Fountaine Pajot Maldives 32

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shanegoodhand

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Hi,

I'm trying to find out what the headroom measurement is, when stood at the galley worksurface, with the convertable roof closed. Any technical, owners club, reveiw web sites would also be helpful, as I'm sure would any of your comments.

The Maldives 32 is among a number of cats that we've shortlisted and are currently reasearching with a view to liveaboard. (Husband - wife - uk - med - transat - carribean).

Thanks,
Shane.
 
FJ are fine if bought from new, but do watch out for ex-charter versions, as their light build does not stand up to the strain as well as the more solidly built cats.
 
Not sure what your experience of cats is but I suspect you'll find a lot of other cat owners (including me) will suggest this boat is a little small for liveaboard. Prodding around previous posts will reveal that most reckon 38 feet about the minimum.

The problem is at this size you tend to have less bridgedeck clearance so you get some slamming (I'm not saying that's necesarily the case with the Maldives) and that you can't carry the weight of fuel, water, supplies and stuff that you need for liveaboard without hunkering the boat down too much.

We sail regularly with a Lagoon 38 and the difference between that boat and ours going into seas is quite dramatic. They will be down to 4-5kts on both engines while we are making 6 just on one. A 32' boat is going to hobbyhorse and get stalled by waves even more readily.

I would quibble with Talbot's comments about FP's being lightweight. Heavy does not equal strong if it is well designed. I own a Belize and have come across many FPs. As with all boats the owners have niggles but lack of strenght has never been an issue. I'd agree with him that you should avoid and ex charter boat though, if only because you'll have to put so much kit in to bring it up to liveaboard standards.

Personally I'd strongly suggest you do what we did and buy a fairly new boat that has been already kitted out for blue water cruising. You'll save a ton of money and all the 'running in' hassles. You'll also be able to afford a bigger boat such as the Athena 38 which friends have cruised in the Med and now the Caribbean very happily. The Lagoon 38 is a good option too with a great interior. The good old Prout Snowgoose/37 is always worth a mention and the new version of this from Broadblue is good value - though they do slam of course, which the higher French boats are better at.

Good luck with it all.
 
Thanks for your input guys,

Ive just been informed that the headroom is only 1.61m which makes it rather unsuitable.

Jeremy, I'd love to buy a fairly new Athena or Lagoon 38 but I need to keep enough back to provide an income to survive on.

My shortlist (now) is more along these lines :- FP Antigua 37, FP Tobago 35, Lagoon 35, Woods Flica, Solaris Sunrise 37, Benetau Blue 2 and the Gemini 105.

Apart from the Solaris which I've viewed (and liked) my knowledge of these models is purely from brokers photos/company data/owners forums etc.. again any comments and views would be welcomed. Here are a couple of specific questions :-

If a non European boat is brought into the EU, for instance an American spec Gemini 105, how difficult is it to gain catagory "D" RCD status and apart from the insurance hassle, what would be any other implications? Would it be easier to make the mods that the UK spec boat has and get RCD "A"?

Are there any taxes to pay when buying in the USA or Carribean (apart from VAT on returning)?

I noticed a comment in a post a while back that said something like " If you livaboard for 5 years or more, the boat is classed as your permenant residence and VAT is not applicable" Nothing more seemed to be made of this since. Does anyone know if it's true?

Finally a boat rather than a money question! When comparing two boats like Flika and the Solaris with a similar length. Would Flika always be more stable due to its increased beam or are there other factors?

Thanks again,
Shane
 
The woods Flica is a very nice fast cruising boat. It is a better allround boat if the version you are looking at has the extended sterns (canoe step up) It is normally very sparsely fitted out inside.
 
Re: Fountaine Pajot not solidly built

ooh, more info please. The lagoon 57 claims a dispacement of 15 tons against the FP 60 footer at 20 tons hence there's some hefty weruiggt somewhere in an FP?

Otherwise - do pls tell me the more solidly built ones
 
Re: Fountaine Pajot not solidly built

Big difference is large FP's are/were built by, I think, Wauquiez, and are totally different from the sub 50' ones. So, yes, big FP's are solid but the small ones, well, I've seen daylight through the hull of one Athena I've been on.
 
Re: Fountaine Pajot not solidly built

I could mention the finnish icebreakers as an example, if you need others just give me a call /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
 
Re: Fountaine Pajot not solidly built

I was referring to the smaller boats not these!

Privelidge have a reputation of being a tad more solid than most others.

The voyage 580 is also around the same weight at 39600 lb

39067_102_pic.jpg
 
I personally don't see the great benefits in the FP 'galley up' configuration. I opted to put my galley 'down' so have 10 ft headroom! I think it's far more important to have the chart table 'up' so you can see out while piloting. If you put saloon, galley and charts 'up' as most FPs do, they all end up being cramped.
 
Afraid I've not had any experience of the boats you list, but to help on the VAT question:

1. I don't believe there are any taxes to pay when you buy boats in the Caribbean. In the US taxes vary by State - that's why you'll find a lot of US boats registered in Delaware where the tax is low. May not apply anyway for exports.

2. Not sure where the idea of a boat being VAT free after 5 years living aboard comes from, and how would you avoid paying it for the first five years anyway? Current VAT rules are that you can be in VAT zone for 18 months out of 24. So when we bought our non-vat-paid boat in Tunisia and cruised the Med for a yeare we had no problems - nor in the Caribbean where we are now. However the number of countries you can spend time in around the Med that are outside the VAT zone are of course ever reducing. I believe you can get exemption for layup time, but you'd be vulnerable to an agressive local VAT officer.

So if you plan to do what we did and spend some time in Europe and then skip off, there is no need to pay VAT, providing you follow the rules carefully and demonstrably.

Good luck.
 
Galley up/down - 'sall relative innit? With our galley up we can only seat ten in the saloon for dinner, but that's enough for me. Personally I liked having the galley down on our Snowgoose but my wife much prefers it up on our Belize, as she finds it cooler and more sociable. Trouble is the staff just don't know their place these days...

I think Snowleopard's implicit point is a good one though - that the smaller the cat the more sense it probably makes to have the galley down.
 
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