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I was sitting in the
offices of Ocean Yachts, having just returned from two days in the Florida
Keys aboard the new 70 Super Sport. "As soon as we decided to go
this big," John Leek, Ocean Yachts’ president, told me, "we
committed ourselves to making her everything Ocean is known for. We wanted
her to be the best there is."
He certainly had his
work cut out for him. Thanks to a booming economy, the market for 50-foot-plus
sportfishermen is red hot, and demand has left some builders, Ocean included,
with a six- to nine-month backlog. Devoid of resources it would normally
have, the company would have to expend a lot more effort than it usually
did when designing a new boat. But as Leek said, Ocean was committed.
To compensate, Leek
had Dave Martin, who has designed all of the company’s boats, take
a hard look at Ocean’s 66 Super Sport. Although successful, the 66,
in production since October 1992, was due for a modernization, and a 70-foot
length would provide better performance and more accommodations. "We
wanted Martin’s design to provide the most up-to-date hull configuration
possible to compete in the bluewater sportfish arena while being wife-
and family-friendly," Leek explains.
The first step was to
build the boat tough, something I observed first-hand on an earlier visit
to the factory when hull number one was being pulled from the mold. Her
solid-FRP bottom is protected with vinylester resin for blister resistance.
To save weight while maximizing strength, Divinycell of varying thickness
is used in the hull sides, hardtop, side decks, and decks. Her FRP stringer
system, built outside the boat using aluminum molds that yield a precise
fit, is foam-cored for sound deadening and bonded to the hull. Engine
beds are of encapsulated steel plate, drilled and tapped to accept the
engine mounts.
Instead of using foam
or wood in the way of through-hulls, Ocean uses additional FRP laminations,
which it says offer less chance of water infiltration to the substrate.
The superstructure is joined to the hull with a shoebox joint: The overlapping
deck is fastened to the hull with stainless steel screws, bedded with
sealant, and then laminated with two layers of fabmat. To ensure easy
cleanup, bilges are gelcoated and Awlgripped.
Watching the hull being
marked and measured for bulkheads, wiring, plumbing, five fuel tanks (three
forward and two saddles), and machinery spaces made it difficult to imagine
the finished product, but Leek laid out the floor plan for me. "Among
the first things we considered in the design process was beam," he
says. It’s considerable: 19'8", which allows for four staterooms,
these being a forepeak VIP, port and starboard double berths aft of that,
and the amidships master, all with en suite heads and all with at least
6'6" headroom. There’s even a laundry room aft of the port stateroom
with side-by-side washer and dryer units, a six-foot-long hinged countertop
over the appliances, and a freezer in the port bulkhead.
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Ocean 70 continued > Page 1, 2,
3, 4, 5,
6
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