There's a guy over in Carabelle who put 550 QSMs in a 45C and he was turning 28kts in the corner, 23ish at cruise, and burning what I burned at 19! BIG difference.
There's another guy over on the east coast who put the 660s in a 45C and got a corner speed right around 31kts. He said it was stable there but only ran there for sea trials; his normal cruise was in the 26-27kt range. Someone on the board here put a pair of 660 Cats in one of those boats too - I'm sure he'll pipe up here
So yeah, you can kick these boats up pretty good - my understanding is that they start having problems around the 30kt area, but do you
really want (need) to cruise there, and - can you afford the fuel?
BTW the guy I talked to who had this done did a
complete refit along with the repower (paint, interior, etc) and spent around $250k for the whole shooting match. He said about $130 of that was for the repower part.
When you think about it that's a hell of a deal. Spend under $500 total (including the acquisition cost of the boat) and get a boat that IMHO is every bit the boat of a $1.5m 42 Cabo!
I've been out in some of the newer stuff. They are nice but were I looking to blow in the 1.5million range I'd do the Hatt any day of the week instead. Stick the other million in T-bills or something similar and use the $50,000 in interest that kicks off to pay for the fuel, dockage, maintenance and insurance - your operating costs are paid forever and there's almost no depreciation!
Downsea in particular that keel is a BIG plus, and when you look at the financial aspect of it the only argument for the "new" one is that you just "gotta have" something that's "brand new" - and don't care about the economics.
