C yacht is a small Dutch brand that used to make quality sailboats at an interesting price but with an uninteresting design. But that has changed!!! It seems that finally Dutch shipyards are improving dramatically the quality of their designs and after Contest, it is C Yachts that has a main Yacht cabinet designing the new boats. The C 42 and C47 designs are already the work of Dykstra Naval Architects and as usually Dykstra designs are beautiful.
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| C47 |
C yachts have a conservative clientele and certainly they asked Dykstra for a slightly conservative design and Dykstra obliged, specially on the 42 but on the 47 he put a lot more creativity. While the 42 is a good looking boat the 47 is absolutely gorgeous.
Both boats have modern hulls, relatively beamy with almost all beam pulled aft, a spade rudder and a modern bulbed keel with lead ballast, an elegant design with fine entries and narrow forward sections.
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| C47 |
C yachst are already built with top building methods using an all sandwich hull with a closed cell foam core, vinylester resins, sandwich bulkheads bonded and glassed to the hull and a stainless steel main structure that is connected to the keel. This allows the C 42 not to be heavy, specially considering that they have a B/D ratio of 40%, on an effective keel with 1.90/2.20m draft.
The C42 displaces 11500 kg, has 4.10m beam and a SA/D of 19.6. The C47 is more interesting, being proportionally lighter, displacing 13200 kg, having 4.40m beam and a SA/D of 20.6. Not bad for main market boats, similar to the dimensions of the Contest 42CS. The two boats should have very similar performances, good performances for main market sailing boats.
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| C42 |
The rigging seems specially adapted to solo easy sailing, with a central winch that takes directly the main halyard, a solution that is used also on the Contest 42CS and on the Maxi 1200 with good results. The other two winches near the wheels receive the lines from the jib or genoa and only for reefing will it be needed to go forward, on the cockpit.
The C47 will have proportionally a better performance being a very fast boat, for the type. Gorgeous and fast this one will only need an interior as good and nice, as the ones on the already existing Cyachts, to be one of the most interesting offers on this market segment.
They are obviously not "cheap" boats but even so the 47 price seems interesting, at around 625 000 euros including 19% VAT, but with no sails. The 42 will cost, on the same conditions, 425 000 euros and that should make it a bit less expensive (but not much) than the Contest 42CS.
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Due to the sandwich construction of the complete hull also under the waterline a No Go for me personally. I am way more fan of a Breehorn 44. Yes, it is a classic hull design, but much solid built hull.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very old design. They were solid, if I remember right they could be built in aluminum or GRP, but almos as all Dutch naval recreative industry. they went down due to non competitive prices.
ReplyDeleteOther way to see it is that they never cut corners in quality but that was also what bring them down, they and the rest of Dutch shipyards, that built cruising yachts for normal people (I mean not millionaires).
The only Dutch builders that survived make luxury very expensive yachts, almost all with more than 50ft.