Thoughts on Sea Ray Sedan Bridges

Visit the SeaRay forum on YF. Lots of threads on Sedan Bridges...

https://www.yachtforums.com/superyacht/sea-ray-yacht.59/

I have a 2009 52 sedan bridge and have owned it for 4 seasons now. We boat on Lake Michigan. We love the layout of the boat except for the master v berth. Not a huge issue because we only spend 4 to 5 days at time. We are both still working. The boat is extremely easy to captain and has terrific torque with my qsm 11 motors. I would consider this boat to be a middle of the road build to upper middle. The boat does well in anything under 4 from head sea to following. 2-3 beam will make it rocky. We know our limitations and make it work for us. It’s solid with no creaks or popping in any conditions. For the price point I’m very pleased with this boat.

The mid 2000s Sedan Bridges were good boats. The 52' is a pretty good seaboat, the master of the one I ran was aft not a V berth and had several steps into the head etc. But other than that had a good layout etc.

You could use the aft berth for master but that has the day head and smaller shower. There are only three steps from the galley to the 3 staterooms so it’s fairly level. The steps to the bridge are decent to climb up and down IMO.

The one I ran was around a 2005 and had 3 staterooms, I remember the day head being forward but honestly can't remember totally. I run so many different yachts a year.

Our 58SB is too new-to-us to know yet about ocean handling; we brought it up from Florida but stayed inside all the way.

That said... it's almost twice as heavy as our previous 42, and that one mostly did fine offshore. We got seriously beat up once on a northbound leg back in Spring 2020, but the boat itself was fine. Given that, I'd expect our current boat to be fine for conditions we're likely to encounter.

Our choice of 58SB was largely driven by the full-beam aft master, the most significant upgrade we were after compared to the previous boat with an island queen berth in the bow. The rest of the 58SB pretty much has all the other features we usually look for (stairs to bridge, aft-mounted helm, good side decks, etc.). Prices are inflated, just now, and we found several instances where prior owners should never have owned a boat. "Deferred maintenance" makes it sound like deliberate decision-making... whereas reality is often just plain ol' neglect and stupidity.

My take so far is that Sea Ray (ref their large boats) makes a pretty good Chevy. Typical boat systems: similar engines, ACs, heads, pumps, appliances, etc. that other similarly-positioned makers use. Pretty good documentation (even including a nifty Parts Manual), and pretty good customer support even for earlier models like ours. I'm coming to like our common-rail MAN diesels, even though they did cost an arm and a leg -- and a small boy, a mule, and good hunting dog -- to rehab after the POs neglectful ownership period.

-Chris

Lots of Sea Rays floating around with no particular issues. And there are pros/cons to cored/solid, anyway.

As I understand it from the layup schedule I have for our hull, our bottom is solid... and that suggests not all Sea Rays are laid up in the same way, some cored, some solid.

-Chris

Ok it was a LONG time ago when I took up fishing, sold the go fast boat and bought a 30 ft. Sea Ray bridge model. Buddy had purchased a 28 Bertram around the same time. Sea Ray was more stable. Bertram was far superior in a head sea. The Bertram had a feel of solidness the Sea Ray was always lacking. Sold it after 5 years and never considered another of the brand but hey that's just me and like I said a long time ago.

Hey Criss
Did you pick up your 58SD in south fl? By chance 2 ACs in the bridge?

Yep, near St. Pete. Turns out to be bordering on a "project boat" due to previous neglect, but it's all fixable as far as I can tell.

Only one bridge AC, 24K BTU, seems to be sufficient.

-Chris

O K, it could of been a SD I used to manage. Understood she was back on the market.
Those V8-900-CRMs are sweet runners. Just some oil leaks are a bear to fix.

Useful to know, and you might have some background info I could benefit from. See PM.

-Chris

I've had conversation with Sea Ray as I am interested in a 45 to 50-ft sedan bridge. The 480 Sedan Bridge always had a cored hull and had wood stringers until they switched to solid fiberglass stringers beginning 2001. Beginning 2005 the 500 and later 52 sedan bridges have solid fiberglass hulls. Also of note they started using the Cummins QSM 11s around 2002 after the Cat 3196's developed the well documented troubles.

It is not uncommon to see Sea Rays in the bahamas. I think that is some testimony of their sea worthiness. I don’t care what planing 50-60 footer it is you would always be wise to pick the weather when crossing. I especially like the 56.

The Layup on the 550-58 Sedan bridges is as follows in the doc below. Uses Cormat as a core material with is not wood/balsa, so has some "coring" but not wood based. This not the same as the Sundancers and earlier Dd"s that used balsa. We run on the Great Lakes as well, on a few occasions over 4'. Boat is very solid and the seakeeping is excellent. As to the overall quality I would agree with Chris' comment 100%.

Yes, that's the diagram you gave me almost a couple years ago (thanks for that!).

I think the diagram suggests the 550/58DB bottoms are solid, Cormat only topsides. Whereas early versions of the 56 (and other various models) maybe had cored bottom, too.

I don't know what "CM 2415" is, though.

-Chris