400: Lagoon 400

[Garold]

Originally Posted by nikki-m

What are NV doing at a public boat show, if they don't want to deal with the public?
Their website www.nvequipment.com suggests differently.
However, it was actually Graham's (Ancasta) idea to purchase directly from NV - perhaps he can obtain the covers for you, as he offered to do for me.
My supplier has indicated that he can source the items for a 20% discount on retail cost. These items include the cockpit covers, steering position frame and covers, and cockpit seating.

Yes, I think that Graham mentioned that he can get products from NV. But I was curious like you about if they would be cheaper direct especially direct from France, but NV told me that I had to go through a dealer (or maybe trade buyer).

As for your 20% discount, I think that your supplier is sharing their margin with you and giving you a generous share.

As for NV's presence at a public boat show, I'm unclear too. However, interestingly many of the the other exhibitors were curiously unwelcoming too. Maybe I just looked too cheap to be a potential customer!

Cheers

Garold

[hanafe]

Hi Guys,
I have not been at the forum for a long time, as we were out sailing on our L 400. We sailed from Hong Kong to the Phillippines, stayed a couple of weeks and made it back.
It is nice to see that Lagoon made so many improvements which we all did on our own after delivery.(for a lot of money)
I quickly flipped throught the threads in the forum and can add some short comments.

Performance in light winds. She is always doing a bit more than half wind speed, but never try to point her. She is as every cruising cut with mini keels. They are not going upwind. 87 degree tack angle. Never! Well, on your instruments maybe, but the Leeway you are doing is eating up any nice looking angle to the wind.
High Speed: yes, if you are for example at a 70 degree apparent. In a force 5 she easily makes her 10 knots, also when fully loaded.

Dinghy: We have a Genesis walker bay, with steering console, 20 hp Mercury 4 stroke with electric starter. Great and no problem to handle at the davits. We also made a bridle that the lines are not overturning. We have an electrical winch for the davits but you can handle manualy very well in deed. My wife needs the electical.
What change did they make at the davits? I missed that.

Camera: I installed 1 camera under the radar 2 weeks after I got the boat already. Great. I have no problems to see on starport side.

Manovering under engine: Great, like a scooter. As tiny the spot or whatever wind direction I have, it is a walk in the park. A bowthruster would be a big waste of money.
Speed under engine: We had some long periods with no wind on our trip to the Phillipines and have a lot of experience running the engines. We have the 40 hps Yanmars. 2 engines around 2000 rpm gives you a very good cruising speed of around 7 knots with a reasonable fuel consumption. Bringing up the rpms is increasing the fuel consumption rapidly. As usual.
On long distances in calm condition we are only using 1 engine 2000 rpm and do around 5.5 knts. The cruising range is than going up to more than 800 miles with one load. Fantastic.

The props are a bit too far back. When steaming against waves they easily come out of the water.

Boarding: Well, the steps at the stern are definetly the wrong place. We get used to it. We always go stern first to the pontoon unload one crew menber with the lines and than point the bow to the pontoon.

The free board is too high to jump down. I did it one time as well and will not do it again.

Positions of winches: Awfull. Without electrical winches it is a pain in the neck. They are so high you can not really use the winches manualy. However, considering that these boats are not made for going round the cans, it is acceptable. On long cruises you adjust the sail maybe once a day or even less. Only to avoid chafing at the sheet anyway.

Quality of finishing: I can only quote one guy in the forum. Do not expect Mercedes quality when you buy a Ford.
We have and had plenty of teething and finsihing problems. Step by step we get it done but it is a long painfull process.

So that's all for now.

Need to go on the boat now.

Cheers HanaFe

P.S. There is a Lagoon owners forum on

lagooncatowners : Lagoon Catamaran Owners Group

This is the forum I am normaly on.

[Garold]

This weekend I visited our L400 but didn't go anywhere because my wife was away on business. However, I took the opportunity to do a couple of jobs that were waiting for a wet weekend that we haven't yet had!

First job was to scrub the waterline. We had a 6 inch line of green which was evident all round both hulls. And that's a very long waterline! I had looked at it for a week or two and it just looked like our boat had been laid-up for a few months and was a bit unused. Anyway, I tackled it with the deck brush from the dinghy and the jetty. After two hours of scrubbing the boat looks much better, and the blisters on my hands are proof of significant effort.

