Australia-based Riviera Yachts is known state­side for its line of convertibles, but the builder made a big splash at last year’s Fort Lauderdale Internation­al Boat Show with a two-stateroom, 36 foot express. Now, to appeal to those with bigger families—or more friends— Riviera has upped the ante with the three-stateroom 4700 SportYacht.

The 47-footer takes her kin’s concept of one-level living and expands it. The resulting flexibility of the saloon-helm area is outstanding: Aft, a glass and stainless steel door folds away, and the bulkhead’s expanse of glass flips up and latches firmly into place to the hardtop. Both the sunroof and side windows electrically open to complete the alfresco transformation, allowing those sitting at the saloon’s C-shape set­tee—or in the galley directly’ opposite it—to enjoy the breeze and communi­cate easily with guests in the cockpit. The saloon is also great for movie nights, courtesy of a standard 26-inch LCD TV and Bose Lifestyle stereo sys­tem. And if it gets too hot, just close up the saloon and turn on the standard 24,000-Btu Cruisair air conditioning.

Like the saloon, the cockpit is meant for entertaining. The teak dining table seats six comfortably; lower it via two gas-assisted Besenzoni pedestals and add cushions, and it becomes a two-person sunpad. A wet bar with refrigerator and ice maker are just to port and forward of the settee, while an optional extendable awning can shade the entire cockpit.

To free up space in the cockpit, the standard electric barbecue is transom- mounted and opens aft, so the chef stands on the port side of the swim plat­form when grilling. But because the forward few feet of the platform is fixed, guests can still access the centerline ten­der garage via an electrically activated hatch (where the standard ten-foot Zo­diac RIB is stowed) and use the swim platform, which lowers hydraulically. Standard power on the 4700 is twin 567-hp Caterpillar C7 ACERT diesel in­boards, with the option of twin 715-hp Cat Cl2s.

When introduc­ing the 57 Su­per Sport five years ago, the big news at Oc­ean Yachts was her innovative hull con­figuration. In the pursuit of better effi­ciency and course tracking and a gen­tler ride in rough seas, naval architect David Martin configured her running bottom with some innovative twists.

Most notable, she has just a single pair of longitudinal strakes (not the usual two pairs), and the strakes aren’t paral­lel to the center line. Instead the sharp­ly down-angled strakes are farther a­part at the bow than at the stern, a fea­ture Martin introduced in order to im­prove lift and to straighten the flow of water into the props. Combined with an exceptionally deep forefoot to soft­en the ride in heavy seas, the strakes help keep her dry while stabilizing the hull in slop and chop.

So successful was the hull form on the 57 that Ocean left it unchanged for the new 58 Super Sport. Post what has changed is a lot more than you might imagine possible with just an­other foot of length. For starters, her bridge clerk offers an unusual cen­ter-console-style helm station aft of a giant, wraparound settee that should seat at least eight big guys comforta­bly. And her cockpit has been en­larged and fitted with a mezzanine seat that offers guests a great up- close view of the fishing action or just a relaxing place to hang out at day’s end.

In the saloon the 58 offers a big, U­ shape settee to port; it’s a better use of space than the L-shape seating area on the 57. And in that same vein, the galley sink and cooktop are farther forward, giving the 58 lots more floor and countertop space than the 57 of­fered. Opposite, the dining area is al­so larger, offering a full U-shape set­tee and dinette.

Perhaps the most significant changes in the layout are on the low­er deck. While the 57 had three state­rooms and three heads, including a full-beam master, the berths in the second and third staterooms were situated athwart ships; that are not the preferred orientation, especially for guests trying to sleep when the yacht is rolling. With careful allocation of her extra foot of lengths, the 58 offers a much improved three-stateroom, three-head layout.

The full-beam ma­ster is virtually unchanged, but there’s now a fore-peak VIP with a center-line berth, while in the third stateroom there’s a pair of twin berths facing fore and aft. Lots of im­provements from just one more foot of length.

Sunseeker’s latest 37M Trideck Yacht, all 121 feet and 180 tons of her. This is a yacht with  four big en suite guest cabins, an improbably large, full-beam owner’s suite, and an upper lounge/bar that seems almost as generously proportioned as the main saloon below. The sheer quantity of internal volume available for the accommodation seems to be the result of some cunning sleight of hand, as if it has been borrowed from a bigger boat.

Although there has been some clever lateral thinking, the idea has come not from bigger boats, but from the smaller sport cruisers that have been Sunseeker’s stock in trade for decades. At a stroke, simply raising the foredeck has given the owner’s suite the best of both worlds: the width of the yacht‘s full beam, combined with the light and window area of the main deck. In spite of first impressions from outside, the fore­deck slopes upward from the bow to the wheelhouse windows and is reached from each side deck via a set of steps just for­ward of midships.

