Boat test for the 2007 Savannah 54 with boat pictures, boat specifications, and boat test results. Includes pricing, videos, engine test reviews, and ratings for the 2007 Savannah 54.

I'm in Ohio, the home state of two dozen NASA astronauts and the official birthplace of aviation, so it's in this spirit that I prepare for liftoff.

Standing at the helm with the wheel under my left hand, I have my right hand resting on the easily adjustable, single-lever Rexroth electronic controls. It's a natural fit and feel that inspires confidence while driving at any speed. The standard smokey-blue glass hardtop, which spans nearly 14 feet of the Savannah 54's 16'6" beam, is slowly retracting in response to a switch at the helm. Two custom-built Opacmare stainless steel doors aft in the saloon open as the glass window between them drops down into a high-gloss cherrywood housing via an electric motor. Late-summer sun streams into the bridge deck. My test boat's as open as a center console and ready to fly. Her standard 800-hp MAN diesels spool up to WOT, and the boat sprints straightaway across Lake Erie at 40 mph. Okay, it's not space travel, but it's pretty cool.

I slowly bring the throttles back to neutral, curious to double-check her bow rise, since I've known several express cruisers with moonshot-like running attitudes during planing. This is not the case with the 54. I ease the controls forward, taking the motors to 1500 rpm (4.5 degrees) and then to 1750 (5.0 degrees). She's quickly over the hump and trims out at 4.5 degrees at her 2000-rpm cruise with about one-third tab. Sightlines are clear for 360 degrees, and I'm back to WOT, but the starboard motor is turning 100 rpm less than the port motor while all other engine indicators are in the green. Houston, we have a minor problem, cause unknown.

Even with the minimal engine glitch, this vessel's sleek, curvaceous, European-influenced profile, courtesy of megayacht designer Luiz de Basto, is a blur to Erie's perch-fishing fleet as the 54 executes fast, hard-over maneuvers with the help of standard power-assisted SeaStar hydraulic steering and high-speed bronze rudders. She stays right with me as I do my best to vent one of her 31x41 five-blade Michigan wheels. But she's played this game before and banks gently yet quickly into every turn with nary a drop in rpm. Such maneuvers with similar vessels have often left me with restricted outboard visibility, as they dig in on the inboard side, heeling hard over. But on this vessel I have a clear view to both the inboard and the outboard sides.

If the Savannah 54 feels well balanced, much of the credit goes to her modified-V hull form—21 degrees at the bow and 14 degrees at the transom—courtesy of the naval architects at Titusville, Florida's, Vectorworks, which specializes in both recreational and military vessels. I find her even-keel feel particularly intriguing because nearly all of her machinery, from the standard 21.5-kW Onan genset to the chillers for the 72,000-Btu air-conditioning system and the nine 8D batteries, resides under her cockpit. (The builder did this, in part, to keep the vessel's interior pin-drop quiet.) To compensate, Savannah places both the single 750-gallon transverse fuel tank and the 200-gallon water tank forward of the MAN diesel engines. More counterweight is gained by the standard granite countertops in the galley and heads.

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