The World’s Largest Center Console: Hydra-Sports 53 Sueños
Hydra-Sports introduces the world’s biggest center console yet, a 53 footer.
We’ve seen some huge center console fishing boats introduced in the past few years, like the Boston Whaler 420 Outrage, the Everglades 435cc, the Sea Vee 430 Fisharound, and the Hydra-Sports 4200 Siesta. All of these boats break the 40-foot mark, all are arguably center consoles (though they all also have substantial cabins inside the console and under the deck), and all warrant the name “center console yacht,” instead of “center console fishing boat.” Yet no one’s come even close to the 50-foot mark with a center console. Until today—when Hydra-Sports launched their all-new 53 Sueños center console at the 2015 Miami International Boat Show.
Hydra-Sports launched their all-new 53 Suenos center console at the Miami Boat Show.
This is one whopper of a center console: 52’11” LOA, with a beam of 13’. You might notice that’s actually a rather svelte beam-to-length ratio, in comparison to most center consoles. Hydra-Sports' own 4200 Siesta has a beam of 12’2 even though it’s a solid 10’ shorter, and the Whaler 420 Outrage tapes at 13’0”. But that’s one of the ways Hydra-Sports maintains the expected zippy performance.
Another way? A rack of outboards a mile long. This boat can be rigged with quad Yamaha F350 four-strokes, quad Seven Marine 557 outboards, or a shocking quintuplet of Mercury 350 Verado horses. Do a little quick math and you’ll realize that with as much as 2,228 HP on the transom, this isn’t just the largest center console in existence, it’s also the most powerful. In fact, the max horsepower rating is officially "none."
Of course, with this kind of virtually unlimited power you’ll burn a lot of fuel. That’s why the Hydra-Sports 53 sets a third record, as the center console with the most fuel capacity ever, at 1,000 gallons. That’s almost twice the capacity of those 40-something “monster” center consoles.
Hydra-Sports manages zippy performance with a rack of powerful outboards.
Sueños means “dreams” in Spanish; Hydra-Sports calls the boat the HSC53 for short. And another thing needed for this 53 footer to perform as desired was a new hull lay-up; traditional lamination simply wouldn’t do. While the Hydra-Sports reps wouldn’t give away the exact lamination schedule, they did tell me there’s a mix of interplastic vinyl ester resin, Kevlar, Prisma and Megaform pre-forms, and orthotropic fiber reinforcements.
We couldn’t run the 53 just yet (It’s tough to test a boat at the boat show… especially when it’s stuck in the convention center), but we could see that the usual worries of poor visibility due to bowrise on a boat of this size are mitigated thanks to a raised helm-deck. And close-quarters maneuverability should be a piece of cake, since the HSC53 is rigged with joystick controls.
You’d expect the world’s largest center console to boast the world’s largest center console price tag—and it does—but the price of the Hydra-Sports 53 Sueños isn’t quite as shock-and-awesome big as you might guess. At $949,000 it’s only a couple hundred grand more than most of those 40-something center console yachts. And buying your dream boat for under a mil seems like a bargain—especially considering that this one is the largest center console fishing boat in the world.
You can check the Hydra-Sports web site for info, but as of this printing, they hadn’t yet released much information on the 53 Sueños.
News flash: The Hydrosports 53 just won an innovation award for best new center console fishing boat at the 2015 Miami Boat Show!
