Williston, Fla. — Today, Monterey Boats unveils the 385 Super Express (385SE) at the 2017 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The Monterey Boats booth will be located at Bahia Mar-H Dock, slips 827-833.
With top speeds in excess of 60 mph and maximum 1,200hp, Monterey’s newest addition is setting the standard for outboard-powered vessels in its class. At 37 feet, the 385SE is one of the largest bowriders on the water today and blurs the line between weekend cabin cruiser and full-blown yacht.
“In making that boat,” Monterey vice president of design and engineering Mark Owens says, “we realized everyone has a 35-foot bowrider with kind of a small cabin and small head ... and we just wanted to one-up them! So with 37 feet and the height of the boat, that allowed us to put a real cabin and a real head you could stand up in.”
With the prototype finished just prior to Monterey’s dealer meeting in August 2017, Owens relates it was a gamble. The popularity of the 378SE would be hard to top, but the innovation of an outboard design paid off. Owens walked away with 11 full orders for the new 385SE and 12 additional for the 378SE.
“We felt the 378SE ran so well with the IOs,” Owens continues, “but with three outboards on it, it would be phenomenal. Which it is! It’s quiet. You still have the room on the back of the boat, but you can go into shallower water … If you hit bottom with an outboard, just trim it up and you’re good to go.”
While outboards are historically home to southern waters, built for wetlands and shallow coastal areas, offerings like this from Monterey showcase how versatile the design truly is.
“I was on it, rode on it and everything,” owner of Great Lakes Yacht Sales Jerry Ipjian says of the 385SE. “It’s a neat boat! It rides exactly the same as the 378SE ... It’s so quiet. The outboards are so quiet these days. It’s taken a bit more time than down South, but I think outboards are going to become very strong in the Great Lakes. They require less maintenance and have a better power to weight ratio.”
Boat show attendees at this year’s 2017 Fort Lauderdale boat show can experience the 385SE firsthand along with a broad range of models from Monterey Sport Yacht, Super Sport and M-Series lineups. This year’s Fort Lauderdale Boat Show will run from November 1–5, 2017.
