New Boat: Vicem 62 Sport

Mixing Business With Pleasure

A Cruising couple creates a
yacht from experience

Is it possible to design and build a 62-foot sport yacht featuring a dedicated office with worldwide communication capabilities, shoal draft and 30-knot speed that can be easily operated by a typical husband and wife team?
In short, yes. Not only is it possible, the KG Marine-designed Vicem 62 Sport delivers all that and still manages to provide two comparable Master/VIP staterooms. Klaus Gueldenpfennig, managing director of KG Marine, is the impetus behind this project. “My wife and I enjoy entertaining business clients aboard, but in other vessels I found it awkward to show them around the yacht, proudly display the large and luxurious master stateroom, and then usher them into their much smaller, more basic stateroom,” he says.
Klaus also insisted that the dedicated office, which converts quickly to a third stateroom, have worldwide communications capability. It’s a feature he thinks is part of a growing trend. “Owners of small to mid-size companies frequently find they can’t use their yachts as much as they’d like, or cruise to out-of-the-way places, because they need to be available by telephone or e-mail and have Internet access,” he said. “If a customer or a project director can’t get an answer immediately, a contract or a good client relationship could be lost. Do that often enough and the business could be in trouble.”
Consequently, a sophisticated Redcom SLICE functions as the communications hub, allowing communication capabilities including Internet and VoIP, comparable to land-based offices and similar to that used by defense contractors.
This 62 footer, first in the Vicem Sport Series, utilizes a standard Vicem hull—cold molded mahogany and epoxy (West System) over mahogany frame construction—plus the high-quality interior joinery for which the Turkish builder is known. The layout is KG Marine’s design. Klaus and his wife, Brigitte, are experienced yacht operators and applied their insights to details that make the boat luxurious and easy to operate. When leaving the dock, running underway or returning dockside, the pair easily handle maneuvering chores and line handling without assistance. There’s an excellent view from the helm station, both forward and aft to both quarters, and an adjacent watertight door to quickly access the starboard side deck. Remote docking stations are positioned on both stern quarters. Foot activated power winches at each quarter allow the line handler to easily position the yacht in a slip or alongside a dock.

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For an owner who would rather spend time with his guests instead of operating the vessel, a two berth crew cabin with head and shower is positioned forward of the standup engine room, completely separate from the owner and guest accommodations.
This first yacht in the series has twin MAN 1,050 horsepower diesels coupled to a patented POWER-VENT surface drive. On a recent test ride, the yacht quickly came up on plane at a mere 13 knots, cruised comfortably at 26 knots and at max rpm of 2,350 achieved a respectable 31 knots. The yacht runs flat and visibility either standing or sitting in the Stidd leather helm chairs is excellent. Two electrically powered sunroofs, one over the helm position, one over the dinette, provide welcome air flow at anchor or underway. The POWER-VENT surface drive system reduces draft by six inches and operates at the high speeds of surface-piercing systems without exposed mechanical and hydraulic equipment extending beyond the transom.
Unlike a typical surface-piercing drive, the POWER-VENT system is passive. Precisely shaped vents in the sides of tunnels stretching from the transom to just forward of the props allow air to be sucked into the prop area. The carefully sized vents balance the amount of air flow so that the water level remains at the midpoint of the props even when conditions change, allowing the surface-piercing props to act similarly to those systems typically mounted on the transom.

New Boat: Sea Force IX

Sea Dancer

A custom yacht is the solution for this fishing, cruising couple

The one indisputable point about Rumbera is that she is a boat of many passions. After that, descriptions become subject to point of view. Is she a fishing machine with a yacht interior? A family cruising boat that chases billfish? A fast, high-performance luxury motoryacht? A precedent-setting custom design for a high-end series boat builder? Yes, on all counts, and then some. Rumbera is the perfect definition of a yachtfisherman.
After nearly 40 years of tournament fishing in countless production sportfishing boats, a Caribbean-based couple decided it was time for a new and bigger boat and set about inspecting everything the boat shows had to offer. Customers with this much experience know what works for them and what doesn’t, and before long, they decided that what would work for them was a custom boat.
“I spotted a profile of a Sea Force in Southern Boating and I liked it,” said the owner. “But I didn’t know anything about the company. I had my broker, Jeff Creary from HMY, check them out and with his report, I felt we could get the boat we were after.”
Building a custom yacht is like assembling a puzzle, or perhaps more like the 3-D chess game Spock played on Star Trek: Everything affects something else; each decision changes the options for the next decision.
Beginning with general requirements for a boat about 80 feet long, Rumbera (Spanish for a woman who dances the rumba) grew to her final length based on requirements for a world-class cockpit, a substantial lanai deck, full-beam master stateroom, crew quarters, and a brilliant ship-like engine room with plenty of work space and redundant systems to keep Rumbera dancing non-stop.

