Korvet 14 CLR
There’s a type of customer that boat designers view with a degree of unspoken pity. This is the bloke who is full of brilliant ideas for a new boat, wants to build one for himself, but is so utterly convinced that all those idiosyncratic and highly personal ideas are exactly what everybody else wants in a boat that he starts a boatbuilding company. Trouble is, those everybody else rarely agree.
The new Korvet 14 CLR does have that genesis, courtesy of its owner Peter Bost and his company Deep Water Yachts. But you know what, the first Korvet is such an outstandingly clever invention that I think everybody else will want one. Peter’s Korvet 14 CLR may be quirky in places, but this is actually a result of a highly disciplined and logical approach to its design and detailing, not of eccentric thinking. In the flesh it looks terrific, with muscular exterior styling that is an unusual but utterly rational mix of materials; unpainted aluminium for maximum strength and zero-maintenance synthetic teak decks for the same reasons, oversized stainless-steel guardrails, and a high-performance 3m vinyl wrap on the superstructure that will allow future owners to significantly influence the look and feel of their boat.
The light and airy interior is as open plan as it’s possible for a 45ft boat to be – the twin-berth aft cabin even has a glass bulkhead to separate it from the saloon – although for me, the highlight was the lower saloon which is as sociable and as inviting a space as I’ve ever had the pleasure of settling down in on a boat. The forecabin is a roomy affair with plenty of stowage and a colourful (bright blue) ensuite which makes its all-white counterparts feel rather lacklustre. This heads lives right forward, which means the double bed lives much further aft than usual. Consequently, jumping into bed is far easier than normal because the floor space runs fully around its perimeter.
Aside from a distinct lack of handrails inside and several sharp joinery corners, details I felt were at odds with the go-anywhere-in-any-weather potential of the Korvet, practical detailing was okay inside, rising to truly excellent on deck. Space considerations mean that boats this size are often forced to use inflatable tenders, but the roomy deck design allows the Korvet to easily carry a hard (indestructible polyethylene) tender on the foredeck, lifted on and off with a simple crane built into the guardrails.
I thought the mini flybridge was marvellous. With appearance, windage and handling in mind, Peter did not want the weighty, aesthetic bulk of a full flybridge, but he did want an elevated conning position for pilotage into strange harbours and other practical reasons. There’s plenty of room up here for a big sunbed, and the helmsman steers the boat from a small flip-up seat, one of a pair which lie around the sunken footwell. With low-air-draft inland waterways in mind, the mast can be lowered and the guardrails removed.
With low drag and fuel consumption an objective, the aluminium hull is a slippery round bilge form, ideal for cruising at displacement speeds, which would be around 10 knots, say. However, there’s also a chine near the waterline to help the boat up to its semi-displacement top speed of 18 knots, the predicted speed with its standard-issue twin 190hp Steyr
shaftdrive propulsion. You just might be able to spot a tiny bulbous bow on the running shots. This isn’t designed to act in the conventional way; it’s there to help break the ice (Peter’s cruising grounds ice up in the winter) as well as to elongate the waterline length at low speed to improve efficiency.
The engineering installation is absolutely first class in its thinking and its execution, and future boats will have full stainless piping/plumbing in the engineroom, not just on the fuel lines. A pair of reassuringly expensive Aquadrive flexible couplings will doubtless help to reduce transmitted noise and vibration to a minimum. These details, and others, plus easy access through a big boat-style watertight door means that you’re unlikely to find a boat this size that is any easier to maintain.
Often, a refusal to follow conventional thinking results in a boat which is great, but only for the very few whose quirkiness it suits. That’s emphatically not the case here. The Korvet 14 CLR encapsulates a terrific bundle of interesting ideas which all come together to work on a conventional level too. It’s a boat I’d be extremely happy to own and cruise.
The Korvet may be quirky in places, but this is actually a result of a highly disciplined and logical approach to its design and detailing, not of eccentric thinking