Enclosed Yachts

A fully enclosed yacht is a boat with an enclosed saloon and single-level living quarters below deck. Put a bridge deck on its top and you get a sportbridge yacht. Extending the bridge deck above the cockpit gives you a flybridge yacht.

Any addition to the superstructure makes the boat heavier (and more expensive), so enclosed yachts are a priori faster than flybridge yachts. The trade-off is less space for recreation and the lack of a high helm post with good visibility.

Enclosed yachts not only perform well but also look good with their sleek, streamlined profiles. They have much more to do with automotive design than multi-storey flybridge yachts. If you are a fan of fast luxury cars, you will probably love a yacht with a hardtop and enclosed saloon, which is sometimes referred to as a sedan yacht.

There is a vast choice of new and used hardtop motor yachts on itBoat.com. We offer the possibility to sell and buy hardtop motor yachts with cryptocurrencies. The buyer puts the money in crypto to the escrow account, and the seller gets the payment in fiat currency as soon as the deal is closed. If you are interested in buying or selling yachts in crypto, please contact us at [email protected] We accept all major cryptocurrencies including stablecoins.

How are enclosed motor yachts built?

After the first design sketches, naval architects build a computer model to see if it works in practice, often building a small-scale model to be tested in a test pool. The most common material for building a hardtop yacht is composite.  Composite hulls are easy to build and can be formed in complex shapes. Plastic boats are practical as they don't rust or corrode, although they still require regular cleaning and repainting. 

The modern process of building a composite boat hull follows the principle of a sandwich. First, the mold is sprayed with gelcoat, then a layer of fiber mats is laid down. The fiber mats are vacuum-infused with resin and laminated. Then comes the core foam material and another layer of fibers, and so on.

What types of engines are used on enclosed yachts?

There are all kinds of engine and drivetrain options for hardtop boats. Diesel engines are the most common choice for all yacht sizes and types because of their ease of maintenance, fuel efficiency, and good fuel range. Gas engines have great high-speed performance, but the trade-off is high fuel consumption and poor range, so this is mostly the option for smaller speedboats and offshore racers.

As for propulsion systems on hardtop yachts, shaft drives are most common on anything larger than 20 meters. Smaller boats can have pod drives, usually paired with joystick control for easy handling. Large sport yachts can be powered with Arneson surface drives or waterjet drives.