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“I love fishing with my husband, just not marlin fishing,” claims the female half of the ownership team. “With this boat we wanted to be able to cruise with our family and our friends as well as fish, so I wanted a comfortable and luxurious environment.”
While her husband, her son and the family’s captain, George Pinon, sorted out mechanical, electronics and equipment details, she turned to Kathryn Carbone of Interior Design South in Delray Beach, Florida, to articulate “comfortable and luxurious.” A residential designer for 25 years, Kathryn has helped numerous clients decorate the interiors of their boats. Rumbera’s owners have been her clients for 20 years.
“When they decided to build, she expressed a desire for something light and bright, very open, and very elegant,” said Kathryn. “She also emphasized to me the need to cater to the comfort of her family and guests. She wanted the interior to be practical—beautiful but practical.”
While the owners’ homes and apartments are furnished in very traditional styles, Rumbera’s interior is contemporary in keeping with the fact this is a complex machine. There are no raised and fielded panels or layers of window treatments obscuring the view. The light and bright element is achieved largely by the selection of English sycamore for the joinery, the elegance of its pale, highly figured pattern enhanced by simple geometric shapes, the clear, Italian semi-gloss finish and a slavish attention to book matching the grain patterns.
Knowing that the interior of this boat was going to be unlike any previously completed, Sea Force CEO Ron Rookstool chose to have all of the veneer flitches made from a single tree and to purchase adjacently grown trees for the solid wood sections. A specialty firm in Ohio created the sequenced veneers. “Full panel overlay doors minimized the seams created by the abundant cabinets and we used LED lighting to accent the ribbon grain,” said Kathryn.
To meet the requirement for openness, Kathryn, Ron and Sea Force’s in-house engineer Rick Hyer created a main deck structure that did not require internal supports, a nice bit of engineering considering the open spiral staircase and the large, well-appointed enclosed bridge on the upper deck. Sea Force vacuum bags and “cooks” the hull and all major components for six or seven hours followed by a slow cool-down for superior post-curing.
One piece of the puzzle that pleases the builder is the lavish master suite, which Ron asserts is, “second to none.” The suite is aft in the lower accommodation, taking advantage of the nearly 22–foot beam. To accommodate hull shape, the generous master bath is up two steps, on the same level as the guest staterooms. Providing sufficient headroom for the master stateroom required raising the galley two steps from the saloon, a design feature that neatly separates the island bar and galley from the saloon.
Rather than crowd the lower deck, the owners chose a layout with only three staterooms including a spacious fore and aft VIP with a spectacular green onyx bath. The baths are lavished with imported stone and each features a large walk-in shower. While Rumbera has substantial stonework, including a fantastic chocolate brown crushed granite and glass foyer sole and granite counters on both the main and upper decks, the weight was kept to a minimum by prefabricating the surfaces on synthetic substrates.
When asked what pleases them most about their new boat, Rumbera’s owners seem hard-pressed to choose, but both mentioned the elegant living the layout affords, and a large part of that is the freestanding dining table and chairs adjacent to the galley, which eliminate the need to scoot around a table. The bridge deck lounge aft of the helm is also a favorite.
And then, of course, there is the business end of the boat where a custom Release fighting chair is surrounded by what seems to be an acre of teak. Fitting in fishing accoutrements was the special province of the owner and he is particularly pleased with lighted 55-gallon live wells recessed within the port and starboard steps to the lanai deck, pull-out barbecue grill and sink and bait prep areas that hide away neatly when not in use, a full-size tackle closet, and a day head that can be entered from either the saloon or the lanai deck.
There are two sets of aft helm controls, one that pops up out of the lanai deck and one on the covered seating area aft of the bridge. An additional station is located on the Bosch American tower and a remote unit on a 30-foot leash can be plugged into any station. The top of the enclosed bridge bristles with evidence of the boat’s world-class electronics package. Twin Furuno open-array radars and three GPS antennas provide redundancy for the Navnet 3-D black box charting system. A VEI Poseidon thermal imaging camera is mounted under the floor of the tower station to give 360° viewing.
The engine room is a tour de force. It begins with a separate manifold and electrical corridor. This air-conditioned space directly off the cockpit contains the levers and switches for all fuel and water transfers plus the AC and DC custom power panels by Wards Marine. It also provides access to the crew quarters and some of the massive freezers relocated from the cockpit for better weight distribution. A watertight door separates this area from the engine room where a pair of thundering MTUs and two Northern Lights gensets in sound boxes have pride of place. Sea Force cleverly located items susceptible to salt air, such as compressors, in glass-front cabinets with separate air supplies. Ron takes particular interest in safety issues relating to wiring and makes sure every wiring run is engineered to be chafe-free and that every element is properly grounded.
“There are a lot of firsts for us in this boat,” says Ron. “I think all our boats are easy to handle, and when the owner asked for a stern thruster, I was skeptical. But we put it on and I can tell you I became a believer after I docked this boat sideways by myself.” Rumbera is the first Sea Force IX with prop pockets, which reduced the boat’s draft by 10 inches. It’s also the first to use 40-inch Veem propellers from New Zealand, wheels that Ron says were almost too pretty to put in the water, but more efficient than standard props.
Rumbera carries an 18-foot SeaHunter flats boat on the bow, chosen, the captain said, because it was the highest quality multi-use tender for the least weight.
“At the end of the day, I think this boat really reflects the owners’ lifestyle and their passions,” says Kathryn. “His fishing trophies are artfully scattered about the boat and she has plenty of room to entertain in a big, stable boat.”