New Boat Report: Yellowfin 54 Offshore
Yellowfin Yachts has a well-deserved reputation for building exceptional center consoles. During the waning days of 2020 the Sarasota, Florida, builder splashed its latest design — a 54-footer with a 15-foot beam and a deep-vee hull rated for up to 3,000 outboard ponies in quad or quintuple installations.
“We began looking at building a boat of this size seven or eight years ago at the request of several customers, but we put the project on hold to give the engine builders a chance to catch up with our plans,” Yellowfin president Wylie Nagler says.
The outboards available at the time were deemed incapable of pushing a 27,000-pound boat to the speeds Nagler was shooting to attain.
“The development of 400-plus-hp engines from Mercury and Yamaha made powering the new boat possible, and we moved ahead with the project,” Nagler says. “The 54 was designed with the same principles that have made Yellowfin famous, and hull No. 1 has exceeded our expectations for ride, performance and fuel economy.” (Mercury just unveiled its new 600-hp, V-12 Verado, which tips the scales at 1,260 pounds).
The boat rides Yellowfin’s proprietary twin-step hull and incorporates the latest construction techniques and materials. Powered by quad 425-hp Yamaha XTO outboards, it is capable of speeds in excess of 60 mph and has a 900-gallon fuel capacity. A generator is standard.
The helm has space for three 24-inch multifunction displays and four captains’ chairs with flip-up bolsters. A second row of seating is abaft helm seats. Beneath the console is an air-conditioned cabin with a queen-size berth, galley, wraparound seating and a head with a shower.
Forward of the console is a chaise lounge for three. In the bow are two forward-facing lounges with integral seat backs and an in-deck fishbox situated between them.
The cockpit has twin rigging stations with an aft-facing bench seat between them, tackle stowage and 150 gallons of live well capacity that can be configured as a single well or split in two for segregating baitfish. The 800-quart transverse fishbox in the cockpit sole will easily hold large catches. Rod holders festoon the gunwales. A dive door moves on a hinge-and-slide system, sliding aft and out of the way when open like the doors on a commercial jet.
The Yellowfin 54 is a semicustom boat, built to order with a variety of options, including hardtops and towers, a Seakeeper stabilizer and bow thrusters. Yellowfin says it has 17 orders for the boat. For more information, visit yellowfin.com.
