what size of boat you can handle yourself with your wife ?

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pascalsunseeker

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I am the owner of a sunseeker predator 60 for 5 years and I want to upscale to 70 or 80 ft sportcruiser or flybridge, probably sportcruiser. we don t want to have extra staff onboard so we have to handle the boat ourselves. what s your opinion. our boat is in beaulieu sur mer SOF. greetings Pascal
 
I understand you completely.
Why spend your "hard earned" on a beautiful boat if you are going to hand it over to someone else to play with.
It HAS to be something that the two of you can manage.
After all, it is your home from home.

IMO - 70 feet is very doable (we manage our 67 easily).
I have thought about this very problem and the critical size seems to me to be about 75 feet.
It might be different on a sportcruiser - I've only thought about fly bridges.

I would keep the drive systems straightforward.
That means I would stick to shaft drives and thrusters.
Maybe have a third station (in the case of flybridges - perhaps a second station in the case of sportscruisers)
Definitely not controlled by positioning electronics or joysticks etc.

As you are probably aware stern berthing is about the most challenging for an "only two" crew.
Being able to communicate easily between each other makes things easier.
To this end, we have wireless headsets for those specific occasions.

Anyway, my point is "go for it".
Generally speaking, the bigger the boat, the easier it gets.
 
Agree with the sans crew concept
Prob 80 tops with two .
There's plenty of large "opens " like Lepard 22-24 ,s and Managusta 80,s
Very reasonable a lot of boat bang for your buck .
I guess for me it would depend on the home Berth -ease of manourver ,not in flat calm but windy too .Then I guess you could call for guy with a rib from the Capitaneries as back up if other than F 1-2 when docking .
somewhere like San Remo where the aisles are extra wide looks easy
About 1hr or so up the road heading E for you .
Then there's talking "HER" into the concept --prob the hard bit .
70 or so seen plenty with just two on .

What are you looking @ -if you don,t mind me asking ?

This may be just over ,a bit too big for a coupe
http://www.mondialbroker.com/Barca.aspx?pk=189f9865-81dc-41d2-a4c3-0bed19a999ec
 
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up to 80ft no problem for 2p's,

except for the maintenance and the cooking,
its a lot of boat space to keep clean,...

in summer we have crew; cooking / cleaning lady, and she is very bussy !
 
The real question is how willing and able is your wife to do the crewing duties, assuming you are doing the helming? We've owned boats for about 25yrs so my wife is a very able crew (although sometimes not so willing if I make a comment out of line:rolleyes:) but I've met other boat owners' wives who view crewing as incompatible with their nail polish. FWIW we handle a 63 foot Ferretti without too much drama and I think I'd be happy going up to a 70 footer. Much beyond that, then I think its a question of whether your wife is physically capable of lifting the bigger fenders and pulling the thicker ropes found on larger boats

Of course there is always the option of you doing the crewing whilst the wife drives the boat but I'm guessing that's wash your mouth out time for many on this forum;)
 
pascalsunseeker said:
I am the owner of a sunseeker predator 60 for 5 years and I want to upscale to 70 or 80 ft sportcruiser or flybridge, probably sportcruiser. we don t want to have extra staff onboard so we have to handle the boat ourselves. what s your opinion. our boat is in beaulieu sur mer SOF. greetings Pascal
Click to expand...

Define 'handle the boat ourselves'. Are you talking about (a) the boaty bit or (b) the cleaning, washing, cooking, fetching drinks bit?
 
As others have said the boat is nil issue, however I used to have a Squadron 65 and now a 58 and on boat get a crew person for the summer to wash, clean, cabins and so on. They are not expensive and make it a true holiday.

Re lines they do get bigger. Most marinas have normal sized bow lines, but some that take bigger boats ( Soller for example) have lines the size of your wrist with so much sag in them that you have to use the winch to even start to get them tight. Even pulling forwards, doing the lines and then winching the stern lines seems impossible given the scale of sag, and for that you do need arms like Popeye!
 
