"Oh What a Beautiful Morning"

My Dad used to sing that song when the sun was shining and the birds were chirping and long before I, as a teenager who could sleep forever, was willing to lift my head off the pillow. Now I am the guy who gets up early and tries to get a head start on the day. Few people are up and on the water at 06:30 except of course the commercial guys who are out there at 04:00.

Today's "chamber of commerce" morning began a classic Maine summer day. Crystal clear skies, 65 degrees (warming to 80 degrees this afternoon) and calm seas. And lucky me, "had" to be out there with the brand spanking new Sabre 54 Fly Bridge Sedan and two of my associates from Sabre, Aaron Crawford and Glenn Campbell. In the helicopter was professional photographer Billy Black and his assistant Meagan.

Here is just a hint of what Billy shot. We'll have plenty more to show you in the days ahead so stay tuned please. By the way the boat is going 32 knots in these shots.

The crew agreed that if you have to go to work at 06:30 this is the place to go to work.

First 54 Fly Bridge is "on the ways"

If you are wondering what "on the ways" means it refers to the way ships were launched before the days of modern dry dock shipbuilding. The largest of ships slid down the ways and came crashing into the water. It certainly made launch day exciting.

Ship talk aside we are very excited about the upcoming launch of the Sabre 54 Fly Bridge. I will have some great shots of the boat here and on our main web site within 30 days. Meanwhile one of the questions which arises is how we would protect the occupants of the fly bridge from sun or weather. Depending on the market, tops run the gambit from a simple bimini top to a full hard top with heavy weight EZ 2 CY screens. Hull #1 is going with the latter and this very elegant hard top design was created by J+J Marine. Their design uses elegant stainless steel structures and a light weight FRP hard top.

 
We can't wait to see all of this fine craftsmanship coupled to the bridge of the Sabre 54. She is going to be sensational.

 

Sabre 54 Fly Bridge

Before I start talking about fly bridge stairs let me explain what has happened to the name of our new Fly Bridge boat. The American Boat and Yacht Council sets recommendations for yacht nomenclature and basically says we can call the boat by a number that represents to longest molded part, which in this case is the hull. When the 52 foot hull design was made we, for market competitiveness purposes, opted to call her a 52 footer. That's how long she is on deck. So here we are a few years down the line and 20 hulls later and we want to introduce anew model based on the same hull design and to avoid confusion we are opting to call her the 54 Fly Bridge Sedan because that's how long her hull actually is. So, if you are looking for the Sabre 52 fly bridge you will not find her.

A big topic on fly bridge boats is the method of getting people from the lower decks to the fly bridge. i.e. the stairs. I've seen far too many people quit boating or spend their days seated in the main salon simply because the stairs on many sport fishing convertibles, are too steep and un-people-friendly. So when it came time to design our stairs it was clear that a spiral was the only way to go and our engineers have come up with a beautiful piece of custom hardware for the task at hand.

 

 

So the answer to the question on how easy it is to scale these stairs is "very easy and very comfortable."