Second job was to change the anchor. We were supplied with a Delta 20kg, which coincidentally, we had fitted to the L380 which we had previously. However, after anchoring twice in a muddy river and dragging twice, we decided that we needed a change.

After lots of research I decided to buy a Rocna. I had reserved a 33kg anchor but when i saw the size of it I decided to go with the 25kg. My initial reluctance with the 25kg Rocna was because it doesn't seem such a big step up from the 20kg Delta.

However, since the Rocna is supposed to have more 'bite' than a normal anchor and it is 25% heavier than our Delta I have decided that the 25kg Rocna is the best option. I just hope that all the postive reviews of the Rocna are true, because it was £500, and so quite a serious decision.

After a weekend of waterline scrubbing and anchor lifting, I feel happy to be back at work to recover!

Cheers

Garold

[colemj]

Originally Posted by Garold

However, since the Rocna is supposed to have more 'bite' than a normal anchor and it is 25% heavier than our Delta I have decided that the 25kg Rocna is the best option.

For mud, it is less about weight and more about usable surface area (that's why the Fortress is so good in this application). The Rocna has >25% more usable surface area than the Delta you replaced. And so does the Manson, Ultra, Raya and Spade (didn't want to start a Rocna thread).

Mark

[Garold]

Mark

Yes, but unfortunately most of us want an anchor that does everything.

We had a fortress anchor at first on our last boat which was a Lagoon 380. Though it did hold well and often bit first time, when we turned with the tide, it would often let go and then take a few hundred yards to reset. This was problem for us in South coast UK tidal waters, especially in rivers.

Apparently one of the features of the Rocna is that it sets quickly and so should reset quickly when the tide turns even if it breaks out on the turn.

But as all the tests show, anchoring is a bit of an art, with some luck and experience involved, and ideally using the right kit (which most of us never have because we use the same anchor all the time).

So whatever happens at this point, I've done as much research as I could, and the choice is made. But if it's useless, I shall admit my error at the end of the summer. And you will see a second hand 25kg Rocna for sale somewhere!

Cheers

Garold

[peterp]

Welcome back Hanafe, excellent feedback on your L400 thanks for that. I have visited the Yahoo site but frankly I think this forum is much nicer and we have a developing L400 group on this thread.
Regards Peter

[Garold]

Hanafe, I'd second Peter's comment.

I appreciate your contribution to this thread because you have current real world experience of L400 ownership. And it looks like over a period of a year or so, if everyone continues to contribute to the thread, we should have 4 or 5 owners all maybe helping each other over ownership hurdles.

As for snagging lists, we are making our way through ours fairly rapidly with the help of the after sales guys at Ancasta. All of our snags are from the factory and as Nikki-M has reminded me, they are all minor and mainly cosmetic.

I think that the answer with snag lists is to take as much help as you can squeeze from the supplying agent, and then just pay for those items that are not resolved. Better to throw an amount of money at something than to get into life-shortening stressful battles over warranty (so long as the items don't exceed a sensible budget...maybe up to 0.5% of purchase price is probably my limit.). From past experience, the long-argued-over items rarely get done to a satisfactory state anyway, so best to save the stress and make the concession early.

But anyway Hanafe, please stick with us and keep giving us info on your exploits. We appreciate it.

Cheers

Garold

[peterp]

Hanafe, wondering do you have a screecher or a genaker for light wind sailing, if so how does it perform. I did not order the factory genaker, at the moment I am dealing with a local sail maker to make us a screecher, like to have it when my L400 arrives in September.
Regards Peter

[D&D]

Originally Posted by peterp

I am dealing with a local sail maker to make us a screecher

Any particular reason why you went that way Peter? We would be very grateful to hear your thoughts as, if we were to order an L400, we would certainly want a screecher...and whether factory or local retro-fit we really hadn't considered.

We acknowledge that the Lagoon sails generally are not up to the options available (laminates, etc) on others so I suppose that may be perhaps one of the reasons you went with a local screecher?

