Advice on short-handing 27m Leopard

Yes, you can run those motors at 1000 rpms and then run them at cruise 1/2 an hour every 4-6 hours and they should be ok. I second Olderboaters comment, if the Leapord has jet drives, forget running them at 1000 rpms, jets are horrible in-efficient and moving the boat at anything much slower than the normal cruise speed they're designed for. Arnesons OTOH generally are not, however Arnesons tend to be very spendy to maintain the drives. Arnesons are pretty efficient at hull speed, and cruise. Yes, it can be handled by a couple, but keep in mind both Arneson boats and jet boats are very difficult to dock and your line handler has to be good. It's a size that will really tax a couple keeping up with it.

Surface Drives = Arnesons (Arneson is the major manufacturer but there are other brands).

With surface drives you can do hull speed and efficiently, however they're hard on the motors at hull speed on most yachts with them usually because you see much higher load factors because they're swinging a very big propellor and it's completely submerged at hull speed, because the drive is designed so only half of the propellor is in the water at fast speeds and the other half is not submerged. So typically you're using half of the propellor for top speed/rpms. Generally, most of these yachts have to be run at cruise speed to stay on plane, below that like if cruise is 2000rpms and you drop down to 1850 rpms, many of them will gradually slow down and slow down over several minutes and then fall off of plane. Depending on the boat/hull if you drop below 27 knots +/- they fall off of plane....some of the new hulls can stay on plane at 20-24 knots. They don't have any propellors under the hull to provide stern lift, they rely on mostly hull speed to keep the boat on plane. The boats are very efficient when running. I worked out the numbers on a 59' Baia I manage and at cruise and top speed we're seeing less than 1% prop slip. Problem is you have to run the old girl 90% load to keep her at 27 knots.

But it's kind of like using a Ferrari as a daily driver. Arneson boats are fun to run and fast. But expensive to maintain and can be maintanence heavy and headaches. For example if you don't work the drives up and down and turn the steering from side to side every week or two, growth causes the seals to leak and then the boat needs to be hauled and they need to be replaced. If the props have a few barnacles on them, they won't get on plane on most of them.

Quite honestly, if you're looking in Europe and that's the type of boat you're looking for. You can find big Sunseeker Predators with traditional drives for much less money and a better boat......look at 2005-2008 Sunseeker Predators 74-85' or even the 70'+ Manhattans and 75'/82' Sunseeker yacht if you want a flybridge boat.....the predators are priced well under $1 mill, and the Manhattans around $1 mill. They're great sea boats and a lot less headache than an Italian built Arneson boat.

That's because the lower salon is a COMPLETE waste of space and time. We have galley down and lower salon and upper salon on the 62' Predator I manage and between 2 owners and 4 years, it was used exactly once. It's like being in a cave and nobody ever wants to sit down there, and I mean ever.

There are a ton of Sunseekers for sale in Europe if you expand your search beyond france. The reason the Leapords are cheap is because they're expensive to maintain between the drives and everything.

The new owners cook on the boat once in a while and they never use the lower salon either.....it has a nice sized table, settee, could easily sit 8 people, it's not a tight area.....but NOBODY uses it. You can't see out of the boat at all, and feels like you're in a cave.....