Sealine T47
A Sealine isn’t the first marque that springs to mind when considering a liveaboard – don’t they make small whizzy sports cruisers? Well, yes they do, but they also make boats like this.
INTERIOR
Unusually for a near-50ft boat, the Sealine T47 was conceived with a two-cabin layout. As a result, instead of the usual large master cabin and often a slightly pinched pair of guest cabins, the T47 came with two really big double cabins. In fact, it is the mid cabin rather than the bow cabin that is the master – rare in an aft-cockpit boat of this era. To make up for this, the crew cabin back under the cockpit was far larger than normally found sub 50ft (there’s even a washing machine down there). However, later on, Sealine relented and created a three-cabin version, but it did it without compromising the two existing cabins. Instead, the galley was moved from the lower deck to opposite the huge sofa in the saloon, making space for a small single cabin. On the outside, the aft cockpit is large and well sheltered and the flybridge is an easy stroll up wide steps. Up top, the double helm seat rotates through 90° to give a more sociable layout when not underway, and the aft seats drop flat to create sunloungers.
PERFORMANCE
Early boats got a pair of Volvo Penta’s TAMD 74P EDC 480hp engines that punched the top speed past 30 knots. Later boats got the current- generation D Series engines, in this case superefficient turbo-charged and aftercooled D9-500s with high-pressure injection, electronically managed to lower fuel consumption and emissions.
SEAKEEPING
Calm seas stopped the MBY team from really putting the T47 through its paces when we tested it in 2000, but it acquitted itself well in the standard high-speed wake-crossing challenge. What did stand out however, were very low noise levels at speed.