tcm
...
We've just got back from a first trip on this boat. And it's totally fab. For those who know, sorry, yawn. Otherwise it's a 23metre speedboat, a Leopard Sport. It's finally arrived in la Napoule in S of France, two days earlier than the revised delivery date and three months ahead of the initially contracted date.
I was due to go on Friday on a plane. But I couldn't wait , so I drove down with loads of gear on Wednesday. Coliholic, poster hereabouts volunteered to come along too, so we blammed down from London early wednesday morning, driving faster and faster as we got nearer.
The skipper is a good chap. The manufacturers gave us some fizz, and bought us lunch, and apologised profusely about the hardly noticeable faults. The skipper was worried that Mrs tcm might not like the boat. Also the salesman ws worried as she'd not seen the boat at all.
Can't remeber much of the first two days. I think we went shopping to stock up the boat with wine for the season. The second day we had to go out and stock it up again having slightly under-estimated the first time. On Friday Mrs tcm came down with jfm and Mrs jfm, and some short people. And all v jolly fun. The boat zooms along, has home cinema quality tv in the saloon with purple leather sofa, and plenty of room for people to have chats here and there without having to join in everything. All the boat shop people trooped on and nodded their approval.
The abiding feeling is that I can't quite believe that the thing has anything to do with me at all, that it's a dream, and that somebody is going to throw me off. I evidently don't look the part - I went with skipper on the back of his motobike to open a bank account for the boat so that he can buy fuel and they asked who owned the boat, which company? I said it's not a compnay, it's me. Yeah, okay, they said to me and to the skipper in French, but who's the actual "proprietaire"? Um, me.
Cutlery-wise, it is fab. I wimped out of a wind-up to lay the table with plastic forks. I didn't go to bed until 2pm. We left the cockpit in a bit of a state after each evening attempt to drink the boat dry, and the skipper cleared it all up early the next morning. The salesman brought us some more champagne. The telly get lots of channels. The kids play with the playstation. There are four big cardboard boxes of manuals in all the languages, mostly Italian and german which is a bit useless for me and the french skipper. There's a spare fishfinder with the manuals, and remote controls for the radar and chart plotter, good fun when you are sloshed in the evening but otherwise a bit useless.
The storage is so masssive that a reel of 150m of 1" rope was hidden in the foward deck store for two days before we noticed it, in amongst everything that we had previously kept on a Targa 48 held in a dozen big cardboard boxes. The foredeck has music, near the cushions for three large people. Further forward there's enough deck area and stabilty to have a dance whilst at sea doing 20 knots plus.
All boats have faults, and this one is no exception. Snag list:
1. The playstation2 that they have suplied in the kids cabin has only has one set of controls. But there are three beds in that cabin, so that's no good is it? No.
2. There's an almost-noticeable scratch on the saloon table. Okay, so the kids did it. But it wasn't their fault: the spectacular celebration launching chocalate gateau cake supplied by the salesman was put on one of the gold-rimmed Limoges cake plates supplied. The cake plate had a flat bottom, so when they moved it on the table, it made a bit of a scratch. But the manufacturers said they'll fix it.
3. One of the lots of evening deck lights didn't work. So I whacked it a bit, and then it did work.
4. There was a storm on Friday night in harbour, and several drips of water came through and dropped quite close to where Mrs jfm was sitting.
5. The jetboat tender is too fast and powerful. Short people and Jfm went off with gps and did 42 knots in it, and altho it felt unstable, they reported that it was actually very stable indeed. But, to demonstrate how very wrong they were, Coliholic then went out and got flung off the helm seat into the sea within only a minute setting off when he cornered sharply at 30+knots across his own wake. I think we all learned a very valuable lesson there.
6. There is too much electronic music system stuff. It needs 38 CD's to fill up all the available multiplay cd's on the boat, so they should cut it down, perhaps to 32. Also the german porn channel has been set to being one keypress away from sky news.
7. The passarelle remote control is a bit dodgy. This might be something to do with the fact that another skipper came on to the boat to help, and I think that we accidentally started using his remote control instead of ours.
8. In one of the deck cupboards there are cutouts to hold bottles. Some of these are specially shaped to fit certain brands of drink such as Cointreau . But the Gordons - shaped one was slightly too small. So Coliholic and I had to grind it out a bit with the Dremel. So I suppose that's acceptable now, apart from the fact that we only started the job at 1am on Wednesday having drunk the other drinks, and after celebrating our succesful DIY we drank more of the drinks, so almost all the blimmin gin has been drunk.
