We've had 55 aboard a 63 MY. We were not underway and were tied to a dock. Swim platform was about 2 inches above the water. I wouldn't recommend it, and we now have a 25 person rule.
Wow... that's about 8,000 lbs (55 x 150 average). That would probably actually help as ballast down
low in the ER but spread over the boat ...........
Years ago I ferried about 30 people plus about a half a dozen cases of beer from Rariten Bay, NJ to
lower Manhattan a distance of about 25 miles or so on one of my 43 DC's. In retrospect I was nuts to do
it because often it gets snotty under the Verazano bridge but we made it OK without incident except that
all the beer was gone and all we had left were a few large trash bags of empty cans. Boat weight was
the same even with the empty cans but the contents were still on board, just distributed differently.
My most recent boat was a 1982 Series I 48' MY and I figured that it would be much more stable since
it was a larger boat but even with only about 20 people it seemed very unstable so I stopped taking
out large parties. Although according to formulas, those numbers should work I believe that it constitutes
overloading especially if too many folks decide to run over to one side or the other to see something.
Walt