M/Y Adastra, a win for Palladium

superyacht_Adastra_courtesy_john-shuttleworth.JPG

Regardless of anchoring acrobatics — and just how the heck do you tie this wild 146 foot trimaran alongside a dock, with a line throwing gun? — M/Y Alastra joins the short list of exotic vessels I’d love to cruise around Penobscot Bay, if only briefly, and if only to freak out the traditionalists.  And it’s a safe bet that there will be some pretty interesting systems on board; in fact, I heard about this creature because Palladium Systems just announced the monster gear contract they’ve won.  It includes not just their Ethernet/Windows-based SiMON monitoring system — with some 269 data points reporting to wheel house and engine room, and probably various iThings as well — but also their new Titan electrical system


I got to see a demo Titan system at the Fort Lauderdale show last fall, and was impressed by its interesting mix of analogue gauges and touchscreen monitor.  Palladium is good at man-machine interfaces.  However, seeing as I’m just now gaining some competence over Gizmo’s relatively modest electrical system, I’m not qualified to comment much on what’s going on behind this panel.  I don’t know, for instance, how much Titan relates to the sort of distributed power systems we’ve been discussing.  But I did watch a megayacht engineer getting a tour of the massive relays and so forth behind that panel, plus the multiple pages of touch monitoring info you can see if you click on the photo, and he got excited.
    M/Y Adastra is truly an international effort,
designed by John
Shuttleworth in the U.K.
  and being built by the Australian firm McConaghy Boats in China.  And she’s really coming along, as you can watch in this neat time lapse video.  Even if she never makes it out of the Far East — where the traditionalists go much further back — let’s hope we’ll at least get to see
some good photography of the finished systems.  Maybe she’ll even get one of Palladium’s gigando touchscreen remotes.



Palladium_Titan_electrical_panel_cPanbo.JPG

Ben Ellison

Ben Ellison

Panbo editor, publisher & chief bottlewasher from 4/2005 until 8/2018, and now pleased to have Ben Stein as a very able publisher, webmaster, and editing colleague. Please don't regard him as an "expert"; he's getting quite old and thinks that "fadiddling fumble-putz" is a more accurate description.

8 Responses

  1. Bill Bishop says:

    Stunning and sleek, but where’s the anchor(and locker),and do you use an elevator to get to the forward deck? I see two domes aft for comm and TV no doubt, but no nav gear to be seen. I too would like to take a ride. What fun, if you can afford it.

  2. Marine VHF says:

    Bill, I think the “if you can afford it” is the key here. Sounds and looks amazing but you’re right, only if you can afford it.

  3. Butch Davis says:

    Underwater hatches fore and aft with ground tackle. Hydraulic door in the stern for parking a tender used for line handling and ferrying passengers back and forth.
    No need for docking. Just anchor out.

  4. Bill Bishop says:

    He whose the most gold chains wins.

  5. The size of a yacht like this has in inverse relationship to the size of…

  6. Ben Ellison Ben Ellison says:

    It’s public knowledge that the owner of Adastra is a guy from Hong Kong named Anto Marden. In fact, here’s a long interview with him that was published in the Yacht Report, and includes some renderings of Adastra’s interior:
    http://mcconaghyweb.com/newsite/mainsite/files/press/Anto%20Marden%20from%20111.pdf
    Remember, though, that boys resenting other boys about the size of their toys may mean something negative too 😉

  7. Ben Ellison Ben Ellison says:

    Well, it turns out that Marden is quite an egaging character, and has obviously spent a lot of time at sea in smaller boats. Note his love of the beanbag as a sea berth. This would be a new idea to me, except that I recently learned that Bill “WFO” Pratt carries two marine E-Searider beanbags on his jiggetty rocket ship of a center console, and they really work:
    https://panbo.com/archives/2010/04/garmin_visit_3_wfo.html
    http://www.e-searider.com/

  8. Definitely it’s equipped with FURUNO Navigation and Communication Systems, one of the most reliable and attractive marine products in the world.

Join the conversation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *