50ft Flybridge

Adaero

Well-Known Member
Joined
15 Apr 2003
Messages
190
Location
Devon, UK.
www.tulliana.adaero.co.uk
Before we start, yes I'm currently a raggie looking at possibly converting over to a mobo!!

I say the term raggie quite loosly because people like us are even shunned by most of the general raggie brigade as I currently own a multi. We have a 46ft catamaran which is also 25ft wide that we collected from Cape Town in 2008 and we are now in Croatia so with over 9000 miles under our belt we can honestly say we have sailed a fair bit. Our original plans of completing our Med tour followed by moving on the Carib has unfortunately taken a bit of a set back to due work commitments so a complete change could be on the cards.

Back to discussing the thread title. We have been out and had a look at a few 50ft Fly's namely the Sealine T50, Manhattan 50, Princess 50 and will hopefully complete the British line up by looking at the Phantom 50. Most of the time onboard it's just the two of us but we also get a number of guests so it has been decided (SWMBO) that we do need 3 cabins. My preference would be a mid 40's fly but after having so much space on the cat its very difficult find one with 3 cabins and decent internal space. As an example the owners cabin on our cat is 30ft long and 6ft wide with 6ft 5" headroom throughout so you can see her point.

I have a few questions that I need some help with: -
1. Engines. The majority of the boats we are looking at are 2005 to 2008 boats but the engines are quite varied. From Volvo we have seen D9's, D11's, D12's and from Cat we have also seen C12's. My question is, how does the servicing cost, running costs, availability of spares (especially in the Med) vary with these engines?

2. We are looking to continue our Med tour from Croatia so if we buy a UK boat we need to freight it but if we buy from the Adriatic our even anywhere in Italy we can move it ourselves. During our seach of this Med area a few other manufacturers have come to light such as the Azimut 50, Carnevali C160, Cranchi Atlantique and a couple others that I can't remember. How do these boats stack up against the British competition named above?

3. Inverters. I can't believe that none of the boats we have looked at use an inverter from the house batteries. We currently have a 2.5kw inverter on our Cat and if we want to boil an electric kettle, charge a laptop or swmbo's hairdryer we just turn on the inverter. It seems daft to have to start the genny just to do any of these simple tasks? We do have a genny on our cat but we only ever start it when we want the aircon or anything with a major amp draw.

Thanks
 
Sealine T50, Manhattan 50, Princess 50 Phantom 50.

I have a few questions that I need some help with: -
1. Engines. The majority of the boats we are looking at are 2005 to 2008 boats but the engines are quite varied. From Volvo we have seen D9's, D11's, D12's and from Cat we have also seen C12's. My question is, how does the servicing cost, running costs, availability of spares (especially in the Med) vary with these engines?

2. We are looking to continue our Med tour from Croatia so if we buy a UK boat we need to freight it but if we buy from the Adriatic our even anywhere in Italy we can move it ourselves. During our seach of this Med area a few other manufacturers have come to light such as the Azimut 50, Carnevali C160, Cranchi Atlantique and a couple others that I can't remember. How do these boats stack up against the British competition named above?

3. Inverters. I can't believe that none of the boats we have looked at use an inverter from the house batteries. We currently have a 2.5kw inverter on our Cat and if we want to boil an electric kettle, charge a laptop or swmbo's hairdryer we just turn on the inverter. It seems daft to have to start the genny just to do any of these simple tasks? We do have a genny on our cat but we only ever start it when we want the aircon or anything with a major amp draw.

Thanks

50 is quite a more able boat if the sea gets rough than a 40, so good choice imho. Imho the boats you mention are mostly good, and it's somewhat splitting hairs to try to choose between them. FWIW the ones at top of my list would be (in no partic order) the phantom, princess, carnevali and azimut. With the Carnevali, you're buying from a modest size italian yard and all manufacturer back up may well be in italian language only

Be careful with the sunseeker imho. Those built in last few years are fine, but some earlier ones like 2004-5-6 ish (along with some other but not all s/seekers at the timer) had lousy exhaust silencers and were plain noisy. Everyone can hear then coming into the marina. Must be awful onboard. I have been to sea on a hattan 56 and it was LOADS noisier than my Sq58, but I haven't been to sea on a 50. Anyway, I suggest you test drive it to check this point before buying

Ref engines I think all those are fine. Cat and Volvo spares avaiability in the Med is generally excellent (as is MAN and MTU too); parts in stock, loads of boats use them. I did 1000 hours with 2 sets of Volvo D12s and like them very much. Quiet, clean exhaust, fuel efficient, never let me down

Poster CMJ on here has Azimut 50 and finds it excellent and can give you details on it

Yes brit boats rarely have inverters standard. Dunno why. I agree with you they make sense; always seems daft to me to run a 2 litre diesel engine to charge your phone. Retrofitting an inverter is easy but also easy to cut corners. Beware the Med pre-season and in the summer: lots of cowboys open up shop as boat fixers and do appalling work. A badly fitted inverter is a fire hazard so use a firm you know or get references, and get them to sketch out their exact installation spec/plan beforehand, etc
 
Thanks for your replies guys and thanks for the invite to see your Phantom.

If anyone has any info on rough annual servicing costs on the engines mentioned or the other Italian boats it would be appreciated.
Cheers
 
Don'T know much but I do know that we just returned from a weekend on board our Absolute 41. Absolutely faultless, never had a boat, or been on a boat for that matter, so well put together & finished. Italy for me every time, but this is only my personal experience, of course.
 
Thanks for the info on the engine service rates.

The other boats I was trying to find out about specifically are the following if anyone can help:-
Azimut 50
Cranchi Atlantique 50
Carnelvali C160
Della Pasqua DC16
Intermare 50
Asmarine 50
Rafaelli 50
Astondoa
Ferretti 460

We had an Azimut beside us in the Marina last month which the Italian owner kindly showed us around but the rest of them, apart from Ferretti I've never really come across before.
 
Which will probably make them hard to sell on. I'd stick to the well know, mainstream manufacturers, personally.

My only thoughts were that we will be buying probably in the Aegean and possibly selling there again in years to come so why write them all off? I agree, if I was in the UK it would be better to stick to the big British 4 but Italian/Austrian/Croatian buyers in the Aegean possibly wouldn't value a Princess above an Azimut?
For the 7 less well know listed above (excluded Azimut and Ferretti) they are obviously selling boats so there must be something about them or do Italian's tend to always buy Italian products? As far as prices go they all seem to be pitched within 15% of each other when new (including the Brit 4) and the depreciation rate also seems comparable but there is no way of knowing how long all boats have been sat on the market for?
If there are any owners or brokers reading this that could throw some light on this I would be grateful.
 
I may be wrong, but I am not sure you will find much choice of this type of boat in the Aegean or Greece in general. Italy, Spain and SofF are their natural habitat.
 
I seatrialled a Carnevali C155 in 2002 what has become the C160 with bigger aft deck in 2005. That would be one of my favorite boats for build quality and fittings. A par above the rest. I would say it impressed me even better to a Ferretti which is usually quite top tier in this size and only a Uniesse or some smaller builder might do better.

Raffaelli has a very good seakeeping hull altough some fittings are not to par with Ferretti, and Azimut or Carnevali. They are in par with a Princess or Sealine though.
I think at this size you will be seeing the Compass Rose or Maestrale. The Maestrale is the better seaboat, altough the Compass Rose feels just as spacious apart the aft deck.

Now the Dellapasqua is such a good boat, pure old Ray Hunt deep vee below but some fittings leave to be desired if you like a lot of make up, but that is a boat which will leave others to shame in a sea.....
The Intermare is also a nice boat, altough there flybridge is a very sports design.

I am sure the others here can speak well of the British designs, tough my preffered by far would be the Fairline 50 Phantom....

ASMarine are build in UAE though the bigger ones are Italian design 76 feet plus, and the smaller are Colvic Sunquest/Sealord stuff John Benett design.
 
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I may be wrong, but I am not sure you will find much choice of this type of boat in the Aegean or Greece in general. Italy, Spain and SofF are their natural habitat.

Actually the second best market for Italian boats is Greece and in there they are more prone to the less known names. Rizzardi, Possillipo, Italcraft, Raffaelli, Carnevali, Dellapasqua, Ferretti (one of the big brands), Itama, all very good market share in Greece.

Surprisingly the Greeks always hate the major most known builders from whatever country they are....
 
Yup, as JFM hints, I love the Azimut 50. Ours has been a great boat and has done over 400 hours trouble free over the last three years - for me, nothing beats the looks of an Azimut and combined with the fit-out, I'd give it 10 out of 10 - (well 9.99 out of 10 if I consider the only minor let down are exposed screws in the door jambs - never noticed until mentioned on here once...anyway I'm sure all builders have the odd minor flaw).

Personally, I prefer to have something that isn't mainstream - i.e an Azimut in the UK. It's not all about buying something that will be the easiest to sell on (although obviously a sensible thing to consider) but I question whether that is actually the case - there'll always be someone out there (like me) who likes something a little different. Also the support I've had from our dealer (Clipper Marine) has been excellent despite that the builder is Italian and in Italy.

Anyway, it's all a matter of taste and opinion obviously!

The tables turn though if you're going to be in the Adriatic as the AZ50 will probably as common over there as an SQ58 (for example) is over here. I believe over 200 AZ50's have been made so far (PowerYachtBlog could confirm) and as ours is the only one in the UK I think, so there must be another 199 out there somewhere!

p.m. me if you want more details :)
 
Thanks very much PYB and CMJ for your feedback.

CMJ, I think we must be alike in some ways as I also appreciate being a bit different from the crowd and can see perfectly why you would buy an Az 50 in the UK. The AZ 50 next to me in our marina was a 2005 boat but it was immaculate in every way apart from quite high hours on the engines as he travelled from Italy to Croatia 3 times a year for his hols.

I have started to shorten my list down as the availability of some of the boats I have mentioned is short even in Italy and Croatia so that tends to make it difficult calculating a price. One Brit boat I didn't mention earlier that swmbo likes was the Pearl 50 but this also falls into this rocking horse s**t category.

I will continue my research and I’m sure I will be back with some more questions later.

On a point for point scoring basis at the moment the Phantom 50 does come out on top with some of the more obscure Italian designs following closely behind (marked purely from brochures, tests etc). I do though keep coming back to the Sealine T50 although it doesn’t score brilliantly on my rating system the amount of bang for your buck is considerable.

Round and round we go!!
 
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