The Sky Lounge option encloses the bridge at the cost of some open area on the boat deck. It also adds comfort for three- or four-season boating, and makes the bridge bona fide living space. But does it leave room for the hot tub?

There, and Back Again

The 80 Motor Yacht isn’t the top of the Hatteras line – that honor goes to the 100 Motor Yacht – but it’s still as much boat as most of us will ever need. Unlike many Mediterranean-style yachts this size, which stress sunbathing and dayboating as much as cruising, the Hatteras reflects American yachting lifestyles. It has lots of accommodations, a spacious galley, a large saloon and a cozy aft deck, but not many sunpads.

Built almost icebreaker-tough in the Hatteras Yachts style, it will be an ideal platform for venturing into areas less-traveled – maybe the Inside Passage to Alaska, or Canada’s northeastern provinces, or Orkney or the Shetlands. We’d cruise the 80 Motor Yacht as far as the 2,858 gallons (10,819 liters) of diesel would take us, and count on Hatteras’s high standards of construction and engineering to take us there and back again.

If you are thinking about long range cruising, the Hatteras 80 Motor Yacht can do it in more comfort than many trawler types, you'll just have to go slower. On the other hand, you'll have a large entertainment platform if more sedate yachting is what you have in mind. The Hatteras 80 can do both equally well.



The standard open-bridge layout has lots of seating, including an L-settee aft to port, a dinette and a fully equipped wet bar. There are double electric grills, too. The radar arch is polyurethane-coated aluminum.

Choice of Flybridges

The flybridge is where folks spend most of their time underway, and Hatteras offers three layout options. The two open arrangements are virtually the same, differing only in the presence of a hot tub in one.



The standard flybridge arrangement includes lots of seating, a dinette and bar. There’s room aft for a RIB; the hydraulic davit is standard.



Optional open flybridge layout with hot tub takes away the aft settee.

Some people like the flybridge so much, they prefer to live there. For them, Hatteras offers the Sky Lounge, an enclosed bridge that in essence is a second saloon. The joinery and décor are a little classier, and the amenities more numerous, including a 32” TV, stereo entertainment system and, of course, air conditioning.



The enclosed Sky Lounge option turns the flybridge into a second saloon, but robs a little from the boat deck to add an outdoor lounge. No hot tub, though.

Design and Construction

Rather than a deep-V (not necessary when the boat doesn’t jump over the waves), Hatteras designers drew a variable-deadrise bottom with a sharp entry forward and a convex bow for a comfortable ride. Moving aft, the deadrise flattens to almost zero at the transom; a flatter bottom offers less resistance for extra speed vs. horsepower, and adds stability, especially at rest or running at displacement speed. Carefully designed and positioned strakes enhance handling and tracking.



A hot tub on the flying bridge is optional. It does take up some room, though.

The first Hatteras yachts, built in the early days of fiberglass, were engineered by rule-of-thumb: if the crew couldn’t break them by smashing in and out of Hatteras Inlet in all kinds of weather, they were OK. Today, the company is more high-tech, but the boats are still as tough as any you’ll find. The 80 Motor Yacht rides on a solid fiberglass bottom with plenty of structural support in key areas. Divinycell coring is used in hull sides, decks and superstructure to maintain stiffness without adding weight. Hatteras uses no balsa coring.



Seating on the main deck includes a cozy area aft for alfresco dining or maybe enjoying a nightcap while watching the lights go out in the city.

Room for Everyone

Hatteras pulled out all stops when designing and styling the 80 Motor Yacht’s accommodations. The focal point of the main deck is a large saloon/dining area with easy access to and from the galley and an optional lower helm station. There are two basic layouts, not much different but for the addition of a bar in one.



Formal dining on the upper deck. This optional layout includes the bar aft, but otherwise it’s basically the same as standard. All the bells and whistles you’d expect in a boat of Hatteras’s quality (and cost) are here.



The standard main deck layout shows a roomy saloon that segues into a large galley with island forward. Ahead of that is a seating area, and room for an optional lower helm station.



The optional main deck layout reverses the seating and helm areas forward, and adds a bar counter in the starboard aft corner of the saloon. In both arrangements, the aft saloon doors open onto a cozy aft deck with seating.



The bar counter is part of the main saloon layout. Both layouts include a wet bar, icemaker and a home theater system.



Any first-class motoryacht’s galley includes better appliances and fittings than you probably have in your kitchen at home, but Hatteras also allows $10,000 for your choice of china, crystal and flatware. We like the island, too – you can’t have too much counter space.

To Helm, Or Not to Helm?

We’re happy to see that Hatteras considers the lower helm station an option. We think the room and utility picked up on the main deck without a helm there is well worth the compromise. Virtually all boats in this class will have either a flying bridge buttoned up with isinglass or an enclosed sky lounge with helm. This creates a great country kitchen area on the main deck. However, some yachtsmen will want the helm below as well so they can stay part of the action. It also makes boat handling easier if you are short-handed.



