25 Lekker 2023 Walkthrough [Boat Review + Video]

Take an extensive tour of the Lekker 750 Damsko in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with Meindert Wolfraad.

This article is a transcription of the 25 Lekker video from Denison’s Youtube Channel. Tune in daily to discover the latest yacht video walkthroughs from the world’s largest yacht video collection. Watch the full video below:

I don’t know if you have ever been in Australia before, but it’s the ideal spot for me to design a boat. So what I did, I made a combination of an Amsterdam boat, cannal boat, combined with all the innovative parts, what you need to make it useful in Australia. And that’s basically this boat. This design is built for the cannals, to socialize, to drink, to have good fun. But when you would like to hit the big waves in the ocean, it’s easy to do and you feel very safe and comfortable on this boat.

I am Meindert Wolfraad. I’m the founder of Lekker Boats, and I would like to show you guys what we are doing today in Fort Lauderdale. When I was 28, I left Amsterdam and I went to Sydney where I started two businesses, a bicycle business with only aluminum bikes because I’m proud of the Dutch bikes and I would like to introduce them in Australia and the cannal boats, the party boats, what you’re used to have, where we use a lot in Amsterdam, and I would like to use that type of boat for the Australian waters. Damsko is the name of this boat, and Damsko is the nickname of Amsterdam. And the reason why we call this is because this is normally a typical Amsterdam boat, but we completely redesigned it into a super-fast ocean boat.

The Australian waters are completely different than any water in the world, in my opinion. There are a lot of fishing boats, power boats, cigarette boats, yachts, but I was missing the Dutch sloop. It’s a life boat redesigned for Australian usage. They have massive swell in the oceans, so the boat needs to be handled. Big, big waves and it needs to be super comfortable. Secondly, the rivers for example, the Hawkesbury River is a river where they have a lot of races and they go super-fast. So hitting a piece of wood is quite radical because then you have massive hole in a polyester boat. So therefore, aluminum was ideal to use this boat and it needs to go fast. But the most important thing is that the social aspects. So this boat has a space for 16. If you don’t take the cabins, it’s in a different version, open boat, you can have 25 people in this boat.

One of my favorite memories, what I have is that I went with my family, my son of six months old. We took the boat out and we went to the islands in north part of the Netherlands. On the way, we beached it on a small islands. We had a great time. We went for barbecue on top of the console, we had our burgers and our steaks underneath in the fridge. We took a shower and we slept with three of us with my six months old baby, my wife and I inside the cabin. So you can explore basically the beautiful nature in the Netherlands and hopefully, you do the same thing here in The Bahamas or Exumas or whatever, where you would like to go to in America.

Fort Lauderdale is the yachting capital of the world, meaning there are so many boats, but you need to find the right spot. So this is one of my favorite spots. It’s in the middle of the nature. You’ve got the beach on that side and you’ve got some very shallow cannals, how we used to know them in the Netherlands, but they are much shallower. So this is probably two feet, three feet max. The reason why we could be here is because we can trim the engine all the way up to two feet and that is a huge benefit and that’s the reason why I can explore these beautiful beaches around us.

This boat is where the DNA started for Lekker. Aluminum is practical. In usage, it’s last forever, like a hundred, maybe 150 years. It’s super lightweight. And therefore in my opinion, it’s one of the better build boats you see nowadays on the water.

So here at the pour side of the boat, you can see we’re using different plates. It’s five mule up to seven and two centimeter thick aluminum combined with a rubber fender instead of in the Netherlands, we use quite often a rope. For us, it’s more the simplicity of the design, but also the practicalities. Everything is protected and you don’t have any scratches. So that’s the philosophy and the idea about this, that’s what this whole boat is about. The paint is a very hardcore industrial paint. This is super thick, easy to maintain and it’s a matte finish. The reason why we always use matte is because the boat is not plastered. So what you see is what you get. There’s a lot of time and a lot of effort to finish the boat. Well, it’s a piece of art in my opinion. We use a fake tick. So everything, what you see on the front as well on the swimming platforms is a fake tick. Once a year we do it with a high pressure, easy maintenance, again.

The Bimini is something where you really need to have with this sun. It’s so strong. So therefore we build a custom built Bimini where you can go super-fast like 45, 50 knots and it stays quite good in control. Just zip it open, push it to the front and it’s probably covered at least half of the boat in the shade. And that’s important nowadays with this aggressive sun. 

Here on the stern, you can have a small little swing platform, what’s the same height of as the water. So very easy to access in and out with a ladder where you can put in quite easily. And the swim platform has different aspects, not only to use them as a swimming platform, but also to use it for stability. So when you go very fast, it has a deep V-shape underneath. It has also the ability to keep the boat very balanced and get a lot of comfort. 

The helm is the most important thing and it needs to be aerodynamic and very practical. So the straddle is easy to reach, the touchscreen as well and even easy to look. The depths are easy to control. And even the bow trust there is easy to operate. And when you have a drink, you just reach it here and you can charge everything inside as well. You can even put 220 or 110 in it. 

The experience of using this boat is insane. So I call it the wolf sheep closing, meaning it looks like a putt-putt boat, but it is a go-kart, a race cart on the water. It sticks to the water when you turn so fast that even the black fender can touch the water.

The steering wheel is very unusual. For Dutch boats, it is usual, but for any other, I think international boat brands, it’s not usual. When you go fast, this is the way how you keep yourself balanced. When you would like to go quickly to the right or you would like to go backwards, you just turn it with one finger. And that’s so easy to operate. It is unusual. It is maybe traditional, but it is super practical. A typical center console boat, you sit with people in the back and this boat you are as the captain, you are part of the social parts. So you got six friends on the one side, six friends on the other side, two people on the back, fridge in the front where people can get a lot of drinks. There’s 200 liters of drinks in the fridge. You can operate it by the way, from your telephone. Two hours before you know you would like to go boating, you put the fridge on and all your beers are cold. When you have a group of 10 people and you have this completely full, this table, it’s quite easy to get your beer still out by just shifting the whole fridge out like this.

In the front section of the boat, underneath here, there are two things to point out. One is the sleeping area. You can make a massive bed. And the second thing is the toilet or the head. It’s practical for everyone to use. There are two different layouts of this boat. You’ve got the cabin version with and without anchor, and you have the open version, meaning you have the seats all around. When you take this cabin out, you can fit up to 25 people and 16 people on the ocean. And the reason why is because she’s so stable. 

What you can see here is the bow, and that’s the secret for us. It’s super stable. So you cut through the waves quite easily. It’s quite high compared for such a small boat. So you don’t get wet that easy. Here, these two aluminum plates, they are designed to, when you have a big wave to knock the wave down. The secret is basically underneath the boat. The speed, the 50 knots is what we can handle with big chop. It’s all about the race car underneath there. 

We have more than 200 boats in the water everywhere in the world. Not only Fort Lauderdale, but in Suriname, in Scandinavia, New York and Japan, they’re all over the place and it’s just phenomenal to see that the dream, the passion, what I took in my first boat is rolling out all over the world. Back home in Amsterdam, there are more than 30 people working there every day with a lot of passion. I love them all. They’re family for me. And we hope to build your dreamboats. Every boat’s custom built, so there’s no boats the same. If you have any questions, just reach out and we are here to help you.

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