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1988 42' Sea Lord Trawler Jim Payetta: Today on foot-itis, we take a look at a boat that is all about cruising. Trawlers are becoming increasingly popular as more and more people are discovering the joys of live aboard cruising. This week we take a look at the 42' Sea Lord Trawler with Mike Burns from Clift's Marine Sales. |
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Jim Payetta: The Sea Lord has plenty of room for living aboard and cruisingWow, Mike, you could have a small ballroom dance back here.
Mike Burns: Is it not it huge? This is the advantage of the sundeck layout; you have made use of the full beam of the boat. The Sea Lord itself is incidentally about 13-feet, 8-inches.
Jim Payetta: It is also nice to have the hard top, for inclement weather. The hard top is also handy as a full enclosure so you can enjoy this area any time of the year.
Mike Burns: The Sea Lord can pretty much can be used as a year round home.
Jim Payetta: From the cabin, you have great access up to the fly bridge, and there are moulded steps down to the ladder into the cockpit.
Jim Payetta: What is nice about this layout too is it is nice and open to the back cockpit area.
Mike Burns: For entertaining you can be right up at the helm, and see all the way back.
Jim Payetta: There certainly is a lot of room and plenty of electronics.
Mike Burns: There is also plenty of room to add a lot of stuff at the helm. I have even seen some people convert the helm into a nice chart area, or a variety of things up here.
Jim Payetta: There is certainly plenty of room down in the cabin.
Mike Burns: Absolutely and the Sea Lord has a great rich interior with lots of great teak wood. This intricate detail is what the Taiwanese boats are renowned for.
Jim Payetta: Now the layout of this boat has a traditional trawler layout. The area above the engines is raised so not room is at all lost.
Mike Burns: On some of these boats, you will see them have a galley on more of a single level, with a step down to the forward cabin.
Jim Payetta: They also have got the master stateroom aft.
Mike Burns: With a full beam, there is tons of room at the back of the cabin. The master suite has its own head, shower, and lots of room. This particular berth is angled on a 45-degrees you can get in and out of the bed without crawling over somebody.
Jim Payetta: Up in the forward stateroom you even have bunk beds.
Mike Burns: As these are traditional bunk beds, there is lots of room so the upper bunk is it not much of a climb
Jim Payetta: Most trawlers have the lower helm station, and this one is no exception.
Mike Burns: It actually is fully functional lower helm. You do have some good windows all around, for inclement weather. But for docking and close quarter manoeuvring, you are obviously going to want to use the upper controls.
Ted Rankine: This trawler is made for long distance cruising.Out on the water, we put the Sea Lord through its paces. While there were only six of these boats made under the Sea Lord name, others were produced under such names as Oceana, Vista and Overseas. All very similar in style and built in Taiwan out of the Chung Wa and Fu Wei boat yards in the early to late '80s.
The Sea Lord has a semi displacement hull that makes for a very comfortable cruise at a very fuel efficient 8 knots. However, the twin Perkins engines, rated at 240hp each ensure that there is enough reserve hp to take you up to 12 to 14 knots if you need it.
We could tell from the dockside presentation and our tour of the boat, that the owner had maintained it meticulously. However, we still wanted to test all the systems in our sea trial from both the upper and lower helms. When you are investing around a quarter million, you do not want any surprises.
Jim Payetta: A trawler may not be for everyone, but I certainly understand why more and more boaters are getting into them. Personally, I would love to learn more about what the cruising lifestyle would really be like aboard a trawler, but the owner just would not agree to a 4-month sea trial.
* taken from a transcript of our Footitis Used Boat Profiles on PowerBoat TV 2004 Episode 10 - Order A Copy of the Show
