Nordhavn vs Mochi Craft LRC

Minimum crew requirements

I do have to agree on Iluvyachts post. It is not a hard figure. It depends on the type of boat, the ability (seamanship) and idividual strength (both physical and mental) of the crew (couple) and the type of journey. The same boat taken for meandering around in the Med might be far to much in the Roaring Forties.

Back to the OPs question, the Mochi 75 Long Range is not a real 75 ft boat as far as volume, weight (both for the momentum and the sail area of hull and superstructure) and underwater body is concerned. In reality it is a 60 ft boat and can be handled easily by a crew of two or a family crew.

If you look at the hull with its distinctive tunnel design in the aft part, you will see, that the stern platform is a necessary part of the hull, because the tunnel length is needed for the hull efficiency. But the aft part of the hull does not contribute very much to the overall buoyancy of the hull. Thats why they had to hide it under a bathing platform, it could not carry more hull. The boat needs to be perfectly trimmed in pitch, to be efficient.

And by personal experience, I can tell you, the boat does not like to maneuver without a stern thruster, when going backwards. Med mooring was not easy .

And the Roaring Forties would not be my favorite area of operation with an 75LR, whereas on a Nordhavn 60+, I would be much more confident rounding the Cape. Sorry for the first picture. I could not resist, I am a sailor .

If you're doing long range cruising with a crew of 2 where you're running 24/7 without stopping each night. The hours are too much and lack of correct sleep for more than one 24 hour period for a crew of 2 regardless of the size of the vessel. I have done lots and lots of long voyages. It becomes tough to do even with a crew of 3, taking shifts after a few days. A crew of 4 taking shifts is ideal.

And then you get into the maintanence. Most owners that can afford a yacht of the size we're talking about. 8 out of 10 of them are over 50 years old. They're not physically capable of keeping up with the exterior and engine room maintanence if they're cruising a lot. A lot of the wives aren't strong enough or nimble enough to get the lines and fenders on a 75' yacht......just look at the sheer weight and size of them. Why would you have enough money to buy a yacht of this stature just to make yourself a slave because you're too cheap to hire crew? If I bought a yacht, I'd maybe want to run it and enjoy running for periods of times, but I certaintly wouldn't want to wash it or anything like that after a long day.

Lots of two crewed vessels out there, just ask the Dashews. Ditto many Nordhavns in the 43 to 68 foot range. The Dashews are likely the best traveled blue water cruisers out there, reading all their blogs and books is quite a chore but very educational. The FPBs are expressly designed for a couple in mind.

The few Nordhavn "disasters" I am aware of occurred with inattentive professional crews. One a N76 being delivered up the west coast and the other a N62 which hit the beach in Baja.

Well, most people aren't the Dashews. What may or may not be right for them isn't for many others. I know what people do. Still I don't consider a two person ocean crossing to be well advised nor do I consider it enjoyable. And our purpose of boating in all ways is pleasure.

For coastal cruising two can be fine and each couple has their size limit. Most who use Nordhavn's for coastal cruising do not choose to go beyond 60' or so.

This is "Pleasure" or "Recreational" Boating, not a challenge to see who can handle the most with the smallest crew.

You're right, check out James and Jennifer Hamilton at their M/V Dirona website. They have been cruising now for about 2 years in their N52, currently lying NZ.

Once into heavy offshore work and blue water cruising, couples are not unusual, nor are they always suffering the lack of more crew. Sometimes more crew is not a positive as personalities, knowledge and life styles clash.
The couples list is very long, especially when you get into the CCA members who do couples only sailing.

Blue water cruising

But when talking about M/V Dirona, we are talking about a 52 ft boat not a 70+ ft ship. The Nordhavn 52 Dirona is most probably the optimum power boat, you can design for bluewater cruising by a crew of two (couple). And this counts for length, volume, weight, stability, internal and external layout, technical setup and overall quality of the boat. The proportions of the NH 52 are so perfect, that Nordhavn has stopped producing the NH 47. "Perfect is the enemy of good".

Plus the stile and pace of cruising of the Hamiltons is optimized for a crew of two. They are not in a hurry at all and do not take any unnecessary risks.

But from reading the blogs and stories of circumnavigator couples, especially sailors, I take the information, that both are going asleep at the same time, with the boat on autosteer and the person on watch sleeping near the rudder and relying on the radar target alarm . I know, single handed sailing only works like this but this is not my way of life.

Most still add a friend for ocean crossings covering many days. Not generally hard to find a friend who is up for that. Couples with a 52 fine the rest of the time.

Mapism,

We do not allow hot-linked images, nor do we allow links to builders whom we know to have questionable business etiquette. Your link and image have been removed.

So did you come here just to pick a fight with the forum owner? Just always amazes me. You're angry at him because you didn't read the forum rules?

Actually I know many other forums with the same rule. It's easy to tell those that don't have the rule. They are filled with boxes where images once could be seen.

Belle making the popcorn now.

That's because many admins have failed to have the foresight of linked images being replaced by the host with something less benign than a picture of boat.

The OP asked for a comparison between the two boats, not me.

It is inappropriate to post confidential business details, but I believe it is perfectly acceptable to guide our members toward prudent buying decisions. That's what we use the PM system for...

A disclaimer sometimes used by those with a vested interest. I could run a high level IP search, but at the moment I'm in the midst of migrating YF to a new server.

I only removed the image and the link to the builder. Nothing else.

To everyone who has posted in this thread over the past 2 days...

Our new server had a newer version of MySQL installed and the system was throwing off database errors all morning. We were previously on MySQL 5.1., so we had to re-copy the database files over from the VPS. In doing so, we lost two days of posts between the time when the site was first moved to the new server and this morning. Unfortunately there was no way around this as downgrading versions of MySQL corrupts data.

This is the first time in 10 years that we have lost any significant data. Please accept my apologies. This has been a real fiasco, but I believe we are stable now.

(fingers crossed)

Thank you for the explanation, I thought my post had been removed for some reason.