“A proper boat, with proper performance”
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
This is a Duchy 35 now. This is a very elegant day boat or cruiser. And the hull of this is actually taken from a plug of a wooden boat so that’s why it’s got such elegant lines very much like a wooden boat. And in fact, if you want to, you can have a teak transom across the back instead of what we’ve got here. The hull colour as well in fact you can have whatever choice you want pretty much. There’s a range of gelcoat colours or they can paint it if you prefer. And the whole ethos of this boat is to be very good looking, very subtle, very classy but also very practical.
So you’ll find on here things like, if we head back down the side of course the usual way in is over the bathing platform and on but if you look, there’s a little tread in here and that means it’s really easy because they’re just above pontoon height. So step onto here and into the boat and then you can open this door and enter this way. So very, very practical but what we’re going to do is we’ll actually go in through the transom, through the posh way and we’ll have the full tour.
Credits: Nick Burnham
EXTERIOR
Let’s go and have a look. So if we step on here, you can see this mechanism for the door. Looked really nice. That’s very impressive! And the first thing we come to then is this cockpit area. So seating around the back, this table of course will open out. So if you want more space for dining, you’ve got it. That’s that door that I just showed you on the side of the boat. And what’s great about this is that you can open these cabin doors all the way up so this whole area becomes like a sort of inside-outside area that works really well. You can in fact have those doors in teak as well if you want to.
As we head through there’s a few more practical features. I’ll slip my shoes off. This backrest is a perfect example because what you can do with this, I’ll just move these out of the way a little bit, we can tilt that the other way and now you’ve got a great seat. It’s within the shelter of the inside of the boat but of course, it’s connecting it now with the cockpit so that’s a lovely place to sit especially since the weather’s not quite so warm.
They do a couple of different layout options on this boat and in fact, there’s quite a bit of customisation you can have as well. So this has got the galley up here and what you have here then, is an induction hob on this one, gas is standard but most of these go out with a generator and electric cooking sink of course as you can see and there’s the cooking just there. That one is a fridge. All nicely stocked but there’s also another fridge over on this side or you can have a freezer if you prefer.
A couple other things worth seeing, I like this. That’s a storage area that allows you to get right back into the corner, that’s very good. That’s a drawer for your cutlery and then this is all the crockery and glasses. Now, these boats are made in Cornwall and so all these glasses, slide that one out, are made in St Ives down in Cornwall. I don’t know how well you can pick this up but they’ve all got the Duchy 35 logo on them, which is rather nice. And that slots back in there to keep it safe. Same with the plates all made in Cornwall, that’s a nice touch.
And talking of nice touches, have a look over here. It’s an option but if you go for the custom toolkit, there it is. All your screwdrivers and your spanners and everything where you can get to them and all nicely held in place and that’s great!
This is a Hi-Lo table so if you want to have some sleeping up here in addition to what’s down on the low deck you can have it. You can see it’s got a telescopic leg there. And this is also another very nice touch, you can see the seating goes right around the table here but actually what you can do, is move that cushion out the way, that will lift and now you have forward-facing seating right next to the hound. That’s brilliant for when you’re underway because it means four of you can sit across here and have a chat and enjoy the boat. And in fact, this has very much been designed with short-handed cruising or just to make life really easy in mind.
So there’s a door here, you don’t often find that on a 35ft boat and the idea of this is, you’ve got your throttles on the side next to the door and it means that when you’re manoeuvring the boat, you can bring it in like this and that again like we saw before, is just a very short step down and tie your boat up, brilliant for short-handed boating.
“This boat has very much been designed with short-handed cruising in mind.”
Let’s head on back in. Now although it all looks quite traditional, there’s some very modern and up-to-date systems in here, like for example this one here, so this is all the operations for the boat. It’s all electronic switching and we can go in from here, [screen] into things like the lighting, you can control the cabin lights and courtesy lights and that sort of thing, we’ve got gauges on here, so fuel gauges, water tank, holding tank, voltage is on here as well and so on.
What’s really clever with this is that, you can set this up to have the boat exactly how you’d want it when you’re on it and then there’s a remote control key fob as you approach the boat, you press the button, it puts the lights on and it switches everything to how you want it when you’re on the boat when you walk away, press the button again and it shuts all down. And you can even link this up to a system that allows you to connect via an app. So you could be driving back up the motorway and think, I was rushing away from the boat, did I shut the sunroof? And in fact then if we go back to the home page we can see even that is controlled from here and therefore even that is accessible from the app. So if I push that one there [button], for example, that’s bringing that whole roof section back like so and you can set that up so that for example if the bilge pumps run, it’ll let you know all the batteries go low. It’ll let you know.
Over on the other side, you don’t see this very often, a proper chart area so you can lay your chart out on here if you want to, of course. Space underneath there for the charts. Pop the hat back, there we go. Big windows, a clear view out and then ahead of this is the lower deck.
“This boat has a proper chart area to lay your chart out if you want to.”
