Charley 2 splashdown
The largest catamaran motor yacht built in Australia has launched in Western Australia.
24 August 2023
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Australia’s full-custom superyacht builder Echo Yachts has launched their latest newbuild superyacht – the 56-metre aluminium catamaran Adventure and Support Yacht M/Y Charley 2.
M/Y Charley 2 is the largest catamaran motor yacht built in Australia and the second largest Echo Yachts’ superyacht created at the Echo Marine Group shipyard near Fremantle, in Western Australia.
At 56 metres LOA, with a beam of 14.8 metres and 1,041 gt volume, the new aluminium hulled Charley 2 is a significantly larger variant of its predecessor M/Y Charley (composite hulled, 50 metres LOA, 701 gt volume, delivered in 2017.)
Naval Architecture for Charley 2 was performed by Australian firm One2Three Naval Architects, with Engineering, Electrical and Fitout design performed by the in-house team at Echo Marine Group.
Charley 2’s larger enhanced layout provides extremely spacious interior accommodation, outdoor entertaining areas and significant water-toy-carrying capacity.
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The decision to build Charley 2 with a full-custom designed aluminium hull has resulted in improved hydrodynamic efficiency, and enabled the use of much smaller engines to propel what is a significantly larger yacht compared to its predecessor M/Y Charley.
Other features include accommodation for 18 guests and 19 crew, and watertoys comprising two Caribe C14 RIBS tenders, a Williams Turbo Jet tender 285, two Pioneer multi landing craft and three Yamaha Wave Runners, plus two folding davits for launching watertoys.
Charley 2 features a large 12-metre custom-built catamaran tender on an upgraded launch and retrieval platform positioned at the stern of the vessel. This new tender platform design ensures improved tender operations and full walk-around access for ease of tender cleaning and maintenance.
The yacht is equipped with a large helicopter touch-and-go pad suitable for an Airbus EC130 helicopter, dive store, decompression chamber and specialist sonar equipment on the 12-metre tender for wreck finding and diving adventures.
The design and construction of Charley 2 was completed within three years of project commencement in 2020, resulting in a very high standard of finish thanks to the world class skills and expertise of the design and build team involved.
Mark Stothard, Director of Echo Marine Group expressed his thoughts on: “a very special day for the teams at Echo Yachts and One2Three Naval Architects seeing the fruits of our combined efforts in the launch of Charley 2.
She sits perfectly on the design waterline and is one of the most complete vessels I’ve seen at launch. A few weeks of commissioning and trials, then she’ll be off on her first adventure!”
Charley 2 has a top speed of 17 knots and a cruising speed of 12 knots. Sea trials commence at the beginning of September, with delivery several weeks later.
Echo Yachts will be attending the upcoming 2023 Monaco Yacht Show and Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, available for appointments to discuss full-custom newbuild, refit and maintenance projects
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