The new 60-foot Mulder Healey 1800 comes with both a back story and some head-turning innovations, including a helm seat that rises through an opening in the hardtop reminiscent of a special effects scene from a James Bond film.
The back story is that the boat was built to recreate some of the spirit and style of an Austin Healey sports car. The boat’s owner, David Healey, is the grandson of Donald Healey, who created the famous British cars.
David Healey founded Healeys Cornish Cyder Farm in the UK. He’s now 65 and retired and his sons are running the business. He and his wife are lifelong sailors, but he says she got tired of not knowing how long it would take to get anywhere. It was time to move to a powerboat.
Healey turned to Vripack and de Groot in the Netherlands for the design, and to the Mulder Shipyard there for the build. He said he wanted a boat that would go 20 knots in style and comfort and handle the waters from the North Sea down to the Med.
Mulder just launched the boat, and Healey is more than happy, as you can see in the video below. He says he and his wife now “look forward to coming on the boat, instead of other boats where you want to go to a hotel room.”
The two-tone metallic blue and white color scheme is similar to the Austin Healey 100S; so is the small windshield on the cabin top that protects the captain and navigator when they’re sitting up there. And the yacht’s lines also are designed to be look like those on the sports car.
Sone user-friendly features on the yacht include windows that drop down electrically in the salon to provide full ventilation, and a push-button partition that drops down from the ceiling in the guest stateroom so that two couples could sleep there in privacy.
But the standout feature is the helm chair that goes up through the roof. “Everybody said I was nuts” when he thought of that, Healey says.
To go up, the captain first pushes a button to open a forward portion of the roof, then another button to raise the helm chair on a large stainless steel pedestal, until it is over the rooftop, and behind the windscreen. All the yacht’s controls are set in two armrests that rise with the seat, so the captain can run the boat from up top. There’s a matching seat on the port side so that two people can go up, or down, together.
The yacht has two staterooms with en suite heads, a large galley and roomy salon. An extended hardtop protects the cockpit, which has glass panels, large settees and an outdoor galley.
Power comes from twin 600-hp Volvo D8 engines, delivering a top speed of 24 knots and a cruising speed of 24 knots.
Specs.: LOA: 60’6”; Beam: 16’9”; Draft: 4’1”; Disp.: 30 tons; Fuel: 1,188 gals.; Water: 237 gals.; Power: 2×600-hp Volvo D8s. Read more at https://www.muldershipyard.nl/series/custom-build/healey-1800/ and see the video with Healey, produced by Motor Boat & Yachting:
