I remember fielding the phone call in the back seat of an Uber on the way to New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport on a gray spring day. It was 2018, and a Maritimo insider I’ve known for some time was on the line. He told me something big, and still secretive, was afoot. He said it was a yacht that would change the way boaters viewed the Australian builder altogether.
He was right. The X60, which I saw before the Sydney International Boat Show, is unlike any Maritimo I’ve been aboard. She retains the builder’s rugged pedigree and adds features that rival what yachtsmen find aboard major European brands.
Those features start with the X60’s beach club. Yes, it’s an honest-to-goodness beach club on a yacht that is 63 feet 9 inches length overall. The customizable space sits low in the water, which makes for a very cool, connected-to-the-water ambience. The X60 that I was aboard had a 43-inch Samsung TV, a head to port, a refrigerator, an ice maker and a wet bar. Other clients have requested saunas, a Jacuzzi, and even a Kegerator for beer, and the builder has been all too happy to oblige.
The space can also be configured as a tender garage, or as a particularly private guest stateroom with a queen berth, essentially turning the hydraulic swim platform into a de facto balcony. This is high-level stuff for a production-built 63-footer. And what might even be more impressive is that all three options also will be available on the 60’s little sister, the X50, which is scheduled to debut later this year.
Above the beach club, the cockpit has a dining settee for six along with a grill, a sink and a refrigerator to starboard. A console to port with a Twin Disc joystick system aids in docking, while a hardtop pulls double duty, lending shade to guests below while helping to make the yacht’s exterior lines sleeker.
Twelve-inch-wide side decks lined with hidden LED lights are designed for safe passage from the cockpit to the foredeck lounge, which has twin sun pads forward and bench seating abaft.
Indoors, an aft galley serves both the cockpit and forward salon with equal ease. And the 6-foot-tall refrigerator hints at this yacht’s long-range cruising chops. Overhead is one of the X60’s key features: the first of two electrically opening skylights on the main deck. One is over the galley, and the other sheds light on the helm. I can’t recall ever seeing a feature like that on a vessel of this size, and the skylights add nicely to the natural light coming through the electrically opening windows to port and starboard. When all four components are open, the interior feels like an exterior.
Down below, the companionway is well-lighted thanks to the steeply raked windshield above. A forward VIP stateroom has an athwartship queen-size berth as well as private access to the day-head, which is shared with the starboard-side guest stateroom; it has single berths in an L configuration, ideal for the kids, or can be turned into an en suite head for the amidships master. In that master, the owners have a king-size berth and two 5-foot-tall hanging lockers.
Back up top, the helm has dual Garmin screens and twin Pompanette seats, with the captain’s chair in particular enjoying excellent lines of sight. I had great views of Sydney Harbour and the surrounding waters from that vantage point. The yacht planes at 13 knots, a notably low speed that Maritimo attributes to its racing heritage. When racing, even the slightest imbalance can throw off a boat’s trim and contribute to a loss of speed. Maritimo applied the same attention to balance to this yacht that it gives to its formidable racing team. She handled well in the building 4s and 5s outside. Her convex hull landed softly in the troughs. The ride was quite dry as well, with white water sloughing off the hull at about amidships.
She cruised at 31 knots, with her twin 925 hp Scania motors burning 79 gallons of diesel per hour. Flat-out, the yacht’s top-end was 34 knots, and she felt at ease coasting along in the rolling Pacific swells. The X60 was also pleasingly nimble, whipping hard over to port and to starboard in a tight one-and-a-half boat lengths.
For a yacht that offers so much in the way of comfort-minded design, her sprightly performance felt almost like icing on the cake.
But then you remember that Maritimo is a quintessential Australian brand, and Australians stereotypically place lots of importance on safety and performance in their vessels. When it comes to Maritimo, that should be no secret at all.
Power Moves
The Maritimo X60 has an engine room that’s designed for owner-operators, with 7 feet 6 inches of headroom and access to all equipment. A 17 kW Cummins Onan genset and two Racor fuel filters are here, along with standard twin 800 hp Volvo Penta D13s. For American buyers, 1,100 hp and 1,200 hp MANs are available. Saddle tanks hold 1,100 gallons of fuel.
Intelligent Design
Maritimo’s lead designer, Tom Barry-Cotter, says he got the idea for the X60’s beach club from far larger builds. “We looked to the superyacht industry,” he says. “We wanted to do something really cool that gives us a competitive advantage in this class. There’s not a lot of moldings down there, so it’s very flexible for customizations. Our owners love it.”
