The real difference in sea worthiness of motor yachts

I actually quite enjoyed the geography lesson ... hope you learned something

I think I know your point but could you elaborate and explain your reasoning a bit, please.

Ordered a 590 for Fall 2021 delivery. The 550 is very similar. Wife believes the layout is unparalleled. I agree. I like the engine room space. Separately will have Dometic water maker and Spot Free system on rear engine room bulkhead so we have clean water everywhere and no limits for the Bahamas. Will run the east coast to Cape Cod from North Miami base, leaving before hurricane season. Just retired, mostly, so I have more time to be flexible. I think the key to ride and seaworthiness (for the conditions) is having a flexible schedule. Do not go if it is rough. No one wants to spend much time doing that, especially the ladies, even with a Seakeeper.
After looking for a couple of years & collecting info, I am comfortable with balsa cored the way Prestige does it with vacuum. I expect a quiet ride.
A bigger company can have the advantage of designs that are repeated and trued up. My boat will likely be around 45 hull number of 590’s. With the 550 and 560 predecessors, that knowledge adds experience vs. smaller manufacturers with short volume and having to amortize design over a few builds. I could have got v-drive shafts, but opted for the Cummins-Zeus because of added speed and anticipated safety. I figured my wife could better get back to me for a man over board situation if needed with Zeus. Also the breakaway of the Zeus adds some comfort, though have never dinged a prop with over 18,000 recreational miles. I expect Zeus to be more expensive for preventive & required maintenance, but it is relatively a small cost overall. It looks like the lower initial costs will net favorably, with depreciation, compared to higher initial cost choices over five years.
Since, I do not have the boat yet, my comments are heavy with speculation. There may be some of the commenters here who are speculating since they have not had experience running the Prestige boats. It does not mean we discount well thought out advice. Since Prestige is relatively new to the U.S. there is not a fan club. French built vs. U.S. built is a negative, but I have sold plenty of my stuff overseas, so fair is fair. U.S. built Cummins vs. Volvo, MAN and MTU is a plus to me.
Regarding the ride, how much time is actually spent cruising on a flybridge. It is a small percentage. The comments about insurance may be accurate, but I had no problem getting a quote after 20 years absence from boating. But I have a lot of experience and inland commercial experience from my early 20’s.
I will hire a captain for the first run to the Bahamas to get a feel for the best and most enjoyable areas to anchor. Dealer will give several days on the initial boat shakedown and familiarization with systems.
Good luck on whatever you decide. Just do it, if your finances allow it. Enjoy.

Tusindtak

Congratulations on your decision but is this the thread you intended your post for? Excellent post but not about comparative seaworthiness.

Do you intend to boat mostly ICW or do much cruising outside?

But the ride quality at 12 to 13 kts might be a lot better than on plane. For some people they are not driven by the economics or efficiencies that you point out. In the big picture the fuel bill is not going to cause them angst if there is so much else that they do enjoy about the experience.

Unrelated anecdotal case in point: With a tie in to private jet aviation, so maybe someone with more experience / knowledge in that space can comment. A friend of mine is a pilot for a client with a nice private jet. They do long haul trips, but also some shorter hops. The boss does not prioritize fuel economy; if they can get there fast at lower altitudes with the throttles in the corner burning quite a bit more fuel than climbing to the higher altitudes, he has no problem with this. At least this is what my pilot friend tells me over beers.

I'd take it a step further, one needs to look carefully at the performance curve of any boat they're considering. I look at nm/gal carefully and every engine/boat combination is different. As you move up in speed, the nm/gal will decrease but there are parts of the range where those decreases are smooth and other parts where they are major drop offs. The example you use has 1.2 nm/gal at 9.5 knots but only .5 at 11 knots. At 13 knots it may be .45 nm/gal and at 18 knots it may be .4 nm/gal. So from 18 knots to 11 knots the savings may be too small to justify but then the huge savings at 9.5 knots and I'd bet at 8 knots it would jump up above 2 nm/gal.

We have one boat that looking at nm/gal and going up the range goes 1.00, .71, .55, .36, .27, .24, .20, .18 so savings all across the curve as you slow but another that goes 0.79, 0.71, 0.69, 0.67, 0.66, 0.58 so from 17 knots to 37 knots it has only miniscule difference in fuel efficiency.

What Judy is describing are the fast trawlers......ie fleming.....Marlow....offshore.......etc. they simply won’t cruise any faster than 12-17 knots at 80% load due to hull design........on motoryacht it really depends on the hull as far as speed effects each ride.

