Maritimo S48: Review

When you've trolled the coast, port hopped to Port Douglas, punched your way through foul weather and now seek real comfort in a low-stress luxury cruiser, it's time to jump ship to an S-Series. That, says Maritimo, is what more and more people are doing in this just-add-water age of pleasure boating on familiar waterways.

OVERVIEW
- The S-Series for luxury boating with family and friends
Maritimo has carved its niche among the long-range motoryacht clique. But its S-Series recognises that boat owners are increasingly shopping for single-level craft. For these social ‘boaterflies’, Maritimo provides the same platform and attributes of its M-Series but without the bulk of the flying bridge. The so-called S-Series iterations are available in 43, 48, 50, 58 and perhaps bigger models before too long.

Naturally, given the ageing Baby Boomer demographic, the S-Series is gaining momentum. Retirees who just want to gad about their favourite waterway with the extended family are keen customers. The lack of bridge height increases the boat’s appeal in places like the Gold Coast canal estates. And ageing boaters are walking away from stairwells for physical reasons, we’re told.

This brings us to the latest S Series, the S48, which is based on the M48 that we have tested in detail here in our Maritimo M48 review. The M48 debuted at the 2015 Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show, as the 400th Maritimo built by the company in its nine-year history, while this S48 was splashed at the subsequent Sydney boat show several months’ later.

You can transpose a lot of what we said in our thorough M48 test and apply it to this S48. The big selling points still include full-beam stateroom and safe walkaround decks. But there are some major changes besides the obvious lack of flying bridge. These include:

It is with these things in mind that we ventured offshore to see how the S48 performed with a pair of 600hp Cummins QSC-8.3 diesel engines and a Cummins joystick docking system among the upgrades. We then grabbed one of the new courtesy moorings off Balmoral and imagined our S-Series soiree.

PRICE AND EQUIPMENT
- Cummins or Volvo, optional Miele packages, Wenge timber and more
From a base price of about $1.26 million with a pair of 670hp Volvo D11s, our test boat was priced around $1.35 million with the 600hp Cummins QSC 8.3 engines and options as a special boat-show package.

The major upgrades were: cockpit table, teak-topped extended hydraulic swim platform, $22k Garmin electronics package, Miele appliance upgrade including bigger galley island servery for the dishwasher; and stunning high-gloss Wenge interior.

Our test boat had the standard Euro transom with just a short integrated swim platform in the photos — Maritimo developed and added their trademark extended hydraulic platform to this boat after our test. That platform doubles this boat’s waterfront real estate and is a must-have.

While the twin 600hp Cummins 8.3s in our test boat gave a top speed of 29.0 knots, the top spec 725hp Volvo D11s on S48 #1 in Europe return 33.35 knots, according to Maritimo data, but the S48 now comes standard with the de-rated 670hp Volvo D11s for 32 knots top speed, an extra three knots over these 600hp Cummins.

Sold through SBM Maritimo in Sydney, which knows a trick or two, our test boat also had a cockpit barbecue, electric sunroof, sliding saloon windows, icemaker, Bose Lifestyle 535 entertainment system, extra televisions, lighting upgrade including underwater lights, interior furnishing upgrades, and the Cummins thrusters and joystick for docking this boat outside a waterfront home in Brisbane Water, where the tide fairly rips through.

Bottom line is the boat is priced right while offering a lot of benefits of bigger Maritimos.

"We spent a great deal of time and effort talking to owners and
prospective owners and taking onboard what they wanted and what worked
the best," says Maritimo Sales and Marketing Manager Greg Haines.

LAYOUT AND ACCOMMODATION
- On the one level for greater intimacy and easier entertaining
As with the M48, there are transom layout options on the S48 to cater for various boating styles: the Euro transom comes standard with an aft-facing inbuilt amenities centre, a transom lounge in the cockpit, and push-button electric lift cockpit floor to a giant lazarette that can be used as a tender and watertoy garage.

But you can have an optional fish-boat transom, which has been fitted to a number of M48s, with the extended cockpit, island live-bait tank, toe kicks and bolsters, infloor kill tanks, and single transom door. With some drop-in rails and a cutting board on the transom, you could create a great Kiwi-style sedan fisher like the Salthouse Corsair. Maritimo has a new NZ dealership y’know.

There are also options for a third-cabin utility room in place of the standard single-bunk arrangement fitted to this test boat. Fact is, pretty much every Maritimo is a semi-custom bespoke cruiser created to owner specs these days. It’s pretty much a case of pick your boating style and choose your layout to suit.

