Azimut 46

The Azimut 46 is a 14.9-metre GRP flybridge motor yacht, and for most of its life it sat at or near the bottom of the Azimut Flybridge range, below the 50 and above the smaller 39 and 43. It is a conventional planing three-deck-level boat: cockpit, main deck saloon with an internal lower helm, accommodation below, and an open flybridge reached from the cockpit.

Azimut has used the 46 badge more than once, so the page needs to say which boat it describes. A Quarantasei of the 1990s was a 46-footer of about 14.8 metres on twin Caterpillar 3208TA V8s of 435 hp. A later 46 flybridge, sold into the early 2000s, ran Caterpillar 3126B engines of roughly 450-457 hp and carried 1,500 litres of fuel. This page describes the third and much the most common boat: the 46 that Azimut listed with Caterpillar C9 power from around 2005, which the yard later renamed 46E, marketed as the 46 Evolution, and kept in its evergreen catalogue until about 2015. The marketplace figures behind this record - 14.94 m overall, 4.37 m beam, 17.7 tonnes, 1,700 litres of fuel - are the yard's own numbers for that boat, which is why it is the one profiled here.

Azimut published length overall including the pulpit as 14.93 m, hull length including the platform as 14.6 m, beam at the main section 4.36 m, and draft including propellers at full load as 1.02 m. Full-load displacement is 17.7 tonnes. Fuel is 1,700 litres and fresh water 500 litres. The hull is a V-form with 18 degrees of deadrise aft, built in glassfibre, and the engines drive conventional shafts rather than pods or sterndrives.

Accommodation was offered in two forms. The yard's own figures read two or three cabins plus crew, four or six berths plus crew, and two head compartments plus a crew head; separate lower-deck and main-deck drawings existed for the two-cabin and three-cabin versions, so the galley and saloon arrangement is not identical between them. A small crew or utility cabin with its own head sits aft, reached from the cockpit. The specification recorded here uses the maximum guest configuration and excludes the crew accommodation.

Only one engine was ever listed by the builder: twin Caterpillar C9 inline sixes rated 505 metric hp, or 372 kW, each. Some databases and brokers quote the same engine as 503 hp, which is the imperial rating of the Caterpillar C9 at 375 kW. Azimut claimed 30-31 knots maximum and 27 knots cruising, measured at half load or performance test mass, so real figures on a loaded boat will be lower. Exterior styling and concept are credited to Stefano Righini, the interior to Carlo Galeazzi, the pairing behind most Azimut models of the period.

The boat was aimed at owner-drivers moving up from a 40-foot cruiser who wanted flybridge accommodation and Mediterranean-style volume without crossing into crewed territory. Two points remain contested: the production span, which several databases give as 2012-2015 although the yard's own specification page for the boat was already online in April 2005, and the CE design category, which no source consulted here stated, so it has been left out rather than assumed.