JEANNEAU 54: LUXURY AT HAND

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Jeanneau 54 has a determined personality but with different facets. It reveals itself as a family cruise boat with all the necessary features: comfort, easy manoeuvrability, great autonomyIt’s sufficient to see the deck to understand how designers have made a perfect separation between manoeuvring spaces and free surfaces for relax so that the two functions can be lived simultaneously. The cockpit is very wide, surrounded by two deep large seats and conceived to provide the helmsman with everything he needs without disturbing passengers.

At the end of the poop, a dashboard has been conceived to create an exclusive space on the sea level, with two lateral sunbeds and a platform equipped with a stepladder to reach the bathroom. During the navigation, the closed transom makes everything disappear through a high-tech system.

In the middle of the cockpit, a big table with closable sides includes a raft which can be dragged to the water – without raising it – by bringing it until the transom where the helmsman’s seat can be raised.

Interiors are very cozy and comfortable. They can have up to 5 cabins and different layouts, furniture, woods and fabrics.

The boat we saw at Cannes had a big fore cabin and two astern double ones; one with twin beds, the other one with a double bed. Each cabin had its own bathroom.

The shipbuilder proposes also a version with only two cabins, one on the bow the other one on the poop, with a wide open-space.

In all versions, except for that one with only two cabins, kitchen is located along the left side, with a beautiful working board separated from the lunch zone through a corridor between the central sofa’s seatback and the kitchen itself.

We have particularly appreciated the large stowage spaces, able to satisfy all needs under the dinette table.

The version with three cabins and three bathrooms is the best solution for six-eight people, thanks to its large rooms and stowage spaces.

The version with 5 cabins, on the contrary, is especially conceived for charter market, where the logics of the greatest efficiency is combined with a good comfort for short periods.

The boat has a topside made of a vacumm-seal laminated balsa sandwich and a monolite hull. The counter-mould is glued and laminated to the hull for a greater stability.

The deck is built through a particular injection process conceived by Jeanneau, called Prisma Process, which allows an excellent homogeneous distribution of resin without exaggerations. This way the deck is strong but lighter; it weight, in fact, is within 17 tons.

We tested the boat with a light wind, between 8-10 knots and a 110-per-cent-overlapping genoa. We registered a speed of 6 knots with a wind angle of 48 degrees. With a wind angle of 34 degrees, we were satisfied to realize that the lost speed was very low, about 5 knots.

When the wind decreased to 6 knots, we raised our Code 0 and we sailed at about 4 knots.

We used a Yanmar 75 HP engine which gave us a speed of 7.6 knots at 2,500 revolutions and 8.7 knots at 3,200 revolutions. As an alternative, you can use a 110 HP engine.