On the Drawing Board: Sea Force IX

Marlin Magazine
September 2003
Author: Dean Travis Clarke

The name Sea Force IX might be new, but the people behind the company have been building fine luxury sportfishing boats for many years.

The new 81.5, like her 76- and 86-foot sisters, sports a full-lifting bottom that affords a relatively flat running angle while underway. A slight keel also provides straight-as-an-arrow tracking. All models can be ordered in either open or enclosed bridge.

Down below, owners get to choose between three- and four-cabin layouts. The three-stateroom configuration offers double berths with private head. The four-stateroom layout offers mirror-image cabins sporting over/under berths between the two larger doubles. The two smaller cabins share a single head and shower.

The salon's forward galley has barstools on the aft side of the galley counter. The rest of the living space remains remarkably wide open, with a dinette to starboard, an L-shaped settee aft to port and a stairway to the flybridge to starboard.

One of the nicest features recently available on many of the larger sportfishing boats is the mezzanine deck. This raised area at the forward end of the cockpit affords a cool, sheltered sitting area for spectators. It not only keeps them out of the crew's way when fighting fish, but also allows unobstructed access to the tackle drawers, bait boxes and rigging stations. You'll never have to ask your mother-in-law to move so you can get a new box of hooks
out of storage. Additionally, you get dedicated cold-drink storage, ice machines and more without taking up space needed for critical fishing features.

As you'd expect, the enclosed bridge locates the helm forward, with another steering station outside on the aft overhang. The open bridge version locates the helm aft in the standard convertible configuration.

Sea Force IX builds its boats of vacuum-bagged epoxy and fiberglass, which is then baked to align the epoxy molecules for unparalleled strength. The company then shoots the entire hull with urethane paint to give it a hard, high-gloss finish. Sea Force refers to its construction method as "monolithic," meaning something large and powerful that acts as a single, unified force. For that matter, as long as we're spouting definitions, Force IX refers to the Beaufort Scale of wind strength. A Force IX gale on the Beaufort Scale is defined as a storm with "wind
speeds of 41 to 47 knots and wave heights in the area of 22 to 23 feet. Crests of waves may begin to topple. Spray is likely to affect visibility." And with the way Sea Force IX claims to build boats, they should be able to handle such conditions with aplomb.