People who buy cruising yachts like the Outer Reef 700 LRMY have been sending builders one over-riding message for several years: they want their yacht to have the same luxury and amenities as their home ashore. The builders who heard that most clearly are now at the top of the industry.
The 700 Long-Range Motor Yacht (LRMY) is designed for the owner-operator who wants his or her yacht to reflect how they actually live on the water. Company President Jeff Druek has also built many custom luxury homes in the Hamptons of Long Island, and he knows that catering to his customers’ needs for custom solutions can differentiate his products and services from the competition.
The U.S. debut for the 700 LRMY was at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, and the company actually signed and funded a new sale of the model at the show—which is unusual in this size-class. The 700 is a semi-displacement yacht that can run in the mid-teens but has a particularly sweet long-range speed in the eight knot range, where it can cruise for well over 2,000 nautical miles with its standard Caterpillar C-9 ACERT diesels. Even at 11 knots, the range is more than 1,000 miles.
Outer Reef’s yachts are built in Taiwan by shipwrights and craftsmen with generations of yacht-building experience. The quality shows in the cabinetry, perfect finishes, and flawlessly designed mechanical systems. The 700 is a five-foot extension of the original 65 foot hull, but the seemingly small change makes a huge difference in the upper living spaces and the lower deck aft of the engine room.
Typical of a yacht this size are the three staterooms below, with the master amidships, a queen VIP forward, and a double-size third stateroom in between. The staterooms are accessed via a comfortable stairway down from the pilothouse.
The master stateroom has a gorgeous walk-in hanging locker, a spacious double-sink, and an en-suite head, as well as sound-insulated access to the engine room. It’s always amazing when I explore some other yachts of this size and realize I couldn’t hang more than two shirts and a jacket in the lockers—not so aboard the 700, where room abounds.
The 700 is a classic pilothouse motoryacht, with a long, open saloon that steps up forward into the galley/helm area. The extra length of this hull allows for a stairwell down to the crew quarters and mechanical spaces from the aft-starboard corner of the saloon—a nicer and safer alternative to access via a transom door or cockpit hatch.
That extra length is used to full advantage in both the cockpit and the upper boat deck. In fact, there’s so much exterior living space that you feel like you’re on a much larger yacht. The summer kitchen and expansive seating area aft of the flybridge helm means that entertaining at anchor will be an effortless affair. There’s also room for a tender as long as 20’.
Aft of the engine room, the extra space on the 700 makes for some interesting options. One is for two crew cabins; one with a double berth and the other with singles. A second option is to keep the crew double but use the other space for more stowage and workroom. I’d prefer the latter, so I can stock up enough to stay on the hook for longer periods.
The 700 is certified for open ocean navigation but is really meant to be a long-distance/long-duration coastal cruiser, so dual generators are a standard feature–a 16kW and a 9kW, both from Northern Lights. Typically, you would run the smaller genset on its own in a quiet anchorage after lights-out to maintain electricity for basic systems, while you would run the larger unit when it was time to run the air conditioning and fire up the galley and entertainment systems.
One of the other custom-builder philosophies of Outer Reef comes through in the delivery. When you get the keys, you get a yacht that has all systems tested and fully functioning. Buyers at this level don’t want to spend extra months after delivery having electronics, entertainment systems, and toys installed and configured. They don’t want that in their homes ashore, they don’t want that in their cars, and they don’t want that in their yachts. That’s why an Outer Reef 700 LRMY might be exactly the kind of mobile global mansion a couple is looking for: comfortable, capable and ready to cruise.
For more information, visit Outer Reef Yachts.
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