Thank you Hurricane for your comment. do you think a sportcruiser is easier then a FB ? A flybridge you have much more influance from wind when its windy and my opinion more difficult to manouver. A sportcruiser you have less influence from the wind but I think you have less overview behind the wheel. you speack about the driving system forward, do you mean arneson drives is a bad idea ? One of the options would be a pershing 70 but i heard the reverse is more difficult then shafts. this is my 4th boat 3 shaft driven + 1 IPS and no experience with arnesons. second station on the back of the boat I sure I want to do this and positioning controls as you mentioned I have no experience with that, just normal shaft with strong hydraulic trusters I think is the best. Do you think hydraulic trusters are strong enough if there is strong wind when berthing to keep the boat where you want ? ps : before this boat I ordered a new sunseeker predator 60 with IPS (5 years ago), this was a nightmare I sold the boat to Sunseeker again after 4 months boat was not stable rolling like hell !! and IPS driving was also a nightmare if you are used shaft drive. this operation of trading in a new boat costed me a lot of money...
 
pascalsunseeker said:
Thank you Hurricane for your comment. do you think a sportcruiser is easier then a FB ? A flybridge you have much more influance from wind when its windy and my opinion more difficult to manouver. A sportcruiser you have less influence from the wind but I think you have less overview behind the wheel. you speack about the driving system forward, do you mean arneson drives is a bad idea ? One of the options would be a pershing 70 but i heard the reverse is more difficult then shafts. this is my 4th boat 3 shaft driven + 1 IPS and no experience with arnesons. second station on the back of the boat I sure I want to do this and positioning controls as you mentioned I have no experience with that, just normal shaft with strong hydraulic trusters I think is the best. Do you think hydraulic trusters are strong enough if there is strong wind when berthing to keep the boat where you want ? ps : before this boat I ordered a new sunseeker predator 60 with IPS (5 years ago), this was a nightmare I sold the boat to Sunseeker again after 4 months boat was not stable rolling like hell !! and IPS driving was also a nightmare if you are used shaft drive. this operation of trading in a new boat costed me a lot of money...
Click to expand...

Sorry - can't answer most of the questions.
Windage is surely an issue - obviously more on an FB but also a significant consideration with a sportscruiser.
I have no experience with extra control stations - the two of us manage with just the FB and and the internal controls.
But on something a little bigger, an extra control station would be useful - one in the aft cockpit would make docking easier (quicker for the helmsman to help with the lines)
There are some on this forum who swear by the extra controls so worth considering.
I've no idea how Arnesons handle at low speeds.
We only have electric thrusters - hydraulic would be a great addition - I'm sure you could rely on them more than we can on our electric ones (we only get about 30 secs of thrust before the motors overheat).

Sorry - cant be more helpful.
 
hello Portofino, Normaly I would go for SS but today I'm looking into SS,Pershing or Riva. Some people told me that ferreti group give better discounts then SS. the link you sended I could not open and not see which boat you mean. greetings
 
indeed jrudge, 1 crew maybe we gone need, you're right even for the lines. my wife can handle lines, she does now but in case they are double the size this could be a problem greetings
 
But on something a little bigger, an extra control station would be useful - one in the aft cockpit would make docking easier (quicker for the helmsman to help with the lines)
Click to expand...
Exactly why I find the extra control station in my cockpit useful. Not only can I help with the lines as well as manouvre the boat but I use the engines to help pulling in the stern lines and thats best done from where you can see exactly whats going on
 
hello Petem, for cleaning exterior when on shore I have a local company who do this for me, inside we do ourselves with this size its not a problem, but as you say when boat gets bigger more cleaning more visitors,... grts
 
my wife steering would not be an option :) handle rope is ok but as you say they are probably much bigger then now so this is something we have to try that this is working. I want to do some sea trials this year and see what s happen. grts
 
Wife --they are about as interested in steering /docking a boat as we ( men ) were changing nappies and reading nursery rhymes feeding children .
You not gonna change that .
Generalising of courses but near a 98/2 split.
Hopefully the "2" reading this will not be offended -just saying it as I see it .
 
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