So there are a couple of options down here, this one is a two cabin boat so what we have in here is a guest cabin. This is brilliant for kids of course because it’s like a little den in here but it is actually a full-size adult berth. So two adults can sleep in there, no problem at all.
And you’ve got this area out here so you can stand and get changed and that sort of thing and there’s a locker in behind there for your bits and pieces. And this lovely catch they put on here, very nice.
On the opposite side, is the heads. So that’s a wet room. So you’ve got a shower that pulls out so you can use it and that clips on up here and there’s the sink.
And then up at the front of the boat, there is another cabin with a double bed in it and again storage all the way around here. I love the woodwork in this boat. It looks really nice. There’s a hanging locker here, with an illuminated rail, that’s fantastic. Then down here yet more storage areas and in fact back to the practical nature of the boat, drawers underneath by the way, that wasn’t what I was going to show you, what I was going to show you is we can pull this tab here and that lifts the whole bit out the way. So you’ve got access to things like the bow thruster down under the front and the battery for that and so on, that’s very good.
Now I mentioned there were different layouts [on this Duchy 35], so if I turn back around what you can have if you wish is to lose that cabin and instead you can bring that galley down. This whole doorway goes, so it’s completely open and you’ll have an L-shaped galley in here. Then that of course then frees up the saloon for just a social space. And another owner has opted to go for a big shower on this side, so they wanted to have just a toilet on one side, a shower on the other and then just keep the galley up as it is at the minute. So Cockwells will certainly talk to you about customisation. If there’s things that you’d like to do, no problem.
Let’s have a head around the decks. So we’ll come out through here, deep wide side decks, there’s more teak on here. You’ve got some bathing cushions up here on the front. And then right up here, the anchor is actually on that cradle just there and so the gubbins for that is in there. So the winch, there’s a bollard in there and then there’s your switches for your up and down.
Let’s wander back down this side [the Duchy 35], there you can see that big sliding roof up on top and the horns and the radar and all that kind of thing of course are up there as well. And we’ll step back down and take a look at the engines. My shoes are in the way, so don’t get squashed. Now both of these hatches come up, we’ll just open the one for the moment worth mentioning as well. There’s another hatch up ahead in the floor so that you can get to the front of these engines. This is just getting us to the back.
Now the standard engines in this boat are a pair of 270 horsepower Nanni diesels. This one’s been upgraded. This has got a pair of Yanmar 350 horsepower V8s. There’s two of them as you can see here and those mean that although it’s a traditional looking boat, you don’t have to put up with traditional performance because this will do 30 knots plus.
“You don’t have to put up with traditional performance because this will do 30 plus knots”
Cockwells told me that they got 31 knots out of this boat earlier today so it is a properly fast boat. There’s conventional shaft drives. You can see the gearboxes on the back of the engine and the shafts going out and of course, they disappear out of the hull, propellers on the end and the rudders behind that. So all nice and conventional and easy to maintain and quite a decent engine room. Obviously, it’s a 35ft boat so you’re not gonna get the sort of walk-in engine room you get on a 70ft Sunseeker but it’s all accessible.
This other one comes up as well so you can get on both sides and I think as I mentioned earlier you can also access the engines from the front, there’s another hatch in the saloon floor so you can get down that way as well.
Okay let’s drop that one back down and I want to reopen that if I can. And probably the last thing to show you is the lazarette, getting my shoes again. Let’s give that a bit of a turn. So that lifts up on a gas strut, nice and easy. This is where the generator lives, so that’s that white box at the back and this is all storage to put canopies in here and you’ve got manual battery switches in here as well if you need them. So that’s quite a decent size. Get your deck chairs in there, maybe a couple of inflatable paddle boards or some folding bikes that’s ideal, very nice indeed. Okay, let’s drop that one back down.
In fact, I think if anything I haven’t mentioned here is canopies. There is a canopy that comes from the trailing edge of this roof down to the transom. So you can enclose all this area when the weather is not quite so good. You could also have a framed canopy that comes out and it’s more like a sort of a conservatory on the back of the boat, really. Just depends on how you want to use it.
“There is a canopy that comes from the trailing edge of the roof down to the transom”
SUMMARY
So there we go, let’s head on back off, have a look at the outside and say that is the Duchy 35 by Cockwells. Lovely boat, hope you enjoyed looking at that one. It’s something a little bit different and as I say it’s a great meld of traditional styling. Really, really elegant but also super modern in terms of its engineering and performance. I really like that, rather a lot. As ever, thank you so much for watching. And as ever, I hope we’ll catch you on the next one. Take care, bye-bye!
The Duchy 35 is just one of the many impressive models in the Duchy Motor Launches range. To see the full list, here’s a complete overview of the Duchy range. If you believe this is the type of boat you’re seeking, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. If you want to know more, check out the Part 1 and Part 2 reviews of the Duchy 35 by Dans Boat Life, as well as the walkthrough, offshore sea trial articles, and the article about the first Duchy 35 to arrive in Australia, sold by Davis Marine Brokerage, the exclusive distributor in Australia.
See more details on the Duchy 35 here:
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