Wow. The Back Cove 30 does not disappoint

I have been away from the keyboard for a week. The first few days were spent in Boothbay Harbor with 250 of our closest friends at the Sabre/Back Cove Rendezvous, an event that marked and celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Sabre Yachts. I'll get to that in my next post but today I am so excited to tell you about the sea trials of the Back Cove 30.

I spent Sunday afternoon, Monday and part of Tuesday doing a sea trial with Peter Jannsen of Motorboating Magazine. World-class photographer Billy Black was along to shoot the boat and the story. Also with us Designer Kevin Burns whose work on the 30 has been exceptionally well received by the public and the press alike. I used my own boat as the photo boat and Kevin and Peter spent their time on board the Back Cove 30. You'll read about our trip in an upcoming issue of Motorboating. Today I want to show you some images and tell you the facts about her performance.

Underway she had a top speed of 26 knots and a very comfortable cruise speed of 20 knots. At cruise she had a sound level (without aft enclosures) of 83 Dba and she consumed an estimated 11 gallons per hour. Over an extended period of use in Rockland then again during our sea trials with Motorboating she averaged a miserly 4 gallons per hour when combining slow speed cruising and full throttle testing.

The most common comment was that "she is a huge 30 footer" and "she feels like a 35 footer underway". Her windshield remained dry in some very tough ave conditions and her running angles remained below 4 degrees of bow rise. Conversation on the helm deck was very easy with sound levels well below older designs.

All in all a great success and a model that we feel confident will propel the Back Cove brand for the years to come

 
 
 

Images are worth a thousand words

I got to Rockland early this morning in order to experience the Back Cove 30 for the first time. In a word she is magnificent. Underway she is elegant yet powerful. Her lines are beautiful and graceful. Very sweet lines. And I could use a thousand more adjectives, all as glowing and all as complimentary. But let the pictures tell you the story. 
 
 

 

Interior shots and test results in the days to come
 
 
 
   

 

Back Cove 30 first launch today

The launch of the Back Cove 30 was delayed yesterday due to very poor weather conditions and the possibility of lightning and hail but the intrepid crew at Back Cove engineering were at it early this morning and as I write she is doing her first tests. More on those later as the results come in. For now here are some images of the proud Back Cove crew loading the boat and sending her off to the harbor.

Finishing touches

Yesterday I was able to spend the morning with two of my best dealers drooling over the new Back Cove 30. It's been hard for many of our dealers of late what with the economy keeping buyers hands in their pockets. So when I saw six faces light up like it was Christmas morning, well, I just knew we had hit a home run.

Here are a couple more images taken with the cushions installed on the helm deck. I especially wanted to show you the beautifully sculpted transom. Monday is launch day so stand by for test results.

When you get to the boat shows just look for the brokers with the smiles on their faces. They're the ones selling the Back Cove 30 !

Isn't she lovely?

The deck of Back Cove 30 hull #1 is now firmly affixed to the hull and finish work has begun to get her ready for her debut on June 28th. In this image you can get a few hints at some of the styling cues. Specifically the style of the column that supports the hard top at the aft end of the house where Kevin has really dialed it up and created some very elegant lines.

One more place where the style has changed significantly from previous Back Cove models is her transom where there is a lot more camber in the coaming and a lot more curvature of the transom surface. I can't wait to see her in her water world. I think she'll be lovely.

 

Decking the Back Cove 30

There's a moment in the development of a boat when the deck goes down permanently and the long development process seems to finally be coming to an end. It's the same in home building. When the roof of a new home goes on one can stroll around the interior and get a sense of the spaces and, from the outside the home takes shape and begins to show it's style and design to passers by.  This week the Back Cove 30 "got it's roof" and she is every bit as beautiful as we imagined she would be from her drawings.

Before the real deal happens a couple of dry runs are performed to ensure that the interior bulkheads are trimmed to fit precisely the the curvatures of the underside of the deck.

Once the deck is dropped into it's final position, the crew makes the last tests and then lifts slightly to apply a generous amount of marine sealant that will keep the hull to deck joint dry. (By the way this is what we refer to as a shoe box joint with the deck overlapping the hull by a couple of inches.) Once in place with the sealant in the joint, the deck is mechanically fastened to the hull using stainless steel fasteners.

