Azimut 55 S

The 55S belongs to Azimut's S Collection, the yard's line of sport yachts, which sits apart from the much larger Flybridge Collection in both proportion and purpose. Where a comparable Azimut flybridge stacks a second helm and a sun deck above the main deck, the S Collection keeps everything on one level under a long, low coupe hardtop with a large opening sunroof. That gives a lower profile, less windage and a lower centre of gravity, at the cost of the outdoor living space a flybridge provides. It is a boat for an owner who drives from the lower helm and wants speed and handling rather than another deck.

The boat was on show from 2011-2012 and built until the second half of the decade. YachtBuyer records the run as 2012 to 2017 with 79 hulls; Azimut collected awards for it at the 2012 World Yacht Trophies in Cannes. Some sources place the launch a year either side of 2012, so the start year should be read as approximate. Exterior lines are by Stefano Righini and the interior by Carlo Galeazzi, the pairing behind most Azimut models of that period. The 55S was not renamed. The Azimut S6, launched in 2018, is a separate and larger boat of about 18 metres built around triple IPS700 engines, described by Motor Boat & Yachting as a stretched development of the original S rather than a rebadge; listings that treat the two as one model are wrong.

Below deck there are three guest cabins. Azimut's own table lists two heads plus an optional third for crew. The full-beam master is amidships with hull windows to port and starboard, the VIP is forward with an island berth, and the third cabin has two singles. Six guest berths is the normal count, with one crew berth if the optional crew cabin was specified. On the main deck the saloon opens aft into the cockpit, and because the pods sit well aft the space beneath the cockpit could be used as a tender garage.

Construction is the part of the S Collection story Azimut leans on hardest, and it broadly holds up. The hull is a resin-infused sandwich laminate with a PVC core; the deck, deckhouse and hardtop combine carbon and glass fibre in vinylester resin. Azimut claimed around ten percent off hull weight against a conventional glass laminate. That is carbon concentrated in the superstructure rather than a carbon hull, and brokerage copy describing a "carbon fibre hull" overstates it. The heavier use of carbon in the deckhouse came later, on the S6 and S7.

Propulsion was a single specification with no published alternative: three Volvo Penta IPS600 units, each a D6 rated 435 hp, for 1,305 hp total. Independent tests put top speed at about 34 knots and comfortable fast cruising in the high twenties. Triple pods in a 17-metre hull was still unusual in 2012, and much of what the boat was sold on follows from it: joystick manoeuvring, low noise and vibration, and a full-load draft of only 1.14 metres.