Paine Apogee 50 Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

Chuck Paine drew the Apogee 50 with a fairly straight sheerline and the maximum waterline length available before the ends begin to look strained, and the result is a 51-foot hull measured over its sugar scoop stern with a 45.8-foot waterline and 14-foot beam anchor. The low-slung pilothouse and nearly flush decks keep the deck profile unobtrusively low, while a lowered cockpit sole beneath the pilothouse preserves standing headroom without raising the silhouette. Exterior wood is confined to the cockpit, where teak coamings and a teak sole were fitted over the owner’s objections for boat-show display; those coamings now wear semi-permanent canvas covers, and there is no wooden toerail, with stainless steel grabrails elsewhere on deck.

A watertight bulkhead forward separates a forward storage garage from the owner’s stateroom, and a second watertight bulkhead with a custom watertight door isolates the engine and machinery space from the living area. The forward garage itself houses spare sails, a spare dinghy, spare lines, and the anchor chains. Aft, the sugar scoop transom is more than a swimming platform: the lower step is a ventilated fiberglass box for a 6-gallon gasoline tank, the next step is a hinged hatch exposing the liferaft, and the inside corners carry massive Harken padeyes for a drogue.

Rig and Handling

The boat carries a powerful sail plan that still qualifies her as a performance cruiser, and Scoots was designed and built specifically for singlehanded sailing. A multi-function electric winch on the port side of the cockpit shelter eases the big full-batten mainsail, with control-line tails stowed in shallow bins; the shelter openings forward are sized to pass those lines while limiting water ingress. Three Furlex headsail furlers allow the boat to be sailed as a true cutter, with a conventional heavy staysail on the inner furler and a high-cut Yankee jib topsail on the outermost; a #3 jib for heavy-air upwind work lives on the inner masthead furler, and the two masthead headsails can be pole-set to opposite sides downwind.

That flexibility has limits. Using the outer furler headsail demands rolling it most of the way for tacking because of the narrow slot between masthead stays, and with two masthead stays it is impossible to get adequate headstay tension for heavy-air upwind sailing, since each stay carries roughly half the load anchor. Practical Sailor also noted the fin keel, exposed prop, and spade rudder combination gives a real propensity for grabbing fishnets and lines, mitigated here by a centerline stainless line deflector and Spurs cutters ahead of the three-bladed Max-Prop feathering propeller.

Accommodations and Systems

Inside, the spaces are big and open, reading larger than the hull suggests. Scoots has only two sleeping cabins — a large owner’s cabin forward for use in port, and a smaller quarter cabin for use at sea — and a single large head aft near the companionway. The pilothouse provides two out-of-weather seats, chart space, radar, and the primary B&G Hydra displays. A centerline opening hatch in the doghouse aids fair-weather ventilation, and a stainless wire between padeyes in the cockpit footwell gives a harness clipping point.

Two freshwater tanks are built high under the deck and well outboard as ballast tanks; 200 gallons can be pumped to windward for stability on a reach or beat, or to leeward in very light air to induce heel and steady the sail plan anchor. A small Kubota diesel drives a 200-amp alternator and the watermaker pump directly, and a couple of hours’ daily operation keeps 1,000 amp-hours of batteries charged and the water tanks full. The engine room even includes a workbench with a compact drill press.

Known Issues

The lowered pilothouse cockpit is a tradeoff: in heavy weather the dropboards at the foot of the companionway anchor have to remain fitted to seal the opening up to the main deck. The twin masthead-stay rig limits headstay tension upwind in heavy air and complicates tacking with the outer furler, as noted above. The fin-keel and exposed-prop geometry is inherently line-catch prone, though Scoots addresses it with deflectors and cutters.

Refits and Ownership

Later additions to Scoots include a radar arch and permanent Bimini that blend with the original design; the arch carries a Furuno scanner clear of sails and lines, with communications and navigation antennas to either side and a solar array atop the Bimini. The tooling for the Apogee 50 is now owned by Morris Yachts, which matters for long-term support of the series.

The Verdict

The Apogee 50 is a thoughtfully engineered small-series offshore cruiser that trades conventional cruising-layout generosity for singlehanded competence, shoal draft, and clever ballast-on-demand. She is not a boat for those wanting multiple cabins and a tall rig for club racing, but for the serious passagemaker she rewards study.

Pros