 
Over the next couple of weeks final work will be performed to the interior and by the 28th of June we'll be taking her down to the water for sea-trials. Stay tuned it won't be long now

Back Cove will arrive .... with the Summer Wind

Don't you just hate hearing a song and then not being able to get it out of your head ? I am hoping that telling someone else about it will at the very least have a whole bunch of other people with the same problem as my own. So there you go just start humming the Sinatra favorite Summer Wind and see if you can stop. For one reason or another that song stuck with me. My parents loved music and I inherited their passion for it. Music always played in our home but of course that was pre-internet and other than Hockey Night in Canada and the Ed Sullivan show music was kinda what we had. So we all loved it. I still do.

So when I start thinking about titles for advertisements I always gravitate to song lyrics. Just the other day I was working on an ad to tell the world that the Back Cove 30 was arriving late in June and before you know it my mind was stuck and I was on the internet searching for lyrics.

But I digress. You are reading this blog because you want to learn more about the Back Cove 30. Last week I spoke about the great design work that Kevin and Adam are doing on the port side of the helm deck and today I want to show you the starboard L-settee.
You can see here that the seating in the 30 is all elevated. That was a complaint we heard from some of our competitors boats so we raised all of this seating so that the passengers have the same sight lines as the helmsman. That makes boating aboard a Back Cove 30 pretty darned nice for everyone aboard.

I'm sorry about the song. I hope you like it as much as I do. It sure beats listening to 24 hour news and talking heads. Why not turn off your TV's this weekend, hop in your boats and head out for some peace and quiet. Listen to some great music and leave the world behind. I'm looking for the Summer Wind.

The Back Cove 30; Center of the raft up

One of the great pleasures I find in boating is a multi boat raft up on a summer afternoon. It's not everyone's cup of tea as many boating families prefer the solitude of a quiet cove. One way or the other the new Back Cove 30 has you covered.

 
To date followers of this new model have only seen the plan view of the helm deck but now the bits and pieces are coming together quickly and we can show you what it looks like in real life. What appeared to be simply a two person settee on the plan is in fact quite a lot more. Yes there are two seats here but beneath the seating is a large storage space that can be accessed by two drop down doors. Atop the seat box is a slide out panel which when deployed creates a nice sized day bed or overnight sleeper.

The forward end of this area is a bench-style mate's seat which will have a backrest. This backrest can be shifted to the forward end of the box so as to create an L-shaped settee facing the similar seating on the starboard side..

So as you can see, whether it's party central or a great place for an afternoon nap (my favorite Sunday afternoon activity) the Back Cove 30 can do it all.

Back Cove 33 cruise Sydney Harbour

If I seem to have been absent for a while I do have an excuse and a pretty good one at that. Last week I went to Australia on a combo work and vacation trip to the land of my birth. (yes I am an Aussie, born in Adelaide, SA). While down under I participated with Jed Elderkin of EMarine Australia in the Sanctuary Cove boat show where I met some wonderful owners and new potential buyers for Back Cove boats. I have to say that I really enjoy the Aussie lifestyle and the general attitudes which seem somewhat more laid back than ours. Maybe it's just that they are talking about boats when I am conversing with them.

After my tour of duty at the show I went to Adelaide to visit with relatives and while there caught up with Malcolm and Liz Prince, owners of Back Cove 33 Investigator. They keep their boat in Adelaide and use it to travel back and forth to their vacation home on Kangaroo Island. Check it out on a map. The crossing can be ugly at times but Investigator manages it well. 

After our time in Adelaide we traveled to Canberra and then to Sydney where we were treated to a Back Cove 33 tour of the Northern reaches of Sydney Harbour courtesy of owner Jeremy Sutcliffe. Jeremy has created some very special features in the cockpit of his 33 which I will cover in a future post.

So thanks to all of my mates, new and old, for a great time in Oz. It was really fun.

Back Cove 30 Build continues

Visible progress is made each day now as the first Back Cove 30 moves along in the assembly process. We showed you the galley test fit just a few weeks ago and now almost all of the interior of the boat is installed.

A few elements that were too difficult to show on paper are visible here now including the board which is shown straddling the berth. If you look carefully just below the board you will see the port and starboard dimples on which the board is resting, When the berth is made up for sleeping the board sits where it is shown here. For daytime use is slots down and rests against those dimples to create a seat back for those seated around the salon table.

The decision has been made to go with S+S Fabrics for our cushions on the new Back Cove 30. We have worked with them very successfully on the Back Cove 37 and feel they will give us a superior look and feel in this new model..

One astute reader recently asked how the companionway stairs were going to integrate with the galley and felt that we had designed drawers which could not open without hitting the stringers. Our engineers came up with this plan which allows the drawers to open between the steps, increasing storage considerably. And yes they did think it all the way through before the question was asked.