bro, what?

Shaft Drive is the way to go... Period... Less costly to maintain and easier to maintain. Less maintenance on shaft drive for sure.

First Question: On cats under 55 feet or so to make a shaft drive work you need to place the engines either under the aft berths or inside the boat some way or another. So that places the engine inside the living spaces, so you get more noise and the potential for exhaust fumes inside the boat. Most cat builders today wish to keep the engines outside of the living spaces, as far as possible, so the engines are in a watertight compartment apart from the rest of the boat. In the old day saildrive legs did produce some problems with clutches and no ability to change fluids inside the boat, but not on current saildrives. They are far quieter than shafts, offer more power at the prop, and when they do need service less costly than shafts which have "dripless seals," cutlass bearings and require professional alignment, ideally with a laser. Once you get over 75 HP engines you must resort to shafts, but on cats of this length you can still keep the engines out of the living spaces. Second Question: You can check the fluid level inside, change fluids from inside, but if you have a compromised seal you only change that when the boat is hauled.

nobody is buying these boats to cruise the higher or lower latitudes dude. you're reasoning like a kut

Boat buying has a formula: E=mc2 (squared) . It's like the law of relativity, because c=$. E is the boat you buy. m is just there as a frustration factor. You have enough $... you have the rear closed and conditioned. Voila! My opinion of most "sailors" out there in You-tube world....If you don't have the $, stay on land or become one of these loser sailing channels that are just fixing stuff as they go along. As for me, assuming I would want to go out there at all, I would just buy the new 80 foot aluminium cat from Bering Yachts and call it a day.

@@mlo5083 You're correct; except for 80, which e qualified as too large for a couple with one helper/crew as well as its unpractical for boat license and European marinas we may visit.