option with the with this carbon launcher on you can really hang down on on the halyard and that and you know get the four state quite tight and that allows you actually to sail upwind with with the large spinnaker type you know asymmetrical sail so with that sail we can sail anywhere from 60 degrees upwind and really it's a light air sail so it's kind of an ounce and a half inch ounce and a half that thick fabric and that weight allows you in light air that sail kind of comes all the way back to that home seat i was sitting in earlier it's a huge flat sail but with that you can again even in light air kind of almost match wind speeds so you know if there's 10 knots of wind you know on my lagoon i couldn't sail you know on this boat you can sail and at 10 knots you're going eight knots um so you're almost reaching true wind speeds it's it's fantastic and it really opens up those lower wind speeds i guess it does i mean i think going back to the difference between you know charter cats and performance cats i mean those are the big that's the big difference for me is you can sail in light air and you can sail up wind and so you find yourself sailing all the time and light wind sailing is actually the most enjoyable sailing if you can go eight knots and the seas are flat that's that's like my favorite type of sailing there is it's a wine and cheese day uh so you're out there and you're you're you know our friends are all motoring to the next island and and we're they think we're crazy to be off tacking into the wind to try and get there but we're having a blast and the family are happy yeah uh and then our fifth sale on this boat is a symmetrical spinnaker uh and that's a great sale so you know we're talking about light wind sailing you know what you what you dream about when you're sailing around the world is the wind's always behind you and you're kind of going with the wind with the waves and that's what that that kite is really for so we can sail either with the main up uh or just the spinnaker alone and just go really down you know 180 degrees downwind with that sail that's again a real lightweight sail but 108 you know it's a real wide sale we run two guys off the bows and then two sheets we go back to the to the cockpit for control and we can we can move that around and sails we need to and then in terms of storage for the sail locker obviously the with these long valves you get huge storage so in here we have where we store our the reacher so the reacher if you come over here actually i'll just climb in here and show you how much room there is so in here you've got um a ladder to get down but then here's where we we keep our reach for sale so our reacher sort of stows up nicely here this day sail normally we'll go here under where the kites are but then you can see just all the toys in here as well we've got i just counted it earlier today we've got seven kites for kite surfing we've got two kite boards we've got two foils we've got three boogie boards we've got two surfboards uh and then all this all the lines that you need to run the boat uh and then kite harnesses you know there's so much room in here to store all the toys and all the sail gear that you need to sail around the world awesome all right so the other thing just to mention about the sail locker is you know these boats are designed to sail around the world in fact i think utremir's you know brand mantra is for the boat to be able to sail around the world multiple times but so with that in mind you have to worry about safety and collision at sea so you know this whole sail locker it's worth mentioning it can be sealed off from the rest of the boat so it's really kind of a crash locker and in fact there's even a shelf there that's got foam inside so if you were to hit something you're going to hit the water line you know that also protects the rest of the boat so you know it's really designed for sailing around the world and that entire storage has also got another sealed bulkhead right from the rest of your accommodation as well right so exactly okay and then earlier we're talking about weight under the mass this is the fuel tanks and then we use it to keep our jerry cans as well you actually don't need the jar cans we we go three or four months you know minimum before we're filling up usually because you're usually sailing because you can see online what's the big point right i mean you're probably using less fuel because you're spending more time with the sails completely um so the jerry cans are actually really just for kind of when you get really in sticks and there isn't a fuel dock and you need to you go in your dinghy to shore to the gas station to get fuel so that's kind of really the only reason for the cherry cans which is an interesting thing to sort of highlight though because sometimes you can't always get fuel right from a dockside right when you're in these remote locations and the two motors they don't have docks so uh you you kind of do need that ability to kind of do that but so we filled up in panama we went to the galapagos we got lucky and didn't get caught in the itcz so we went to the galapagos spent three weeks there sailed all the way to tahiti and we still had full fuel tanks so with the jerry cans we'd filled up in panama these tanks were full so we then cruised for three more months in in french polynesia and didn't need fuel for like half a year pretty amazing so obviously like your fuel tanks and batteries and things are fairly centralized on the boat yeah for weight distribution yeah you know the boat as we talked about earlier with the