BTW, the good folks at Vicsail all speak very highly of you. Seems you made quite a favourable impression on them!

[peterp]

Hello D&D, well I did not order the factory genaker on the advice of the dealer I could have one made here much cheaper. I did discus the pro's and con's of some of the more exotic sail materiel's with the sail maker, it seems the materiel suffers from the sun's uv ray's, and one has to wait till it is dry prior to stowing it after sailing. On the advice of the sailmaker I am going to order a screecher made out of 3oz premium dacron paying extra for tri-radial his advice is that the tri-radial cut will hold it's shape better and longer, the edges will have a anti UV strip protecting it from the sun when furled, it will be fine for my use, hopefully give us a bit more grunt on light days, easy to activate easy to furl in, not as sexy as the exotic stuff but more affordable and less likely to tear, the L400 ain't going to win any races no matter what sails it has, is it Garald and Hanafe? Have you gone for a test sail yet in the L400 Vic sails new demo is as i understand all set up ready for next weeks Sydney boat show, I hope to be there on Sunday through to late tuesday, Steve is doing a test sail weather permiting the day after the show ends on Tuesday I will be on board for that, may catch up if you are there, Steve told me it has the new overhead storage cabinet fitted I'd like to see that amongst other things.
Regards Peter

[YOGAO]

peterp,

did you look into having it made from pentex? It's slightly more exotic, but will hold shape better than dacron.

Fair Winds,
Mike

[D&D]

Thanks for the detailed response Peter.

Who's your sailmaker? Did there work out to be much (any?) cost difference between the local job and the factory option?

No, we haven't done a test sail yet, but we are scheduled to do so tomorrow. I'll try to make some notes and report back here, but there will be a delay as I'm doing a vessel delivery (a 50' Beneteau) up to Qld the next day so I'll be at sea and substantially incommincado (at least insofar as the Forum) for most of next week.

We did, however, spend a few hours on the 'stock' boat earlier this week looking it over -- The Admiral is still struggling with the 'wow factor' thing -- and chatting with Steve and Jo...and hence hearing what a great fellow you are!

The overhead galley storage looks great, better than we expected. There is no issue regarding visibility as only a 'view' of the underside of the bimini is affected...and even that's marginal as there's a ~10cm 'lip' above the galley window anyway which rather neatly accomdates the new cupboards. The storage units themselves are good-sized and easily accessible with gas struts on upward lifting doors and lights on the underside. I'll try to attach some pics for everyone's reference...

[hanafe]

Hi Peter,
we have a asymetrical Spinaker, localy done. The sail maker calls it genaker. I am sorry I do not know the exact difference to a screecher.
We are not happy with the sail at all, but I do not blame the boat. I blame the sail. It is a 1.5 oz nylon and something must be wrong with the shape. I am still working it out with the sail maker. It does not give me any extra power. I have an old much too small genaker from my old boat which I tried and this one give us real more speed although it is 64 sqm !!!! only.
But I can comment on two other things when using the genaker.
1. To leave the furled genaker hoisted is somehow theoretical. The wind will open the sail after a while and than it is getting messy as the sail just unfurls. Maybe it can be avoided if it is more the shape of a code zero as there would be not so much cloth in the top.
2. When flying the sail on port side, a winch and a jammer ist missing. You need to go for the winch of the mainsail of course. Means one whinch and one jammer only, but three things to handle the main sheet, the genakeer sheet and the spinaker halyard for adjusting the tension depending on the wind angle you sail.
There is now way to use any of the other winshes as the angle of the sheets to the other winches does not work at all.
On starport side you have one more winch and all is fine.

Maybe someone is coming up with a GOOD idea. I only had compromises like temporarly fixing at the stern cleat etc.

Cheers HanaFe

[peterp]

Hello Yogao, no I did not, I will enquire into Pentex now nothing about it, thanks for that.
Regards Peter

[peterp]

Hi Peter,
we have a asymetrical Spinaker, localy done. The sail maker calls it genaker. I am sorry I do not know the exact difference to a screecher.

Hello Hanafe, I have attached a photo (I hope) of a screecher taken of a Lagoon on Sydney Harbour.
Regards Peter