As far as the prestige guy. There is nothing quiet about the ride of a prestige. I have put around 5,000 nm’s on various prestige’s. Everything creaks inside the boat as the entire (and bulkheads) are only glued to the boat with epoxy glue. Bonding system, well they don’t bond anything. And no, they haven’t learned or upgraded build quality from hull #1 to now. You get exactly what you pay for. They’re ok for the average weekend boater. But nothing is built to last on them. They’re a price point boat.

Your best bet will be chartering a yacht or two or three in this size with a captain for a week each.[/QUOTE]

This is the best advice anyone has given you. Think about where you want to cruise, go there and charter different boats. That way you will get a feel for them and learn first hand how you like that brand and model.

Olderboater:
Thank you for your thoughts and perspective. I did intend to post here because the OP specified he was looking at a Prestige.
To your question, I plan on running inside and out, depending on weather and if I want to take the scenic route at times. Flexibility of schedule is a big advantage to keeping in more pleasant sea conditions. By selecting timing, I don't see the Bahamas as too much of a challenge except for the stream crossing.
Per Capt J's comment, apparently now Prestige has bonding as indicated in the literature:
"Galvanic Isolator• Cathodic bonding system with dedicated anodes"
Thank you all for providing the forum and sharing your wisdom.

They've always had that as far as a galvanic isolator and anodes. However anything Saltwater passes through (ie seacocks, a/c strainer, a/c pump, thru hulls) is required to be bonded/connected to those anodes with a #8 green wire as per ABYC standards, they're not. Aside from bonding the engines, and a few items, none of the other stuff is bonded. All of the interior is glued together with no fasteners. Everything creaks in a very moderate sea (joinery work). Prestige loves to put the hydraulic swim platform pump and power pack under the crew bed, directly on top of the bilge pump, the only bilge pump that runs to the front of the engine room, when you get on plane water rushes back there and vibrates back there, so everything for the swim platform and all of the wiring for it gets corroded. Parts they usually don't stock and getting them usually takes 6 weeks. They don't barrier coat the bottom and leave bottom paint up to the dealer, who usually does the cheapest bottom job possible and it usually all peels off. They're usually noisy at the marina if there's a little tiny bit of wake action due to the chine just above the waterline and thin hull. They have good fuel economy, they don't have good fuel range. Ohhhh and they always have some mysterious fresh water leak due to a lot of unsupported fittings, so you run at cruise for a day in 2-3' seas and when you pull in, the freshwater tanks are empty and freshwater pumps running dry........I've had this happen on a few of them.

True in general, but you might be in for a pleasant surprise with your new boat, in this respect.
I can't be positive with that specific model, but large jet powered boats are known to be more efficient at high speed, albeit up to a point, obviously.
In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if you should experience nm/gal to remain stable - if not even slightly increasing - from the minimum planing speed all the way up to fast cruising.
I for one would be curious to hear about seatrials. No tentative dates yet?

Unless my memory fails me, they are not even glued - possibly aside from some specific points.
But that's by design: there are very good reasons for building boats with the inner moulds technique.
Crossing oceans just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Let's face it, folks: saying that a Hatteras can withstand a beating better than a Beneteau is pretty much stating the obvious, but so what?
We tend to forget too often that the name of the game for these boats is NOT offshore crab fishing in the Bering sea. It's boating for pleasure, fercrissake.
Everyone would rather be in awful conditions with a Hatt, or even better a Delta Marine and the likes, compared to any boat whose hull is akin to a yogurt pot. But 'fiuaskme, I'd rather put my efforts in avoiding awful conditions altogether, than get a boat that can withstand them better just for the sake of it, dragging around a lot of useless weight and consequently burning much more fuel.

I can't remember off the top of my head which pumps they fit - can you?
I don't think to have ever came across a pump that doesn't stop automatically after it can't build up pressure for a while, though.
Not in this millenium, anyway.

Search Yachtforums dot com and find stuff to read like this too:

https://www.yachtforums.com/threads/feedback-on-prestige-yachts.21288/

I'm not up to speed with new boat prices, but 3/4 of a million for a brand new 55 footer sounds hard to beat to me, even if of course you won't get Riva quality. The first owner of my identical size boat forked out 1.2M back in 2004, go figure...!
But as I said, I'm not following market prices anymore, so I'm happy to learn something new, if anyone is aware of a much better new boat of comparable size that can be bought for this kind of money.