50 & 525 Dufour X Yachts

Source: Barry Tranter, Yacht and Boat Magazine

Overview:

Clever add-ons have changed the personalities of these two classy yachts.  An example of how a smart buyer and a smart boat builder created an amazing yacht.

Main Features:

The Dufour 525 spinnaker can be worked single-handed and a sausage bag makes hoisting the kite a breeze. The X-50 is a genuine racer/cruising yacht.

Dufour 525 & X-Yachts X50 – Boat Review by Modern Boating

“Dufour 525 & X-50 Yachts – Tailored to suit”

One of Australia’s better boating journalists once wrote that modern motor cruisers are as similar as snowflakes.

This statement also applies to production yachts.  It is also a line I wish I had written.  At a boat show, the ranks of white-hulled production yachts may all look alike but they are as similar as, ah, fingerprints (sorry, that’s the best I can do at short notice).

Two boats I have sailed recently, the Dufour 525 and the X-50, have little in common but they are good examples of what their respective manufacturers are up to. They are even better as examples of how a standard yacht can be adapted to personal needs by, on the X-50, careful choice from the manufacturer’s list of options and, on the Dufour 525, how the Aussie importer tailored the boat’s sail inventory to make a good cruiser even better.

X-Yacht 50 – Performance Racer/Cruiser

X-Yachts hail from Denmark. The company builds two cruising boats and two racing boats, but the bulk of their boats are from their Xperformance range; well-engineered, well-built craft which are cruiser/racers that rate and race well.

The X-50 we sailed recently is an example of how a smart buyer and a smart boat builder created an amazing yacht. The owner is based in Darwin and it is a fact of geography that the nearest Indonesian islands are only some 400 miles away. So he wanted to be able to cruise, for weeks at a time, and stop at their small villages and deserted bays. He also wanted to be able to race in regattas like Hamilton Island Race Week,where there are categories for a boat like the one he was planning.  The X-50 is a racer/cruiser, so the owner wanted to accent the cruiser side of its nature.  It was an obvious choice because it has a lazarette in the bow, a space that can be used as a sail locker on a raceboat or as general storage when cruising.

Our owner turned to the options list. For a cruising yacht shallow draft is desirable, so he ticked that box on the list. But because a reduction in draft decreases a boat’s stability he chose a carbon mast, which saves weight above the decks and increases stability.

The latest technological developments had a strong role to play. Furling sails, which are good for cruising, have always been a disadvantage when racing. But not anymore.  Our X-50 was given a boom furling system for the mainsail, so the sail rolls down into the boom like a Holland blind (remember those?). The usual problem with boom furlers is that you can’t adjust the sail’s foot tension for racing. But now you can.  With this system, the sail rolls around a carbon tube and an outhaul line is led through the tube to the clew of the sail so foot tension can be adjusted as on a conventional main.

The forestay is a similar story. The usual drawback with furling headsails is you can’t adjust the forestay for tension and length—but now you can.  Problem solved.

The boat was given North sails with a taffeta fabric, light in weight but not too precious to handle, like the more racing-oriented cloths.

Our owner also added obvious options such as a watermaker, generator and air conditioning. If you are going to cruise Asian waters, you might as well do it in comfort.

Dufour 525 – Grand Style

The 525 is one of Dufour’s Grand’Large series, a French term that translates as ‘offshore’ or ‘wide blue yonder’ or something like that. Dufour also build fast boats, but this one is a cruiser.  Like the X-50, she has a full-depth lazarette forward.  She also has a big garage in the stern, which holds a 2.2m inflatable tender, even when inflated.  Importers Antill Marine are associated with North Sails so the team devised a smart sail plan for the boat. They cut the mainsail with a bit more depth than usual to add power. Then they made a smallish headsail, a 105 percent sail, which means it extends only slightly aft of the mast; the small size makes it easy to tack plus improves visibility.  The headsail is on a furler, but North used vertical battens in the leech (the trailing edge) to support more sail in that area, a traditional shortcoming of furled headsails, and they made the sail as powerful as possible.

For sailing downwind, Antill and North specified an asymmetric spinnaker that sets from a retractable bowsprit.  This is a cruising sail; it lives in a sausage bag and is hoisted while still in the bag. When you are ready, you pull on a line to hoist the bag to the masthead, releasing the sail.  When you’re finished with the sail, pull the bag down over the sail and drop it when you’ve got your breath back.  These sails have been around for a long time, but the latest carbon-fibre bag mouth slides easily; in the old days the snuffer bags were known to snag and make a terrible mess of things.

We sailed on a light day and the boat sailed well—seven knots hard on the wind in 10-12 knots, a good speed.  In a later sail, with a nasty blustery breeze, the sail plan made her comfortable up to 25 knots when a reef in the mainsail became desirable.  With a bigger headsail you might be tempted to roll up the headsail partway, which produces a sail shape that doesn’t work too well. These sails were cut from a Spectra cloth, which is strong and saves weight, but wears well, as a cruising sail must.

Both these boats are great examples of how smart people adapted these yachts’ standard specification to suit specific tasks.  Both these boats were memorable because they took stock yachts to a different level, and conferred on them semi-custom status, different from the rest.

Like a snowflake.

Boat Specifications: 50 & 525 Dufour X Yachts

Dufour 525 Yacht

Length overall : 15.31m

Length waterline : 13.74m

Beam (max.) : 4.9m

Displacement : 16.2t

Draft : 2m standard, 2.35m as tested

Engine (shaftdrive) : 75hp standard/110hp as tested

Mainsail : 128.3m2

Fuel capacity : 500L

Water capacity : 750L

X-50 X-Yacht

Length overall : 15.24m (50ft)

Length waterline : 13.14m (43.1ft)

Beam (max.) : 4.28m (14ft)

Displacement : 12.4t

Draft : 3m (standard), 2.4m (as tested)

Engine : 75hp Volvo D2 diesel

Mainsail (stnd) : 77m2

Genoa 1 – 135% (stnd) : 77.9m2

Genoa 3 – 108% (stnd) : 62.3m2

Self-tacking jib (optional) : 51.5m2

Spinnaker (stnd) : 194.4m2