Hatteras equips the optional lower helm with the same high level of equipment as they do the main helm on the flybridge. That includes a Northstar GPS/plotter, Simrad autopilot and Icom VHF. You choose your own radar. Intermittent windshield washers/wipers and an electric defogger keep the sightlines clear.

The Lower Deck

The Hatteras 80 MY buyer has more choices to make on the lower deck, where, once again, there are two possible arrangements. Each includes four staterooms, and centers on a full-beam master located amidships where it’s most comfortable. In a nod to Med style, Hatteras added three hullside windows on each side to provide the owner with natural light.



The standard arrangement shows three double staterooms and one with twin berths, all forward of the engines. The owner’s cabin amidships has a large head to starboard, a walk-in closet to port. We prefer this use of space to the his and hers bath configurations.



The alternative arrangement replaces the twin cabin with another double, and the closet with a second head in the owner’s suite. Crew’s quarters are reduced to just a double berth. Of course, you can mix and match the options to get just what you want, or have something completely different.



The master includes a king-sized berth with headboard, nightstands either side and a big dresser. There’s a flat-screen TV with CD/DVD player. Six hullside windows provide daylight.



The master head seems even bigger than it is thanks to clever use of mirrors, but we’d leave that flowered wallpaper ashore. Decks and countertops can be marble or granite. The optional arrangement comprises his and hers heads sharing a shower in-between, but it means losing a big walk-in closet.



Guests are treated almost as well as the owner, with queen berths with coil-spring mattresses, lots of drawers and stowage and en-suite heads with first-rate fixtures. There’s no TV in the starboard guest stateroom, which we’d convert to an office/den.

Propulsion

Engine options include twin Caterpillar C32s rated at either 1,550- or 1,650-hp, or C32 ACERTs at 1,800-hp. Sixteen-cylinder MTUs, rated at 2,000- or 2,400-hp are also available. The engines spin 8-blade high-performance Nibral props – it takes 8 blades to handle the loading a boat this size, with this horsepower, puts on the props. They also reduce vibration. We haven’t tested the 80 MY, so can’t comment on its performance – but a boat like this is no speed demon. If you want to go fast, Hatteras has several convertibles which will do the trick. Whichever engines you choose, they will be installed and engineered to top standards, again in the Hatteras tradition.



Hatteras laminates steel beams into the stringers to take the strain of the engines. White-finished surfaces and ample lighting make it easy to see. Fuel tanks are built with fire-retardant resin and finished with fire-retardant paint; they are U.L. approved. Water tanks are also fiberglass. Raw-water pickups are in sea chests rather than scattered all over the place.

Two 27.5-kW Onan gensets are standard, as is a 1,400-gpd Sea Recovery watermaker. The 80 MY has a hydraulic system that powers the bow thruster, stabilizers, 1,500-lb MarQuipt davit on the boat deck and the 4,000-lb Maxwell windlass, which comes with 300 feet of chain and a 110 lb. anchor. A stern thruster is optional. Hydraulics are more involved and expensive to install, but provide the power needed on a boat this size to handle anchors and tenders. Even on smaller boats, we’d choose hydraulic over electric if available. Electric thrusters can only be used for short bursts. And if you've ever had trouble with an electric windlass you'll understand why Hatteras goes hydraulic.

When it comes to mechanical details, nobody beats Hatteras. The 80 MY has an engine room to make any wrench-head drool. There’s good d.c. and a.c. fluorescent lighting and plenty of ventilation, so spending time here isn’t a trial. All systems are easy to access, nicely laid out and labeled. A 110-volt oil-change system means you won’t have to stand around all day while a 12-volt pump drains the diesels’s bottomless oil sumps; the hoses are fitted with Hatteras’s patented quick-disconnects, making it painless to switch from engines to gearboxes to generators. There’s even an aluminum work bench in the engine room.

Recommendation

What can we say? This is a Hatteras, built by one of the best companies in the world. There’s very little not to like: With the "small" C32 Cats and the open flybridge, the 80 Motor Yacht will cost you between $5.3 and $5.5 million. The closed-bridge Sky Lounge option adds $320,000. If you want lots of customization or extra equipment, Hatteras will make every attempt to please you, albeit usually at extra cost. But if you have to ask….

$5.3 million for an American-built boat, particularly by Hatteras Yachts, is not a bad price, in our opinion. The motoryachts in class built in Italy or the U.K. are about the same or more -- as much as $1 million more. Similiar-size boats built in the Far East are about the same to $500k less. In the U.S., Hatteras motoryachts hold their value as well as any brand, and better than most.

The 80 MY has been a very successful boat for Hatteras: Since its introduction in the autumn of 2003, more than 40 have been sold. And a look at the brokerage market doesn’t turn up very many 80 MYs for sale, so we can assume the owners like their boats and are hanging onto them.

Our advice? If you can afford one, go for it. It’s probably the last boat you’ll have to buy.



It even looks cool at rest. We’d live aboard our Hatteras 80 Motor Yacht five or six months a year.