This boat’s owners appear to carry a simply lightweight tender on the swim platform for accessing beaches at their preferred anchorages, rather than worry about craning a tender from the lazarette. It is used for storing watertoys, inflatable SUPS and suchlike instead. There’s a pile of room in there for these things, dive gear, fishing gear and more.

The aft-facing transom amenities centre had a top-loading fridge and barbecue to cater for your weekend.  Steps lead up to the cockpit where, besides the transom lounge, the owners had added lose teak chairs to provide shaded seating back under the extended hardtop.

The extended cockpit table is a great addition for staging those long summer lunches. You could easily add a Euro awning for shade back to the rear lounge and shade cloth awnings for hot climates like Queensland.

The beefy stainless steel deck, gear, cockpit side lockers for ropes and fenders, cockpit joystick station for short-handed docking, wide walkaround decks, and step-up flat foredeck add to the outdoor utility. The Muir windlass is recessed with an integrated anchor and deck wash.

But it's the flowing nature of the cockpit and bi-fold saloon doors integrating the aft galley that create a focal point on this high-volume entertainer. With the galley flipped across to port, the starboard lounge extends further aft than on the M48 sister ship, so that’s a win, too.

The lounge behind the helm seat faces the portside forward dinette and L-shaped lounge opposite, thereby encouraging social discourse when cruising indoors. At anchor you also have that forward dinette for formal dinners or family TV and movie moments.

Yet get a very decent wetbar with icemaker, cabinetry and servery, that doubles as a charging centre, back near the saloon doors. Galley food-prep space is enhanced by the bigger stone island servery with drip lip (small fiddle). With this kind of boat, that transom amenities centre with fridge and inbuilt barbecue will be a popular hub.

The galley had the Miele package valued at $12,300 including dishwasher, upright two-door fridge and freezer, four-burner cooktop, and convection microwave oven and grill. There’s the popular pullout pantry, a nice suite of drawers and Amtico vinyl flooring so you can come inside après swim or serve party food without worrying about soiling carpet.

With the high-gloss Wenge timber upgrade and all the natural light and air pouring inside, it’s a very nice ambience. We saw the lighting plan at night at the Sydney boat show and it was very pretty.

The generator with water splitter purrs along in a unobtrusive manner when, say, running the cooking appliances, the air-con, and the AC gear, even from the master cabin where we listened for genset noise to comment on this very thing.

Meantime, the sense of space and headroom in this chunky boat extends is really felt in the accommodation plan, the three cabins and two bathrooms, including the full-beam master with offset island queen bed. Opening portlights provide natural ventilation, there’s excellent storage in hanging spaces, under-mattress holds, chest of drawers, and shelves, while floor space is maximised.

Maritimo has made an effort to provide more floor space in the VIP cabin forward and around the toilets for larger folk. The third cabin had a single bed and will probably serve as a storage room, especially as you can option this boat with a pullout double bed in the saloon that would be more comfortable.  More detail on the accommodation plan in our previous Maritimo M48 review.

HULL AND ENGINEERING
- Serious cruising legs and a social lower helm station
The hull (based on the previous 470) hasn’t the common low second chine seen on Maritimo motoryachts, but it kicks out higher up the hull sides to really maximise its volume. This means you shouldn’t get too much chine slap on the anchor, so we expect this to be a nice sleeping boat.

A fully moulded liner simplifies construction and runs from the engine room through to the master cabin. It’s fully glassed in to create a one-piece hull structure. The technology is patented, we’re told. At sea, the boat felt like it was a one-piece monocoque structure. Bill Barry-Cotter knows a thing or two about boat building and strong race-boat construction.

The engine room is accessed via the usual cockpit floor hatch. We noted typically expansive servicing room around the six-cylinder Cummins QSC-8.3s and a very simple layout. The boat has GRP wing tanks with sight gauges, fuel filters back aft, a proven ventilation system with washable membranes, easy access strainers and, well, that’s about it in these simple-to-use Maritimo boats.

Power comes from an 11kW Onan genset and 1600W/50A inverter/charger. The inverter does fridges, AV outlets for charging, and TVs when in silent mode on the anchor in a quiet bay at night.

ON THE WATER
- Slippery cruiser, dry with good vision, and nice and cruisy
Fired up, the boat performed very smoothly and quietly underway and on the generator. In fact, it’s one of the quietest Maritimos we’ve driven from down below. Usually we’re in the flybridge roaring along. But on a social cruising sedan like this, keeping cruising noise levels low is imperative.