with the length of the bow you know it's a 15 meter boat and it's also got a 7.2 meters beam so it's quite a wide boat as well and what that really does get you again is a very comfortable platform so you're not really hobby horsing and then all performance cats you know they're not going to find a flybridge on a performance cat it's all about weight kind of low under the mast not high up on the bimini and you don't want your boom up high and losing all the sail area so as you can see right here on this boat you know the boom is nice and low uh we still have room for our toys with our our kids sailing dinghy here uh but you know all the tremors come with the carbon bimini or all 51 zoo at least uh and five x's um but the you know even the bimini is is carbon so certain elements in the boat that are carbon to try to keep that weight down low and to keep the boat from rocking and hobby horsing is like a lot of the you know the charter cats and condomer as well and so what about uh you know payload because you know the argument is can you take you know sufficient payload on a on a performance cap when you're going blue water cruising yeah thankfully kate gear is pretty light but no you know it's a great question i think i think it really depends on you again as a sailor and how what you want and how you want to set it up you know with this boat we've done a very good job of overloading this boat probably well beyond the spec but the boat isn't sinking down below its water line um in fact we've been quite pleased with the performance and um you know we've loaded up dinghies and we've got scuba tanks and scuba gear there's five of us and children's books you know you name it we've got kind of all the toys we could want on this boat and we've been pleasantly surprised with the performance you know and even last night racing the boat with what we have like 10 people on board or 11 people on board we still did pretty well so i think it almost goes more to you're paying for carbon options this is a carbon reinforced longer on if you're going to start putting a carbon rig on and you're going to really you know plus up all the carbon options then maybe you shouldn't load it up with lots of heavy stuff because you just paid a fortune for all those carbon options but if you're if you've got the aluminum mast and you're not worried about every you know 0.1.2 knots of speed difference i think it's it's really kind of comes down to that that minimal the difference so you've really got a good comprehensive sail package and sail wardrobe to give you the power to get the boat going that too but you haven't like it's not a super super lightweight boat in terms of all the carbon options picked so you're still able to get sufficient power in the boat to make it move and it i would say more insufficient i mean one of the other advantages of the performance category catamaran category is that you don't have to force the boat you know push the boat with a lot of sail area in fact you kind of at some point you don't want to go 10 11 12 knots into you know heavy waves at some point it gets too uncomfortable and so the ability to reduce the sail area and still kind of go you know in a good eight nine ten knots and do it more comfortably when the seas do get rough you know that's that's a great option yeah and it's just on performance i mean some people misconceived that you know a performance catamaran is about trying to go 20 knots all the time but that's not really the case is it no i mean i uh and it's not at all i think it's about you know going a comfortable speed where the boat is in balance you're not pushing the rig you're not worried about breaking something but you are still clocking kind of a lot more miles than you normally would so we used to do 150 nautical miles a day on our lagoon and on this boat we plan for 200 to 220 depending on the win conditions so it's a huge difference so we did 15 days crossing the pacific ocean in this boat versus 20 in our last boat that's a five-day difference at sea that's really what it's converting to is it right it's time out in the ocean bobbing around and there's been multiple times where we've kind of just made it in before dark and whereas before we would have had to slow the boat up and you spend a whole another night at sea and you're you're exposed to more squalls or more you know another front that's coming um so on a lot of times we've been lucky to escape you know you can't outrunning the storm might be a bit of a myth but you can you know because of the miles you've been putting in you might get in before the storm and so we've we've had experiences like that where other boats and other friends are caught at sea and we're inside drinking margaritas [Music] so in here another thing that's nice actually is a lot of cats you have the engine right underneath the bed so you got to take all the bedding away to get access to the engine and then back here it's kind of a little quieter you're not sleeping on top of it and then you've got great access inside here as well so you've got here in this engine room we've got our electric drive autopilot the manual linkage to the steering and then great access to the engine if you'd like to download an information kit on the ultramap 51 click here to watch other videos on the ultramare range click here and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Multihull Central

Views: 93,737

Rating: 4.9358668 out of 5

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Id: nZ2JOMH3Bgg

Length: 28min 56sec (1736 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021