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Liara
2009
|Sail Yacht
Sailing yacht Liara was built in 2009 by New Zealand shipyard Southern Ocean Marine and, at the time of her launching, was the largest undertaking to date by the marketing team at Performance Yachts. Constructed of GRP, the 30 metre features design by Dixon Yacht Design and can accommodate up to seven guests and four crew.
The PY-100 was the second Liara to be commissioned by her experienced racing yacht owner who preceded the 30 metre with the smaller PY-65 which won a number of races from 2002 to 2005.
Liara’s intelligent blend of clever outfitting and weight-saving design has allowed her to become a genuine performance cruising yacht. She was built using the most advanced high-tech composite construction to be a light to moderate displacement superyacht that would perform well at Superyacht Rallies while offering lavish comfort for cruising.
Her interiors are distinctly contemporary in appearance and mix neat, natural textures and colours with wood trim to create a light, airy interior. The main salon is the entertainment centre of the vessel with its comfortable sofas and dining table seating eight.
Amongst her three en suite cabins are a generous Master Cabin with a Queen-size bed plus additional single; Guest cabin with Queen-size bed; and another Guest cabin with two single beds. Further emphasising her luxury yet weight-saving focus is the use of foam and honeycomb furniture but solid marble in the bathrooms.
Liara’s decks display clever craftsmanship and design with a layout that sees a large cockpit forward and sail controls and steering aft. Showing her potential as a charter vessel, her foredeck is gratefully uncluttered and provides plenty of space for sunbathing or reclining in the hammock.
Sail yacht Liara has a top speed of 13 knots and cruises comfortably at 11 knots when under the power of her Cummins QSB 305hp engine. Sloop composite rigging, a five spreader high modulus carbon mast, and a hydraulic lifting keel complete her sailing picture.
Owen Clarke were contracted by Bill Dixon Yacht Design to deliver the design and engineering of a lifting keel for their new cruiser-racer. The vast majority of yachts have lifting keels with keel cases that penetrate the accomodation from floor to ceiling. In this case to conform with the interior he wanted the owner required the keel case to be totally enclosed below the cabin sole. To comply with this challenging requirement OC developed the concept of a lifting bulb keel, the head of which is contained inside a fixed short keel fin below the hull. The final solution was independently reviewed using FEA (finite element engineering) and CFD (computational fluid dynamics).