Hello All,

Georgs thought you might be interested in our experiences from this past
year with our new Dutch steel trawler, "Legrace"; her delivery, cruising
in the Netherlands, traveling south through Belgium & France (wintered
in southern France on the Rhone River) and returning to the Netherlands
via Paris & the English Channel (w/ a side jaunt to Dover).

Obviously this will be a long story so I'll break into multiple posts
over the next week or so. First a bit of back ground, Lynn & I purchased
our first boat "Caroline" in July 2002. She was a 1989 Linssen 40SE (40
ft steel semi-displacement cruiser). We bought her in Sneek, northern
Netherlands, and cruised all over the Netherlands that summer and went
to Paris & back in 2003.

At the end of our first cruising season in Sept 2002 we ordered
"Legrace" from Aquanaut Yachting Holland (see http://www.aquanaut.nl
http://www.aquanaut.nl/  ). Aquanaut is a semi-custom builder doing
25+ boats a year with a 1 1/2 to 2 year backlog, so the delivery date
was set for May 2004.

Before retiring in 2002, Lynn & I lived in Prague, Czech Republic for
three years. The word legrace in Czech means fun plus it is a play on
words since we have her by the grace of God. English speakers call her
"le grace" and the French think we misspelled it but it's a
pronounceable name in most languages.

"Legrace" is a Drifter 1250 AK with the following specs as built:

Length    12.95 meters  (42.5 ft)

Beam      4.10 meters  (13.45 ft)

Draft      1.18 meters  (4 ft)

Air draft  5.30 meters  (17.4 ft) with mast up

       2.88 meters  (9.46 ft) with mast & canvas down

Displacement  about 16,500 kg or 36,400 lbs full load

Fuel    1200 liters diesel (317 gals)

Water    800 liters (211 gals)

Waste    500 liters (53 gals)

Single engine; John Deere 4045TFM, 135 hp  w/ TwinDisk gears

Bow & Stern thrusters (Vetus 95kg thrust models)

She has a multi-chine, displacement hull with side bilge keels in
addition to the center keel. WOT is right at 9 knots (2500 RPM), hull
speed is 8.3 knots (at 2100 RPM) and our typical cruise is 7 to 7 1/2
knots (1600 to 1800 RPM) burning 1.9 to 2.5 gal/hr.

"Legrace" is laid out with a forward v-berth (w/ head), galley &
dinette, saloon (with inside helm station), shower/laundry room and aft
cabin (w/ head). Being a semi-custom builder, Aquanaut offers many
options & alternative layouts. Lynn & I looked at dozens of new
Aquanauts while being built and talked with many other owners, gathering
ideas. Then we went through the trade-offs of what will work for us, how
we planned to use her and costs. We had many discussions with Aquanaut
including their designers and head mechanic on layouts and systems. We
also spent a lot of time planning & sizing the electrical system so we
could use both European and US shore power.

The electrical system uses all MasterVolt components:

• 10 kVA isolation transform (with auto switching & SoftStart to
  accommodate shore power voltage)

• 7 kW MasterVolt generator

• 3 kVA MasterVolt Inverter (full sine wave Dakar model, 6 kVA peak) 24
  volt DC systems:

• Service side with 4x165Ahr Gel batteries

• Engine Starting & Thrusters have 2x165Ahr Gel Batteries

Note: two alternators mounted on engine; 110A w/ Alpha Pro regulator for
service side & 65A Alternator for engine starting & thursters

• DC to DC Converter for 12 volt service

• 100A x 24 volt MasterVolt battery charger

• MasterVolt Power System Control Panel for AC & DC management

Other major systems are:

Gulf Coast F-1 Filter & Fuel polishing

Dual Separ fuel filters

Webasto Furnace

X-Change-R Oil change system

CruiseAir 24,000 btu air conditioning

Electronics are all Raymarine:

• 4kW radar scanner 24" radome

• RL-70CRC color radar & chart plotter

• RL-70 LCD display for second helm station

• GPS

• ST6000 Autopilot & 400G computer (w/ gyro)

• Fluxgate compass

• Tridata Depth/Speed/Log

• Wind meter

• VHF radio Shipmate RS 8400 (not Raymarine)

As you can tell my interest was in systems coming from an aerospace
engineering background.