Not content with that, the designers then took the idea upstairs and stretched the upper lounge and its attendant “balcony” across the full beam, too, giving the upper deck the sort of floor space you’d normally expect only on the main deck of a yacht this size.

Space: Like oxygen, you take it for granted until you find yourself without quite enough of it. Which is why on boats it’s the ultimate luxury—particularly boats designed with the charter market in mind. The Sunseeker 37M satisfies both RINA and MCA regulations, and with two doubles on the low­er deck plus two min en suites with fold-down Pullman berths, this is a yacht that can accommodate up to 12 guests. Even with the option of a full-beam VIP suite instead of the two doubles, she still sleeps ten.

But, with its restful scheme of cream and beige, walnut ve­neers, and solid -walnut journey, there is nowhere in the guest accommodation that feels at all cramped. The guest cabins be­low are arranged symmetrically around a central lobby, which is reached down a spiral staircase on the starboard side, and each has an unusually spacious head and plenty of stowage. The crew quarters, three cabins with six berths plus a com­fortable dinette and auxiliary galley, occupy the forward sec­tions, accessed via the main galley.

The piece de resistance, though, is the master suite in the bow, which you find down the starboard corridor from the saloon, past the day heads. Here you enter full-beans territory, with huge superstructure windows that flood the space with light. The bed is offset slightly to port, making way for a pair of free­standing armchairs and a coffee table. The walk-in wardrobe on the port side forward does, for once, fully deserve that description, while the MSD and bidet have their own com­partment with a basin to starboard. Down four steps leading forward, you find yourself in a domestic-size bathroom, with a pair of sinks, a big shower on the port side, a bath to starboard, and plenty of floors between them.

In fact, deck area throughout the accommodations is always adequate or better, and no obvious compromises appear to have been forced on the design team. The main-deck saloon is a rational, light, and well-ordered space with squared-off sofas and chairs facing each other, a bar at the cockpit door, and the dining table amidships, close to the galley. This is just one of the tables onboard that can seat 12—there is another upstairs on the aft deck, partly shaded by the flying-bridge overhang, with its attendant lounge and bar. The cockpit, meanwhile, has seating for up to nine and a pair of coffee tables.

It is thanks largely to that dominating, split-level owner’s suite that the 37M has a world-heating interior. But for a marque as deeply rooted in offshore performance culture as Sunseeker, it was never going to be enough just to build a big, pointy yacht with plenty of internal volume. She had to per- form as well.

The hull shape is a typically Sunseeker deep-V, with a 20-de­gree deadrise at the transom and flat-top propeller tunnels to keep the shaft angle to a minimal 10 degrees. But there, in na­val architecture terms at least, the family resemblances cease. A yacht as large and heavy as this, with close to 1,000 hp between the smallest power option and the largest—there are three MTU engine options, from twin 2,335-hp V-12s to the 2,812-hp motors installed in this first boat—had to be de­signed for comfort and efficiency at speeds ranging from 12 knots for passage making all the way up to the high 20s. So as well as building in plenty of lift along the full length of the planning surfaces (dead rise amidships is a shade more than 20 degrees, and at the forefoot it’s just 30), key to the plan was putting the center of gravity far enough forward to eliminate any planning “hump” as the yacht gathered speed. The result, according to Ewen Foster of the Don Shead design office at Sunseeker, is “a non planning, hard-chine, planing hull. It just rises up and goes as speed increases. It’s more efficient and rolls less than a round-bilge hull, and it banks into turns— which is what people expect of a Sunseeker!”

Apart from Foster, who confesses to being “never satisfied,” the design and build teams are delighted with the perfor­mance of the 37M. During the 500-mile round-trip from the shipyard to the London Boat Show, the trials team recorded a best two-way average of more than 27 knots.

“We knew from the outset that this was never going to be a 30-knot boat,” adds Foster. He explains that so far over the model lifetime of the Sunseeker 105, the company has seen how much extra weight goes into a boat that has to satisfy var­ious new classification society rules for charter. There also seems to be more demand for increased fuel capacity and greater range. So with the 37M designed to fulfill both RINA and MCA requirements for large charter yachts, and with a bunker capacity of some 20 tons, her design displacement was calculated at 180 tons at half load—about double that of the 105. The initial estimate of top speed was around 24 knots with the largest engine option—a figure that everyone in­volved is now delighted to acknowledge as rather conservative. And while these 4000 Series MTUs are die largest engines that the machinery space has been designed to accommodate, the hull has been designed to cope with the extra power and speed of any future performance upgrade without modifica­tion.

The first 37M was sold off the drawing board—to Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan, who was also the launch cus­tomer of the 105—and the next two are already tinder con­struction. Build time is 40 weeks, and Sunseeker claims to have orders for three more.