I was due to go on Friday on a plane. But I couldn't wait , so I drove down with loads of gear on Wednesday. Coliholic, poster hereabouts volunteered to come along too, so we blammed down from London early wednesday morning, driving faster and faster as we got nearer.
The skipper is a good chap. The manufacturers gave us some fizz, and bought us lunch, and apologised profusely about the hardly noticeable faults. The skipper was worried that Mrs tcm might not like the boat. Also the salesman ws worried as she'd not seen the boat at all.
Can't remeber much of the first two days. I think we went shopping to stock up the boat with wine for the season. The second day we had to go out and stock it up again having slightly under-estimated the first time. On Friday Mrs tcm came down with jfm and Mrs jfm, and some short people. And all v jolly fun. The boat zooms along, has home cinema quality tv in the saloon with purple leather sofa, and plenty of room for people to have chats here and there without having to join in everything. All the boat shop people trooped on and nodded their approval.
The abiding feeling is that I can't quite believe that the thing has anything to do with me at all, that it's a dream, and that somebody is going to throw me off. I evidently don't look the part - I went with skipper on the back of his motobike to open a bank account for the boat so that he can buy fuel and they asked who owned the boat, which company? I said it's not a compnay, it's me. Yeah, okay, they said to me and to the skipper in French, but who's the actual "proprietaire"? Um, me.
Cutlery-wise, it is fab. I wimped out of a wind-up to lay the table with plastic forks. I didn't go to bed until 2pm. We left the cockpit in a bit of a state after each evening attempt to drink the boat dry, and the skipper cleared it all up early the next morning. The salesman brought us some more champagne. The telly get lots of channels. The kids play with the playstation. There are four big cardboard boxes of manuals in all the languages, mostly Italian and german which is a bit useless for me and the french skipper. There's a spare fishfinder with the manuals, and remote controls for the radar and chart plotter, good fun when you are sloshed in the evening but otherwise a bit useless.
The storage is so masssive that a reel of 150m of 1" rope was hidden in the foward deck store for two days before we noticed it, in amongst everything that we had previously kept on a Targa 48 held in a dozen big cardboard boxes. The foredeck has music, near the cushions for three large people. Further forward there's enough deck area and stabilty to have a dance whilst at sea doing 20 knots plus.
All boats have faults, and this one is no exception. Snag list:
1. The playstation2 that they have suplied in the kids cabin has only has one set of controls. But there are three beds in that cabin, so that's no good is it? No.
2. There's an almost-noticeable scratch on the saloon table. Okay, so the kids did it. But it wasn't their fault: the spectacular celebration launching chocalate gateau cake supplied by the salesman was put on one of the gold-rimmed Limoges cake plates supplied. The cake plate had a flat bottom, so when they moved it on the table, it made a bit of a scratch. But the manufacturers said they'll fix it.
3. One of the lots of evening deck lights didn't work. So I whacked it a bit, and then it did work.
4. There was a storm on Friday night in harbour, and several drips of water came through and dropped quite close to where Mrs jfm was sitting.
5. The jetboat tender is too fast and powerful. Short people and Jfm went off with gps and did 42 knots in it, and altho it felt unstable, they reported that it was actually very stable indeed. But, to demonstrate how very wrong they were, Coliholic then went out and got flung off the helm seat into the sea within only a minute setting off when he cornered sharply at 30+knots across his own wake. I think we all learned a very valuable lesson there.
6. There is too much electronic music system stuff. It needs 38 CD's to fill up all the available multiplay cd's on the boat, so they should cut it down, perhaps to 32. Also the german porn channel has been set to being one keypress away from sky news.
7. The passarelle remote control is a bit dodgy. This might be something to do with the fact that another skipper came on to the boat to help, and I think that we accidentally started using his remote control instead of ours.
8. In one of the deck cupboards there are cutouts to hold bottles. Some of these are specially shaped to fit certain brands of drink such as Cointreau . But the Gordons - shaped one was slightly too small. So Coliholic and I had to grind it out a bit with the Dremel. So I suppose that's acceptable now, apart from the fact that we only started the job at 1am on Wednesday having drunk the other drinks, and after celebrating our succesful DIY we drank more of the drinks, so almost all the blimmin gin has been drunk.
