Boat test for the 2006 Heesen Man of Steel with boat pictures, boat specifications, and boat test results. Includes pricing, videos, engine test reviews, and ratings for the 2006 Heesen Man of Steel.

Although she wasn't named after Superman, this 121-foot Heesen would make an excellent addition to the resources of the Justice League of America.

That's because Man of Steel (named for her owner's business interests in the steel industry) not only made it through a delivery from Holland to the Canary Islands in weather that was, to say the least, awful, but also did a transatlantic crossing on her own bottom immediately thereafter. All with nary a mechanical failure or damage (outside of normal wear from people aboard).

None of this elicits so much as a blink from Capt. Nigel Jenkins, master of Man of Steel, or Thom Conboy, head of Heesen Yachts of North America. It reveals the confidence they each had--and continue to have--in the all-aluminum, semidisplacement yacht, the fourth launch in Heesen's 3700 Series. It also reveals how Heesen, a yard that has earned a reputation for delivering speedy megayachts, puts a priority on other aspects of performance and takes a bit of a different approach than some yards to series construction.

Take the delivery cruise, for example. Even though Heesen had performed tank testing on a scale model before introducing the series, and even though the first three launches in the series had performed as expected by the time Man of Steel was ready for her handover in October of last year, the wheel remained firmly in the hands of James Hurley, Heesen's corporate captain and after-sales representative. After all, as he puts it, "We know the boat, so it makes more sense to do it this way." The Heesen team is intimately familiar with the yacht, he explains, and can therefore quickly isolate a problem if one happens to arise--much quicker than the owner's captain and crew, though they are given on-site training, so to speak, during the delivery.

And boy, what training they got on this trip. As Hurley reported to the yard, "The yacht left on Saturday 16 October, and the forecast was unfavorable. When we were underway we decided to go via the Bay of Biscay because of the bad weather and wait in La Coruna for it to pass. As far as Brest we had bow waves of [six and a half to eight feet]. After Brest they were even higher, but because they weren't presenting the yacht with any problems, we decided not to stop in La Coruna and just carry on."

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