Azimut 76 Magellano, the Gentleman's Long-Range Cruiser Revisited

Searching for an Azimut 76? This is the boat

Most people who type Azimut 76 into a search bar end up at the Magellano 76, the flagship of Azimut's long-range Magellano family in the middle of the last decade. Do not confuse it with the planing Azimut 77S or the Azimut 78 flybridge, which are faster, lighter boats with different hulls and very different running costs. The number on the Magellano is a nameplate, too: Power & Motoryacht measured the boat at 80 feet 1 inch overall.

The 76 grew out of the original Magellano 74 of 2010. Motor Boat & Yachting filmed it at the Genoa Boat Show in 2012, PMY published its first look that December, and YachtBuyer records production from 2013 to 2017. Its spiritual successor is the raised-pilothouse Magellano 25 Metri, which Yachting reviewed in 2021 and which returned to Ken Freivokh, the designer behind the first Magellano, for its styling.

Built for PMY's gentleman cruiser

Richard Thiel opened his 2016 PMY test with an owner survey. Cruising boaters, he wrote, split into two groups: bluewater purists who will accept discomfort for range, and what PMY called gentlemen cruisers, people who want to travel at efficient speeds but refuse to give up luxury, extra staterooms or the ability to sprint away from bad weather. Few boats served that second group when the Magellano line appeared, and the 76 was, in Thiel's view, the most successful of the family at combining displacement-boat stability with planing-boat speed.

That brief explains everything about the boat. It carries almost 2,000 gallons of diesel in a single main tank feeding a day tank, it has walkaround access to its engines, and yet it has four en suite staterooms finished in canaletto walnut, hammered leather headboards and enough glass to make the salon bright. It is a yacht for families who cruise for weeks, not a stripped expedition ship.

Bill Dixon's hull, with a gyro that seems designed in

The Dual Mode hull, drawn by British naval architect Bill Dixon for the first Magellano, pairs rounded sections along the keel with broad hard chines. PMY's first look summed up the goal: cruise at displacement speeds for long passages, but get up and run at about 22 knots when weather, a medical problem or plain impatience demands it.

Thiel's sea trial took place in 4 to 5 foot seas and 20 knots of wind, and the boat still made nearly 22 knots without any drama. Running angles peaked at just three degrees at 1,750 rpm and stayed there to wide open throttle, and sound at the lower helm never exceeded 70 decibels. His test boat carried a Seakeeper 26 in a lazarette that looked purpose-built for it. Azimut offered no fin stabilizers on the 76, the gyro was technically optional, and PMY was told all US boats would get one. On the used market, a boat without the gyro deserves a discount.

The fuel table that justifies the concept

PMY's numbers, taken with 461 gallons of fuel, 79 gallons of water and 11 people aboard, show the two personalities clearly. At 1,000 rpm the 76 made 9 knots on 10 gallons per hour, a theoretical 1,845 nautical miles on the full tank. At 2,000 rpm it cruised at 16.7 knots on 72 gallons per hour, still good for 477 miles. Flat out at 2,560 rpm it reached 21.3 knots burning 108 gallons per hour. In the article text Thiel quoted slightly more conservative figures, 1,605 miles at 9 knots and 415 at 16.7 knots, which appear to allow for a reserve.

The interesting zone is between 12 and 14 knots, where fuel burn climbs steeply from 30 to 48 gallons per hour for only two extra knots. Owners who want to stretch a passage should live at 9 to 10 knots; owners who are racing weather will find 16 to 17 knots a sensible compromise. Either way, the 76 will never match a full-displacement trawler for economy, but PMY judged it well ahead of a similar-size planing yacht.

Four suites, a U-shaped galley and a crew flat aft

Below, PMY's test boat had a full-beam master amidships, a VIP in the forepeak, a port-side bunk room and a starboard twin, each with its own head. Aft of the engine room, a full-beam crew area with two cabins, laundry and crew mess sits forward of the lazarette and can double as a fifth sleeping space in a pinch.

The main deck puts two helm seats forward, a starboard U-shaped sofa for six, an eight-seat dining table to port and a U-shaped galley fully aft to starboard, where it serves both the salon and the six-seat cockpit table. The flybridge, three feet longer than the 74's, has its own eight-person dining table, and the extended swim platform can carry and launch a tender of up to 12 feet 6 inches.

An engine room a passagemaker would envy

Thiel called the mechanical spaces competitive with the best bluewater passagemakers. The 1,000 hp MAN V8s sit low thanks to their vee configuration, with nearly complete walkaround access and six feet of headroom. Each ZF 550A gear carries a power take-off for a hydraulic system that runs only the bow and stern thrusters, so the joystick can be used freely, while the windlass and Seakeeper are electric.

US-spec standard equipment included twin 21.5 kW gensets, two 65-foot Glendinning Cablemasters, 130,000 Btu of Cruisair air conditioning, an oil change system and duplex Racor filters on mains and gensets. The 220-volt bilge manifold can draw from five compartments, and an Excelsior manual pump by the engine room door is the last line of defense.

• Power: 2 x 1,000 hp MAN V8 diesels, ZF 550A at 2.96:1
• Fuel 1,981 gallons in one main tank plus day tank; water 369 gallons
• Thrusters on gear-driven hydraulics; windlass and gyro electric
• Warranty when new: 12 months workmanship, 60 months hull structure and blistering

Buying a ten-year-old 80-footer sensibly

Because the newest Magellano 76 is now nine years old, condition matters far more than model year. YachtBuyer's data suggests these boats sell quickly when priced right, which usually means a documented MAN service history, a gyro, refreshed electronics and soft goods that have been replaced at least once. Expect to see asking prices in the high one million to high two million dollar range depending on those factors.

Budget seriously for ownership. A yacht of this size in the US typically needs a full-time captain and often a mate, and dockage, insurance, crew, generator and air conditioning service and haul-outs put annual costs, before fuel, somewhere around $260,000 to $420,000. Plan a full survey with oil analysis on both MANs and both generators, a sea trial at 2,000 rpm and wide open throttle to compare against PMY's table, and a look at the Seakeeper service record.