Jonathan Sisler fishes for tuna and snapper 100 miles off the coast of Florida, and he wants to get to his spots in a hurry. So when engine-maker Mercury Marine showed him an outboard motor that generates more horsepower than a Ferrari Portofino, he wanted four.
They are now affixed to the back of a 53-foot-long vessel made by Scout Boats, generating a sea-boiling 2,400 hp. The $2.9 million boat can hit 70 mph, a once-unimaginable speed for a craft of that size.
“It’s a night-and-day difference in propulsion and torque,” said Sisler, chief executive of street-cleaning company Sweeping Corporation of America. “You push the throttle and everyone will be sitting down, I promise you that.”
The once-humble outboard motor is having a supercar moment, with surging power capabilities making it the propulsion of choice for many high-end boats.
The biggest engines are often installed in pairs or quads, bestowing “Miami Vice”-style speed on large vessels packed with creature comforts.
“Everybody has big boat-itis, or they want to go faster and faster,” said Scout Boats founder Steve Potts .
High-horsepower outboards range from 200 hp to 600 hp, and cost anywhere from $20,000 to $70,000-plus per motor. They have helped the boating industry navigate the choppy economy better than others that make pricey discretionary goods, such as RVs .
Raymond James analyst Joe Altobello said marine companies are focusing on upscale buyers, whose soaring stock portfolios have given them the confidence to splurge.
“Now everyone wants three 300-hp engines or more to get out to fishing holes faster,” he said. “It’s been a nice secular tailwind.”
Mercury Marine, a division of the boating company Brunswick, is the only manufacturer to make 600-hp outboards. Brunswick declined to offer sales figures, but CEO David Foulkes said in an interview that “increasing power beyond where other people can go” has helped the company boost its leading share of the engine market.
The outboard horsepower explosion started about 20 years ago, when bigger boats typically had engines set within the hull. The upside was that they could generate more power than an outboard. The downside was that they were hard to service and took up a lot of interior space.
Recreational outboard motors back then maxed out at 300 hp, and most were much smaller. To compete with their inboard cousins, outboards had to become more powerful without adding so much weight that they threw off the boat’s balance. Foulkes said Mercury replaced some metal components with composite or polymer materials, and came up with aluminum alloys that maximized strength while remaining relatively lightweight.
“We have to keep them as compact as possible so that we can fit as many as people want on the back of a boat,” Foulkes said. “It’s a real engineering challenge.”
Mercury’s outboards are made at its factory in Fond du Lac, Wis., which has several die-casting machines that are the size of a house. Molten aluminum is forced into a mold and rapidly cooled, emerging as a fully formed engine block.
From there, workers add the cylinders—the 600-hp version has 12, just like an Aston Martin Vanquish or a Rolls-Royce Phantom—and assemble the rest of the motor before testing it and wrapping it in a waterproof plastic cowling. The end product stands more than 7 feet tall and weighs 1,260 pounds.
Mercury’s competitors have joined the trend. Yamaha’s biggest engine is 450 hp, though Ben Speciale , president of Yamaha’s U.S. marine business, said the company focuses on reliability over raw power.
Joshua Matthews , division director for Honda Marine, said its biggest outboard, which generates 350 hp, emphasizes fuel efficiency. That has won over charter fishing boat captains, he said.
“With these guys, if they’re running 100 miles out and back each day with a group of customers, that’s a considerable amount of savings from a fuel perspective and a cost perspective,” he said.
The surge in performance has allowed boat manufacturers to increase the size of their vessels to offer more cabin and deck space, or use fewer outboards to achieve an equivalent amount of power and torque. Aquila Power Catamarans switched from four motors to two to propel some of its boats, saving space on the back end.
“The swim platform on our boats goes between the engines,” said CEO Jean Raas . “Instead of having to go with quads, the whole swim platform gets wider.”
The horsepower advances are leading to discussions about how much is enough. Mercury has developed a prototype that generates more than 800 hp, and a production version should reach the market within the next two years. Foulkes said outboards could get even more powerful, though they could reach a point of diminishing returns.
“We want to make sure that however high in horsepower we go, we still make the product affordable, with enough volume to drive some level of scale,” he said.
Even so, manufacturers such as Valhalla Boatworks are already drawing up plans for vessels that will accommodate such power. Pat Healey, CEO of Valhalla’s parent company, Viking Yacht, said it is working on a 65-foot boat—10 feet longer than its current flagship.
Boaters like Bob Book are counting the days. The entrepreneur has a $3.8 million 55-foot Valhalla sport yacht powered by four 600-hp engines, which have turned the roughly 60-mile trip between Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Bimini in the Bahamas into a lunchtime jaunt. He sees no reason to stop there.
“Boating is a sickness,” he said. “I can’t wait until the 800 comes out.”
