Sabreline 36 aft cabin real-world performance

TJ Sprocket · Jul 21, 2016

Lifelong sailor, racer, and cruiser looking to make the jump to power with wife, 2 kids, and boat dog. Been exploring the upper Chesapeake Bay for decades and looking forward to getting further afield with some more speed at our disposal. Flybridge is a must. Looked at many options but keep coming back to Sabre/EastBay and most recently was surprised to find the Sabreline 36 aft cabin surprisingly accommodating and quite nimble (on paper). The specs from Sabre for the 36 with Cat 3116s are as follows:
1600 rpm / 10.0 knots / 1.6 NMPG / 426 miles
2400 rpm / 20.6 knots / 1.4 NMPG / 384 miles
2884 rpm / 26.5 knots / 1.1 NMPG / 298 miles
These seem to be quite amazing numbers, achieving relatively high speeds at double the ~0.5 NMPG mileage seen on most twin engine vessels above displacement speed (the Sabreline 43 and 47 included).
My question for the group then is what speeds and mileage have owners actually seen in real world conditions?

O C Diver · Jul 22, 2016

Welcome to the forum! Moonstruck on here has a Sabre 42. It's an extremely nice boat! He has said that he gets around a mile per gallon in the upper 20s knots range. PM him and he should be able to give you more insight to these boats.

Ted

Bruce B · Jul 22, 2016

TJ Sprocket said:
Lifelong sailor, racer, and cruiser looking to make the jump to power with wife, 2 kids, and boat dog. Been exploring the upper Chesapeake Bay for decades and looking forward to getting further afield with some more speed at our disposal. Flybridge is a must. Looked at many options but keep coming back to Sabre/EastBay and most recently was surprised to find the Sabreline 36 aft cabin surprisingly accommodating and quite nimble (on paper). The specs from Sabre for the 36 with Cat 3116s are as follows:
1600 rpm / 10.0 knots / 1.6 NMPG / 426 miles
2400 rpm / 20.6 knots / 1.4 NMPG / 384 miles
2884 rpm / 26.5 knots / 1.1 NMPG / 298 miles
These seem to be quite amazing numbers, achieving relatively high speeds at double the ~0.5 NMPG mileage seen on most twin engine vessels above displacement speed (the Sabreline 43 and 47 included).
My question for the group then is what speeds and mileage have owners actually seen in real world conditions?

You might want to give Sabre a call and ask them. We own a Sabre sailboat and we've found that they are incredibly responsive to any and all questions. Great company, very nice boats!
Bruce

TJ Sprocket · Jul 22, 2016

Sabre have been great providing me with specs etc. on the older boats. Nearly bought Sabre sailboats a couple of times but always ended up going with something more race oriented when it came to it. Now, though, 8 knots max speed has become a little limiting, especially for our vacations on the water when we want to explore new places. I was hoping to get some input based on real world experience of owners about the Sabreline 36 specifically. I really like the Sabre 42 (Eastbay 43 very similar) and they go faster, but I (and my dog) find myself liking the larger flybridge, short steps vs long ladder, and accommodation layout of the aft cabin design. The Sabreline 43 is obviously more of everything but costs double to buy and burns twice as much fuel for the same speed as the 36, in theory.
Thanks!

DavidM · Jul 22, 2016

Those numbers are not only amazing, they are impossibly amazing.

At wot, 2884 rpm, the table shows that the boat goes 26.5 kts and gets 1.1 NM/gal. That is 24 gph or 12 gph per engine.

Looking at the attached Cat datasheet for the 3116, the lowest hp 2,800 rpm at wot engine is 300 and it burns 15.8 gph. The situation is worse if it is a higher hp 3116.

David

TJ Sprocket · Jul 22, 2016

David, thanks for the CAT data. The Sabre uses the 300 HP 3116 so with those numbers the boat data would look more like:
2800 rpm / 26.5 knots / 0.8 NMPG
2400 rpm / 20.6 knots / 1.1 NMPG
1600 rpm / 10.0 knots / 1.6 NMPG
Still pretty good, and still about half the fuel consumption of the 43 or 47. The question then is, does the boat really get to 20.6 knots at 2400 rpm?

DavidM · Jul 22, 2016

I can almost believe that 600 hp would push a 36' semi planing trawler to 26.5 kts. and 378 would cruise it at 20.6 kts. but not quite. It is a lot more credible than their mileage figures. Maybe 10% optimistic or even possible with limited fuel, no water, 2 people and no gear.

David

tugboat · Oct 13, 2016

I have a Sabreline 36 with the 3116 cats.
Loaded with 3 pob I do 16.5 kts at 2200 rpm.
Purchasing survey with fuel water and 5 pob we got 22.5 at 2800 rpm.
Boat pokes along nicely at 1100 rpm 9.5-10 kts.

RT Firefly · Oct 13, 2016

Greetings,
Mr./Ms. tugboat. Welcome aboard.

Marlinmike · Oct 14, 2016

There are differences with a brand new clean fairly light company test and that of a used loaded up with crap boat. Your mileage may vary.....

tugboat · Oct 16, 2016

We looked at four Sabre 36's before we made a bid on the one we have. Two with Detroit diesels had water in the fuel. A third with Detroit's, would not come up to speed during the engine survey, also had water in the fuel. Then we decided on a 1996 with Cat's and low engine hours. Surveyed well. We have been from the Chesapeake bay, out to Nantucket, and through the canals to Lake Champlain. No engine or drive train problems.
Good boat.

dach side · Oct 16, 2016

I had a 36' aft cabin with twin DD 250 hp engines. Cruised ~8 knots at 2 gph, wide open we could hit about 20 knots, but burned way more fuel. Never ran it long enough at WOT to gather accurate fuel burn. It never really got up on a flat plane however, so pushed a lot of water. Very nice boat with a great layout, solid construction.

Sabreline 36 aft cabin real-world performance

TJ Sprocket

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O C Diver

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Bruce B

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TJ Sprocket

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DavidM

Valued Technical Contributor

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