Valder Yachts "The Keys" | Power Catamaran | BoatTEST 

Hi. Thanks for the comment. Sorry if we messed that up. I'll have a listen. But yes, the yacht's beam is 22', which is 6.71 meters. Life is Better on a Boat! Captain Gregg

Battery weight is the death of that, they are about 1/50th as energy dense/rich per kilo as diesel. And of course, as the diesel is consumed the ship weight decreases. Batteries are a "sunk" weight, as it were.

We think it's quite sweet!

Thanks! :)

Hi. Thanks for the question. Valder Yachts "The Keys", as well as all other Valder Yachts to be build, have excellent sea handling characteristics. This is a "foil assisted" catamaran, which means it isn't 100% foiling (this America's Cup sailboats of the past decade), but rather the front 1/2 to 2/3 of the boat rises out of the water at speed. So, in 4-footers, it will be flying above the waves. We were lucky on our test day to have 3-5' seas with an occasional 6 footer. The boat handled them with ease. On our run from Fort Lauderdale to Haulover Inlet, we had seas mostly on the beam and we didn't have to slow down or alter heading to get a different wave angle. And, give she is a wide catamaran, there was much less roll than any monohull, even one with stabilizers, would have experienced. On the run from Haulover back to Fort Lauderdale, we ran directly into the wind and waves for 15-20 minutes. Again, she handled them like there was nothing there. Importantly, the yacht didn't "sneeze", the phenomenon found on so many cats when traveling into a seaway. This is because the front of the hulls are out of the water and she is flying on the foil. We then headed parallel to the coast until dead upwind and upwave set from Port Everglades inlet. She did great downwind. Given she was always ahead of the wave set in speed, there was none of the yawing that is so common when boats have waves astern. Now for the one difference between a foiling cat made out of carbon fiber and a non-foiling monohull made from fiberglass. Sometimes, especially when going upwind/into the waves that have some significant amount of height, the yacht will sometimes fall off the foil when it punches through the face of the wave. This leads to a "splash down" that will drop the speed and give a pretty good shutter throughout the boat. Given the carbon fiber construction, which doesn't have comparable sounding dampening characteristics to fiberglass, the "splash downs" can be a bit loud. However, Valder has given sometime engineering time to the sound dampening characteristics of the yacht. I would take the occasional splash down of "The Keys" over the constant slamming, or at least slight pounding, of a monohull every day of the week. Life is Better on a Boat! Captain Gregg

Hi. Thanks for the question. BoatTEST doesn't get in to analyzing pricing. However, I think there are a few of ways to look at the price of this yacht: 1. If compared to any other 67' yacht on the market with four staterooms, it is likely to be slightly more expensive. But not extremely more expensive. 2. If compared to a motor yacht of equal interior and exterior volume, it would probably be a yacht of 85 to 100'. In this realm, Valder Yachts "The Keys" would be a significant bargin. 3. Neither a comparable 67' yacht or an 85 to 100' yacht is going to come anywhere near the performance of this yacht. Any alternative high performance yacht capable of reach 30+ knot cruising speeds is going to be significantly more expensive that "The Keys" Life is Better on a Boat! Captain Gregg

after the answer to a question no one asked, I imagine it's more expensive than I imagined.

By helli... :)

He said at 41 knots.. 47.18mph.. 185/47.18 = 3.92 hrs 🤷‍♂️ As long as the 41 knots was true.. I can't see why not . The math works

@@_tyger_jones_ has it right. 160 nm (185 statute miles) is 3.9 hours. And while practically one wouldn't run at WOT, the point is that it is possible. One note - Valder informed us that there may have been one small mechanical issue during our test that would have prevented us from getting the real top speed. We plan to redo the performance numbers after the first of the year, but we now expect an even higher top speed....likely close to 45 knots.

Hey @darthkek1953 its been a while. He says, "the HD-4, hydrodrome which broke the 70 mph sound barrier in 1919."

@@BoatTEST Ah. ;-)

😁 @@darthkek1953

@@BoatTEST I knkow it's a UK/US diction thing. Want to have some fun? Try saying "Marry merry Maori Mary".

Hi. Thanks for the comment!! While I'm not sure if truth or folklore, I believe Harold Vanderbilt was attributed to saying with regard to yachting "If you have to ask, then you can't afford it." In all seriousness, in addition to my role as a Test Captain for BoatTEST, I do deliveries for clients around the US, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. My fall delivery season from New England to Southern Florida saw me purchase close to 20,000 gallons of diesel for clients. I track all the information diligently and I can report that between early September and late October, the average fuel price across all those gallons was $5.09. At cruise, "The Keys" burns 126 gallons per hour (GPH). At wide open throttle (or WOT as we like to say), she burns 139 GPH. If you do that math, that is between $641 per hour and $705 per hour (all in USD). Don't get me wrong, still a chunk of change....but as Mr. Vanderbilt said...... Life is Better on a Boat! Captain Gregg

@@GreggClark-BoatTEST if only there was a way for catamarans to harness the power of the wind for those people who don't want the fuel expense...