Otam 90 Yacht Review and Sea Trial
Otam’s head-turning new 90 is a modern take on the original vision set forth by legendary racer Fabio Buzzi.
Late summer, 2001. The phone rang. It was Fabio Buzzi. Would I care to join him and Dag Pike for lunch? This was back when I edited a magazine from a 23rd-floor office overlooking the Thames in central London. Where was he? St Katherine’s, he said. They had just arrived. I could see the yacht harbor from my window, or at least I could see where it was, in the shadow of Tower Bridge, just a mile or so downriver. Of course, I replied. I would be delighted.
Fabio Buzzi was great company. A brilliant raconteur, his accent was richly Venetian, although behind it his English was perfect, and he was fantastically indiscreet about everybody, whether they were fellow powerboat personalities or hapless celebrities he’d met at dinners. He conquered offshore racing in the 80s and 90s, winning literally everything, not just because he was better than everybody else but because he was deadly serious. For a couple of seasons no one else stood a chance. The rules had been written for a previous generation of engines, boats and engineers, and they had to rewrite them to get rid of him.
I did a few races myself back then, in lesser classes and of course only in the idiot seat, reserved for sponsors and journalists. But I tried to make myself useful: in one race, as David, our helmsman, was preparing to make a 50-knot turn around our course marker, I glanced behind automatically, and there was Buzzi’s Cesa 1882 cat coming up on the inside, doing 100-plus on the Class 1 course. I whacked Dave on the shoulder and pointed. Just in time. He was pretty shook up. The catamaran, flying straight and level like a sea-skimming missile, fifty feet off our starboard side, was magnificent. Behind his spray-covered fighter canopy, intent on his oil pressure, his throttle settings and his drive trim, I doubt that Buzzi even saw us.
A few months before the phone rang in my elevated office on that bright blue summer’s day, I visited Buzzi at his workshops in Brianza, on Lake Como in northern Italy. There was snow on the mountains and a biting chill in the air as we took to the water aboard one of his new military RIBs. He wanted to show it off, but there was also a serious purpose to the trial, and as he peered through his thick glasses at his instruments and gauges his focus was so total that I began to wonder if he had brought me along as a lookout. The waters were pretty confined, especially at 65 knots, and I didn’t know where the shallows were but trusted that Buzzi did. When a low bridge loomed into view dead ahead, I had to whack him on the shoulder, pointing, before I got a reaction. He seemed mildly surprised.
So when I got to St. Katherine’s and I found the legendary Italian designer and engineer in a typically expansive mood and Dag Pike, the renowned navigator, looking exhausted, I knew how he felt. The boat that I could see moored outside the restaurant was a huge monohull, gray with a yellow hardtop, fitted out with four diesel engines, some high-tech racing seats and very little else—certainly no soundproofing. Dag said the noise inside at top speed beggared belief.
When Buzzi said they had just arrived, he was not kidding. Just that morning they had powered into the estuary from the North Sea and barreled on towards the capital for as long as the speed limit would allow, tying up in the marina at noon. It marked the end of a busy season of powerboat record-breaking for the pair of them, which began with a new best time from Venice to Monte Carlo. Then came Monte Carlo to London, and finally the demanding 1,600-mile round-Britain record. 34 hours after setting off, they were back—an average speed of more than 44 knots.
The boat was an 80-footer, which for want of a better idea Buzzi had dubbed Record!, and had the name painted along the sides in 3-foot letters. Backed by his competitive prowess and record-breaking success, he was selling a lot of fast diesel craft at that time to Italy’s numerous maritime agencies—customs, coast guard, police and military—and the durability and seakeeping of his boats, proven over and over on the offshore racing circuit, had even apparently piqued the interest of some of the shadier special forces outfits in the U.K. and U.S.. But the 80 was different. He always intended the design as a fast, long-range motoryacht, suitably fitted out and, obviously, heavily soundproofed.
And so it came to pass. Giancarlo Rampezzotti; powerboat racer, record-breaker and the owner of the Otam shipyard in Genoa, which started out in the 1950s but made its name building Magnums under license in Italy, bought Buzzi’s design. He put it into production as a fully bespoke performance cruiser, with a Kevlar hull, carbon hardtop and surface drives. When I spotted the new Otam 90 GTS at the Cannes boat show last September, it was clear where its origins lay. A stretched version of the original design, the GTS retains the essential Buzzi ethos of high performance and lightweight construction. It is also completely custom made.
While the prototype 80 had three 1,100-horsepower MANs and Trimax surface drives, Otam’s production versions have been built with twin- and quadruple-engine installations. Record! herself had four 1,500-horsepower motors and two drives. This 90 GTS keeps it simple: two engines, two Arneson drives, but lots of horsepower. She is owned by an Egyptian businessman, the patriarch of a large family, and he likes to use her as a spectacular dayboat with enough space for everybody. There is no galley, just a pantry down below for mixing drinks and making coffee, and while there are several sleeping cabins, all en suite—a VIP in the bow, a twin-berth to port, and a full-beam master amidships—the focus of the accommodation is actually the main deck, with its seating areas and standing room and cabinets full of glasses fit for every entertaining eventuality. There are crew cabins fore and aft, and a crew galley.
Otam prides itself on customization. You can have pretty much whatever you want, as long as you don’t change your mind once the layout has been agreed on. Boats of this size and power impact the water with considerable force, so Otam likes to build them bombproof, with bulkheads bonded in from deckhead to hull stringers, and once they are in place there is no going back. But virtually everything else is in play. On this first 90, the fourth cabin has given way to a spacious lower-deck lobby area and pantry, with a bespoke compartment for the sound system, complete with fan-coil cooling. There are other individual touches, such as the titanium deck fittings, and the smart glass hull windows allow privacy without sacrificing daylight.
Otam also builds its interiors in a determinedly old-school fashion, constructing the cabins in situ to ensure the craftsmen achieve a perfect fit, then dismantling everything to take it out for painting and varnishing, and finally putting it all back in. It takes twice as long and costs four times as much, I was told, but that’s how they like to do it. The shipyard builds four boats a year.
We had 20 people on board for our sea trial, which is par for the course at Cannes, but the main deck seemed to accommodate everyone without too much difficulty. We also had several tons of fuel and water in the tanks, but none of this seemed to make any difference to the 90’s performance.
It was a balmy late afternoon in the Baie de Cannes and the breeze had raised a bit of a chop, but with a 28-degree midships deadrise, this is a hull with an offshore heritage, designed to soak up punishment. At 35 knots all was serene, and she sailed past 40 knots without breaking a sweat, topping out at just over 43. Fabio Buzzi would probably have been pleased with that, although he might have wondered why the owner didn’t want more horsepower. There was plenty of room down there for another engine.
We lost Buzzi a few years ago. The legend was in his 70s, but he went in a way that few people who had ever ridden with him would have been at all surprised to hear: at high speed, in the dark, at the end of a record-breaking run, probably oblivious to everything but his instruments, coaxing the last ounce of performance out of his boat.
Otam 90 Test Report:
Otam 90 Specifications:
LOA: 91’0”
Beam: 19’7”
Draft: 5’10”
Disp: 143,300 lb.
Fuel: 2,113 gal.
Water: 317 gal.
Power: 2/2,400-hp MTU
Price: $9.4 million
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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/boats/otam-90-yacht-review-and-sea-trial