Sessa Fly 54
- Mon, 1 Feb 2010
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| For: | Handling, low noise, large cockpit, good crew cabin, low-speed manoeuvring, saloon layout options, tidy engineering |
|---|---|
| Against: | Unyielding cockpit cushions, steep steps to flybridge, obscured engine gauges |
Sessa's first ever flybridge boat, the Fly 54, is pitched against some of the very best British and Italian names in the business. Yet looking at its dramatic styling and its sinuous black hull and superstructure, it's clear that Sessa did not draw their inspiration from other builders.
Instead they trod their own very distinctive path, and the Sessa Fly 54's innovative, bold styling is unlike any other flybridge boat we've seen from a mainstream builder. Inside and out, it again diverges from the 54ft norms, with an exceptionally large cockpit and bathing platform weighed against a smaller than average galley and a modest third cabin which obliges you to accept bunk beds. It offers a choice of saloon layouts - again unusual - one with a dinette, a second with a big bar in its place.
Powering their inaugural flybridge boat with Volvo's second-generation IPS was a bold move, too. Sessa's IPS-powered sportscruisers have won awards, and they are familiar with the benefits of tank testing, but they did not have a huge pool of existing IPS-friendly flybridge hull shapes and associated test data to draw upon; in fact they had none at all of their own.
Despite that, they've pulled it off brilliantly, conjuring up a sporty boat that handles well with no obvious vices, at least not in our calm test conditions in Varrazze, northern Italy.
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