Haruku, borderline super yacht, possible live-aboard dive and fishing boat, and certain luxury catamaran has broken the relative monotony of day to day traffic in the Sutera Harbour Marina.
Not that there’s a shortage of aquatic traffic in the marina mind you, after all, Sutera Harbour Resort’s marina is the busiest harbour in Kota Kinabalu. Not counting, of course, the state cargo terminal in Sepangar Bay. I’m sure that get’s a fraction more traffic.
That said, the majority of traffic in and out the marina basin are ferry transfers to and fro the nearby islands. Additionally, a fare few wakes are left by sporty tourist boats, taking punters out for a whole range of water sports like para-sailing, fly fish and banana boat rides. But they’re all, run-of-the-mill, nothing-fancy-or-souped-up, twin outboard motored cookie-cutter, fiberglass boats.
Sure, there is the odd jewel in the marina crown, like Puteri Sutera, a Laguna 44 luxury yacht, the newest addition to Kota Kinabalu’s growing marketing of luxury yacht charters. She’s a 44-foot beauty, a catamaran with all the trimmings, bought especially for luxury yacht charters.
Apart from her and a few other live-aboard boats and yachts, which I’m sure look more interesting from the inside than they do from out, no eye candy has really visited the docks in recent months.
You might remember that last year sometime the bio-diesel project that was Earthrace had to make an unexpected pit stop in the Sutera Harbour Marina. That was the last boat / yacht / catamaran that really caught my attention.
There are, did I notice, certain similarities between the wave-piercing designs of these two vessels, but it’s in a way that two dogs can be similar. For instance, Earthrace is a dolichocephalic type dog, whilst, with Earthrace in mind, Haruku reminded me of a pug. These two unique catamarans really have nothing to do with dogs, but if you compare their pictures you might follow my analogy better. Actually, Earthrace is not a catamaran, it’s a tri-maran (if there is such a term), because of having three solid parts in the water.
Moving on. The type of vessel that Haruku is, said a few sources I tracked down on the web, is what is used in the travel industry as a live-aboard dive boat or even a fishing boat. It’s huge, a long 22-meters in length and she’s fat and chubby, but quite high out of the water, literally dwarfing the other vessels in the marina, which is why she’s so noticeable. And she’s plush, the lap of luxury, all the trimmings.
Haruku, however, is a privately owned, custom made catamaran. The Owner’s Cabin features a queen bed, whilst the two guest cabins features a double bed and a twin respectively. The Owner’s Cabin also has an en-suite bathroom, with shared bathroom facilities for the visitors. The two hulls has additional crew quarters.
The hulls are also equipped to hold up to 12 oxygen tanks for diving, and the stern has a fishing area with indirect and direct lighting to light up waters during night fishing, as well as a basin right there for gutting and rinsing and all those other fishy activities. I only got a few snaps from the outside, so if you’re curious about the inside, check it out. (She’s actually gray, unlike the white she keeps on showing up as on photos).
And that’s about as much as I could find out about where this boat came from and what she’s used for, as this press release didn’t help much beyond the basics. Just underneath the name on the stern is an additional name, George something or other, which I guess gives me another clue as to her background. But a few searches on Google using the relevant keywords Haruku, Catamaran, George kept on returning articles about George Clooney and yachts (holidays, no doubt). Not exactly what I was looking for.
Anyway, when I took these snaps she was docked at the fuel station. Haruku can hold up to 3,500 liters of fuel in her tanks, which are located in the hulls, towards the front. To put that in perspective, my MyVi has a 40 litre capacity tank, whilst the largest of the Boeing 737s has a fuel capacity of 29,660 litres. Haruku’s engines are relatively efficient, as her maximum range is about 1,290kms, or, she can cruise at her full speed of 25 knots (approximately 46km/h) for 24 hours non-stop. The burn-off rate is 0.5 tonnes per hour, but who knows how many litres in a tonne of fuel?
Seeing as how I’m comparing apples, I took the analogy further and discovered that my car (MyVi) was way more fuel efficient than I realised. For 40 litres of fuel, if I was driving long distance, I could likely squeeze about 550kms out of her, which means I would get 13.75kms for every liter. Haruku, on the other hand, only gets 368m (!) out of every litre, and that big Boeing 737, fully loaded with a 1 class configuration, only gets 168m (!!) out of every litre with a maximum range of 4,996kms. Anyway, check my math – but interesting don’t you think? Cars are the biggest pollutants only because there’s so many off them – boats and airplanes can’t be far behind.
Anyhoo, having refueled, restocked and all the other re’s she might have docked for, I can only imagine that Haruku will be moving on shortly.