For Lynn, the galley is equipped with:

• 4 burner gas stove

• HDC220 Coolmatic refrigerator & freezer (24V DC powered)

• GE 1.5 cu. Ft. convection/microwave oven

• Fisher Paykel DishDrawer dish washer

The shower/laundry room has a Splendide 2000S washer/dryer combo unit
(vented not a condensing unit).

Heads are Tecma Saninautico with fresh water flush.

The various pumps are Rule (bilge), SureFlow (freshwater), Whale (shower
drain) or Jabasco (deck wash) brands. Anchor is a Bruce copy with 75
meters of chain with a Vetus Alexander anchor wench. Plus numerous other
Vetus bits & pieces like dual station hyld. steering.

Also, she has a teak interior and the aft deck is teak covered. Aquanaut
uses Sikkens 2 component paint systems.

The manual davits are polished SS and hold the Yamaha 330S inflatable
with 8hp Yamaha 4 stroke engine.

All the above was installed by Aquanaut.

I also use RayTech Navigator electronic charting software on my Dell
laptop. SeaTalk/NEMA and HSB2 cables were run to the chart table in the
saloon to feed the laptop. The RayTech Navigator software is fully
integrated with the all the other electronics - radar/chart
plotting/autopilot/Tridata info, etc. I use C-Map charts, SuperWide
cards in the RL-70CRC & NT+/PC charts from CD-ROMs on the laptop.

"Legrace" is the first boat Aquanaut built with a US 110V/60Hz
electrical system. The 110V wall outlets, GE Microwave, dishwasher and
washer/dryer are all powered from the 3kW inverter. We can't run the
microwave and the dryer cycle on the washer/dryer at the same time but
everything else is ok (except we still have to be careful of visitors
with hairdryers!). If I had to do it over again I would consider the
Dakar 5000 watt unit but after 15 months as full time live-aboards, we
haven't tripped or shutdown the inverter (yet!).

So that about covers "Legrace". For photos take a look at:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bob-w@swbell.net/my_photos

In the Fall of 2003, Lynn and I went to Scotland to be volunteers with
the missionary organization Youth with A Mission (YWAM). Our son-in-law
is the base leader at YWAM's Seamill Centre. Lynn & I did volunteer work
at the school while "Legrace" was being built. It was convenient to take
the discount airline EasyJet from Glasgow to Amsterdam every 4 to 6
weeks to visit the Aquanaut factory while she was being built.

At the beginning of October, Aquanaut began cutting steel. Our
contractual delivery date was in May 2004 but in February we agreed to
move the delivery up to mid-April. It was quite exciting to watch her
come to together!!

On April 16, 2004, Lynn & I took delivery at the Aquanaut factory in
Sneek, NL. We spent May & June cruising in the northern Freisland area
of the Netherlands. This was a period of learning, testing, debugging
and also breaking in the John Deere engine which I'll cover in my next
post.

In July we headed south looking for a place to winter since we are now
full time live-aboards. Our friends, Reed & Judy from Seattle wintered
in Valence, France on the southern Rhone, in their Dutch cruiser the
previous winter. So it was one of the places on our list to check out -
we liked it too and spent this past winter there.

This spring at the end of March we started back north again but took a
different route via Paris, the Seine River to Le Havre and the English
Channel. "Legrace" is currently at the Aquanaut factory in the northern
Netherlands while Lynn & I are in Scotland waiting for the birth of our
first grandchild!!! (Last Wednesday was the "official" due date but
babies seem to have their own schedules).

At the end of October we are scheduled to ship "Legrace" from the
Netherlands to Florida. So the saga will be continuing.

Bob & Lynn Williamson

MV Legrace

Aquanaut Drifter 1250

Hi Bob,

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Legrace - I remember the
prequel in PassageMaker well. Like many nautically obsessed folk, I
reread my magazines over and over... I have every issue but one.

You've got a handsome boat indeed.

I'm looking forward to further posts. I gave up with the main list
years ago - too much with too little of interest for now.

Take care, and happy cruising.

Regards

Simon Kornberg

boatless in Singapore

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