Why did we decide to custom build?
“Dreamworld” is a custom 13m motor yacht, a one off designed by Laurent Giles a world renown naval architect based in the UK. She was hand built over a 5 year period by my father Paul (A professional time served Shipwright) using the finest materials available. Her hull is constructed solely of Brazilian mahogany using modern construction methods (Cold Molded), this provides a very strong structure which is well suited to ocean cruising.
There are many reasons why, the key points as follows;
There are many classes of yachts out there, the majority are production built coastal vessels and quality is not always the manufacturers top priority but rather keeping their shareholders happy.
When buying or building a custom yacht you generally get to decide what equipment you want, it may come at a higher price but you can be assured that quality comes before budget.
You can also provide design input to make her a safer vessel, for example a key thing missing on most vessels is adequate handholds so you don’t slip, fall etc when at sea which can cause severe injury and sometimes death. These are usually omitted due to style concerns but also because typical yacht designers do not go to sea!
Five years, by hand, in mahogany
The hull is solid Brazilian mahogany and is about 1.25 Inches thick, combined with the latest 2 component coatings the hull will last a lifetime. In addition to this special features such as Aircraft grade triple laminated windows, non electronic naturally aspirated engines etc will keep this yacht running for years…
She’s hardly recognisable
Well over the years Dreamworld has evolved to better suit our cruising lifestyle, if you saw a photo of when she was launched and compared her to what you see today its hardly recognisable.
A few of the changes to give a better idea;
The bow was raised and flybridge altered during a refit in the year 2000 as seen in Passagemaker and Motorboats Monthly magazines. These modifications gave the bow more buoyancy, also enables a dryer ride and most importantly increased storage space which is a valuable asset.
During a visit to Puerto Rico we met a fellow cruiser with some unusual poles fitted to their boat, out of curiosity we had to ask them the purpose and learnt they were stabilisers to prevent the vessel from rolling at sea. They had some design issues so we re engineered the design and custom built a set for Dreamworld, what a difference it makes to life aboard !
As any sailor will know, fresh water is a valuable commodity which is generally ferried from shore by dinghy which takes alot of time and effort. Due to this we fitted a Village Marine water maker in around 1996 to help cope with this problem, however it only made 6 Gallons per hour if we were lucky and drained a lot of battery power. In a nutshell we were always short on water and struggled to make it go around, so in 2018 we decided to develop a brand new water maker. This is a prototype model that is being tested and refined, we have had a couple of issues admittedly but these have been resolved. Now we are able to produce 40 Gallons per hour and in certain conditions it can be powered by Solar, Amazing !
Again in 2018 another vital upgrade was made, a 1.3kw solar array to charge the batteries at anchor and also to run the watermaker as described above. This has significantly reduced our generator running time which used to be up to 8 hours per day, this equates to 24 litres of diesel saved per day whilst in tropical climates!
Our latest innovation is a new generator, as usual it is a custom built unit. This is for a few reasons, first of all we can fix it should something go wrong. Secondly it is exactly what we want, ie. it fits in the space we have and its a new technology not seen before, this one is 3 phase and runs though a special inverter to convert into single phase 230v 50hz. The reason we have opted for this is that most of our AC electronics are extremely sensitive to voltage and frequency instability, this has caused issues over the years on the past generator. Now everything works perfectly and we have extra power since we are now at 10KW rather than the old 6KW.
I could go on but then we’d have nothing to talk about when you come sailing with us !
The boat under way
Dreamworld is a displacement hull, when fully fueled we are in the region of 23 tonnes. The fuel carried along with supplies, weather conditions etc all plays a part on how fast we go. Typically we plan voyages based upon 4.5 Knots as that is economical and also we have to allow for the worst in terms of fuel used. However usually when fuel is not critical we cruise at 5.5 knots which is comfortable and surprisingly eats up the miles.
