It was a long time in the making, but the Sealine F380 is a timeless design that makes an excellent second-hand option
As gestations go, the Sealine F380 was certainly the most protracted and painful in Sealine’s history, possibly
in any major boatbuilder’s history.
A huge amount happened between Sealine first taunting us with renderings of a smart new flybridge cruiser in 2011 and the launch of the F380 at the Düsseldorf boat show in January 2014, not least of which was the entire company slipping into administration in April 2013.
For a while, it looked as though we would never see another Sealine. Then, in June that year, the news came that investment company Aurelius AG, owners of the huge German Hanse group of boatbuilders, had bought
the brand, the assets and the designs.
Sealine F380 from Motor Boat & Yachting
MBY's boat report video on the Sealine F380
Used boat – Sealine SC35
Technical writer Greg Copp gives you a tour of another used boat bargain
But crucially, not the factory in Kidderminster. The brand was headed for Greifswald in Germany, where it would join production of the group’s Hanse, Dehler and Moody sailing boat brands and fit neatly alongside the group’s Fjord open boat range, giving the company ready access to the cruiser market.
Based on the hull of Sealine’s ultra successful S380 sportscruiser,(a boat better known as the SC35 before a model designation change late in its life), the F380 hull was lengthened slightly (by 60cm) and lightly modified for its flybridge cruiser role.
But the sheer volume that made the SC35 so popular translated well. When the F380 launched into the sub-40ft flybridge market, a sector long since vacated by once-profligate Princess and Fairline, Sealine claimed that it had the largest interior volume of any boat in its class, a claim that was frankly easy to believe.
Read the full report in the February 2018 issue of MBY.