With 3200lt of fuel and 600lt of water, the S48 is a long-range cruising sedan. You’re looking at 485nm range in the modest 18-knot cruising groove and 430nm up to 23-24 knots. The boat just slips up to plane speed and will give you more than 500nm range at 14-15 knots, not that anyone really travels at those speeds for any length of time.

But the important point to note is the broad range of efficient speeds from 14 knots for heavy weather through to 26-27 knots for 420nm range, which is 300rpm off WOT of 3000rpm and 28-29 knots. Across these speeds, the S48 travelled with a level running attitude thanks to the low shaft angles and flat run of the hull back aft, where there’s loads of lift and load-carrying ability for a cockpit with some seated folk.

As touched on, this level attitude and the low noise are what you want in a sedan. The deep windows add to your connection with the ocean road or busy harbour, while the opening windows and electric roof keep you ventilated. The single helm seat is a compromise, but the L-shaped lounge opposite is okay for crew. With some cushions for support, they can prop themselves up against the galley servery, legs outstretched, while facing forward as is desirable on long runs.

Other times, you can just leave the saloon doors open and have a fair old gaggle of family and friends sharing drinks and nattering as you cruise for views at a safe speed (maybe 8 knots) before dropping the hook. This is how the S48 is designed to operate, gadding about your favourite waterway. The M48 is more your enclosed bridge coastal cruiser, with the side-by-side helm seats, autopilot on, and feet on the dash en route to the Whitsundays. The range is the same, it’s more about user intent.

VERDICT
- Pick your boating style and choose your layout
Having tested the M48 in depth, which replaced the original Maritimo 48 that accounted for 108 builds, we were left asking: is this S48 better?

We’re thinking this iteration might be a hotter boat in Europe and, indeed, the S48 #1 was displayed at Cannes boat show and is now bobbing in Monaco. For our test, Sydney Harbour proved a very nice cruising venue and the kind of busy waterway where you might well question the need for a flying bridge.

Since our test run, we’ve observed this S48 moored out the front of a waterfront home at Wagstaffe, Brisbane Water — you can’t miss it when you navigate inside — and we’ve shared the local anchorage at Maitland Bay with this boat doing lunches nearby.

Certainly, these Sydney owners appear very happy with the manageability and utility of their boat (last photo in the spread with this test), the shaft-drive operation, the bow and stern thrusters linked to a joystick, and the way the boat performs as a Sunday luncher it their wonderful part of the boating world.

It’s not so much a question which boat is best, but more a case of pick your boating style and choose your layout. For the extra $60k, plus some extra for the repeat electronics, we would add our flybridge penthouse in the sky to our Maritimo 48 platform.

Eventually, however, when the sea miles are behind us and we just want instant comfort at our favourite bolthole, rather than crashing through, we might join those heading back down to earth on an S-Series.

LIKES
>> Single-level cruising and socialising
>> Huge sub-cockpit storage for tender and watertoys
>> Full-beam stateroom is a big selling point
>> Long-range cruising performance
>> High volume 48-footer well-suited to today’s cruisers

NOT SO MUCH
>> Personal comment but not the sportiest lines in the Sedan class
>> Single helm seat is a compromise when serious long-range cruising
>> We would definitely add the hydraulic swim platform option
>> There’s not that much of a saving over the flybridge sister ship with its veritable penthouse in the sky

Specifications: Maritimo S48
Price as tested: About $1.4m with 600hp Cummins QSC8.3s and notable options including Bose sound system; Garmin electronics; Cummins Inboard Joystick by Glendinning (about $20K) and cockpit helm; teak swim platform; cockpit BBQ; lighting upgrade; furnishing upgrade; electric sunroof; Miele package; TV upgrade; Wenge timber; and more.
Base price: $1.26 million with 670hp Volvo Penta D11 engines and standard spec.

LOA: 15.27m
Overall Length ISO: 15.23m
Beam: 5.03m
Draft: 1.20m (max)
Weight: Around 19,000kg dry with standard Volvo D11 engines
Sleeping: 4+2
Fuel capacity: 3200lt
Water capacity: 600lt
Holding tank: 200lt
Engines: Twin 600hp Cummins QSC8.3 common-rail diesel inboard six-cylinder engines with shaft drives spinning five-blade props

Supplied by:
Maritimo Offshore,
15 Waterway Drive,
Coomera, Qld, 4209
Phone: (07) 5588 6000
Website: www.maritimo.com.au.