The smallest boats with a standing-height engine room?

Greetings,

When watching videos on motorboats and yachts, especially on the smaller ones, the engine space or engine room dimensions might not even get mentioned in the walk-in video, let alone shown. Same difference (or indifference..) with the specs sheets.

I might never be able to buy my "dream boat", but if I'd get that lucky, I'd want a semi- or displacement motorboat with two cabins (sleeping 2-4 persons), standing-height engine room, preferably IPS, or thruster joysticks (for easier handling), and having as low draft as possible, given the engine room height thing. And the boat itself ought to be as "small" as possible, to make it easier for two persons to handle.

The boat would be used mainly in the Scandinavian and Finnish archipelago and the Nordic lakes. And a speedboat I'm not looking for.

Since I haven't goat a "boating history", a professional captain / machinist would be hired for a considerable time to teach me . Before buying any boat I'd rent one and before that take extensive classes, perhaps buy RYA or some such outfit. The maintenance of the boat would be done by hired professionals.

Please consider this more like a theoretical question / general interest on the concept a of small boat having a proper engine room, rather than an opportunity to give me a shower of "answers" saying "why don't you start with a canoe, why the heck do you want an real engine room rather than a miserable, black hole under the deck" etc.

I hope to get some boat brands and specific model names as answers to this posting, if at all possible.

Thanks for any - especially relevant - input.



AC

Thanks, Capt J and Capt Ralph,

Funnily enough, rather soon after posting my question I bumped into a couple of videos on Nordhavn 59 Coastal Pilot.

Some specs of said vessel:

LOA 17.92 M
LWL: 50’10” / 15.49 M
Beam: 5.18 M
Draft: 5´0” / 1.52 M

On the first video, Introducing the Nordhavn 59 Coastal Pilot with Jim Leishman (a 30 min video) Jim Leishman, Owner/ vice president PAE speaks about the engine room of 59 CP, saying things like " (...) "Six foot plus standing room. You can walk upright on the outboard side of each engine. The engine room is [going to be] unrivaled, (…) it’s [going to be] a major selling point of this boat. (…) Fantastic ventilation… (…) This engine room will be more impressive than what we have in the 86, to be honest.”

The video can be found here: (The link below jumps directly to the engine room part)



Nordhavn 59 CP specs etc:

https://nordhavn.com/models/n59cp/

A N59CP "Video update" (showing the engine room):



I was happy to see that a proper engine room on a non-gigantic boat is not an extinct species, yet.

And Capt Ralph, so right you are about the accursed trend re engine room size.

This paradigm of less engine room, more people room seems to be the curse of the automobile industry, too. People want more room for people, plus more luggage room in the boot - and as a result, I guess, they must build the car around the engine - that's the only way to fit it in...

Boating is supposed to be fun. And one is supposed to keep checking several things on the engine, repeatedly, to keep it in good health. I am not at my happiest fixing anything standing on my head in a dark, tight hole, or doing it while squatting, bent twice over like a contortionist, my cheek all the while caressing a red-hot engine...

P.S. I tried to place merely the links of the videos to my msg, but for some reason the actual videos appeared on the page. I wonder what went wrong.

AC

Capt Ralph,

Did a search on past threads on Nordhavn / PAE regarding "some new order/build issues". Read dozens of pages of testimonials, saw too many photographs of rather unbeliavable installations via links provided within the threads.

What should I say..? A negative Wow or OMG come readily to mind. But beyond that?

Well, I don't want to poison anyone's mind against any company, but I sincerely feel anybody thinking of commissioning a yacht from Nordhavn / PAE absolutely should meticulously go through those posts and links and all additional data available. That's just due diligence.

Of course, people should do similar "problem/issue" discussion and web searches on whichever company they consider ordering a yacht from. Early on.

Companies that have no skeletons in the cupboard are just happy if a potential customer is profoundly interested in their history, in their past milestones, in the quality of their products at its best and worst.

And if one as a customer is not interested in due diligence, then it probably pays off to get an expensive lawyer and a cheap boat...

Thanks, Tim! Will absolutely have a look at Bavarias.

Hals und Beinbruch ,

AC

Rusty (et al.),

It is so nice to get comments and answers from people who know boats, and share similar interests.

And who have done both boat and soul searching...

And fwiw, I enjoy Yachtforums immensely, because one can be a n00b, uninformed etc, but here nobody puts you down just to show how experienced, ”important” or knowledgeable in the world of wet element vessels they are

AC / mk