The yard already seems to be looking further ahead. There’s talk of a 112-foot (34-meter), two-decker- but for that you might have to wait a little.

Heavy ground tackle makes for sound sleeping, but when it’s time to weigh anchor, it can be a pain unless you have a windlass to do the heavy lifting. Fortunately for our lower backs, there are windlasses sized to fit any boat and no reason not to have one aboard as an unpaid hand.

When properly installed, a windlass requires minimal maintenance.Here’s what you need to know.

First, rinse the windlass thoroughly after every voyage to wash off the salt, let it dry, and cover it. (Many anchor lockers are now equipped with the quick-connect-type freshwater connections for rinsing.) Use the windlass frequently to keep the innards lubricated; crank it over for a few turns at least every couple of weeks. If the windlass sits idle, the oil will drop off the internal gears, some of which are steel and prone to rust. Since the windlass is ex­posed to lots of salt spray, rain, and dampness from wet anchor rods, unpro­tected steel will soon be rusty steel. While you’re at it, manipulate any movable parts—clutches, brakes, chain stoppers, etc. “Use it or lose it” is applicable to windlasses, ton.

At the beginning of the season, disassemble, clean, and lubricate the windlass according to the directions in the manual. This doesn’t require major surgery, just basic field-snipping that anyone can do. Use the type of grease recommended by the manufacturer, being careful to keep friction clutches and brakes lobe-free. Repeat the process at lay-up or at no less than six-month in­tervals if you use your boat year-round.

Look around the fastenings for signs of leakage, which can lead to water intrusion into cored decks, an expensive and frustrating condition to repair. Check below decks as well, where water drips leave rust stains even on stainless steel fas­tenings. Misuse of the windlass, e.g., using it to absorb the strains of anchoring rather than transferring the rode to a mooring cleat (or nylon snubbed in the case of chain), can overstress the fastenings, break the bedding, and let water in. Don’t ignore leaks.

Inspect all electrical connections for problems. Connections should be clean, corrosion free (corrosion looks like the white deposits you often find on your car’s battery cables), and devoid of burned areas that can result from arcing. If nec­essary, remove the leads (shutoff the power first—there are a lot of amps here), clean the terminals and posts, and re­connect.

Coat the connec­tions with grease, and re-cov­er them with the boots. Look at the motor casing, too; it’s usually painted steel, and if the paint’s nicked, it’ll rust. Touch up the paint be­fore it gets worse.

Also, check the footswitch­es on the foredeck. The hinged caps should open and close easily and have a firm, tight fit for preventing accidental activations. Be­cause the rubber can be damaged by exposure to UV rays, the diaphragms on the switches should be doused with 303 Protectant or another UV shield. The switches can also be silicone-sealed around their edges. Finally, when you use the windlass, don’t make it do all the work. Motor toward the anchor so there’s minimal strain on the rode.

If the anchor doesn’t break out easily, belay the rode and pop it free with the engine, then use the windlass to lift it back aboard. Your windlass will last longer and be happier if you don’t overstress it.

Sometimes less is more, especially if doing less means doing it better. A case in point is the layout of Cheoy Lee’s 78 Sport Motoryacht. Rather than maximizing the number of guest staterooms, the sav­vy builder opted for just three. But each one is so generously proportioned that it’s like every stateroom is a master suite. All three extend full-beam, the master offering a king berths while the two guest suites offer queens. For extra privacy, the forward stateroom is accessed via its own stairway alongside the lower helm. Even the crew stateroom is exceptional; full-beam at the stern with upper and lower berths, a dinette, and a private head with separate shower.

On the main deck, the design phi­losophy seems to be just the opposite, offering a little something for every­one. Forward there’s a big country kitchen, while amidships there’s a for­mal dining area with a small wet bar adjoining a spacious seating area in the saloon. Alfresco devotees can choose between a dinette on the aft deck and an L-shape dining area on the flying bridge, near the hot tub. Another instance of less is more relates to ‘weight; the less a vessel weighs, the more speed she’ll deliver for a given power and fuel burn. The entire hull, deck, and superstructure arc cored with PVC foam, and key areas of her structure are reinforced with biaxial and triaxial laminates.

Resin infusion ensures an optimum resin-to-glass ratio and thereby a good strength-to-weight ratio. Amenities aside, it’s performance that’s key in a sport yacht, and the 78 builds on a long-established reputa­tion for offering a good turn of speed and a soft ride, thanks to a deep forefoot and fine entry coupled with a moderate dead rise aft. Partial propeller pockets improve propulsive efficiency while cutting draft to less than 5/2 feet. Twin 1,000-hp Caterpil­lar C18s are standard, but Hull No. I is being fitted with optional 1,400-hp Caterpillar 3412Es that will reported­ly boost top and cruise speeds to 26 and 23 knots, respectively.