Zeelander Z44 Review (2013 Edition) by Aquaholic

The Z44 was Zeelander's first boat, and you do not need much imagination to see where the rest of the range came from. The low profile, rounded stern, curved hardtop and polished stainless steel are all here. This is a 2013 boat, yet it still looks very much part of the current Zeelander family.

The stern is probably the best bit. The whole transom rolls over to leave a beautifully smooth, rounded aft end, with the boarding ladder built into its trailing edge. Add the midnight-blue hull and it is still a lovely-looking boat. There are bigger and more practical 44-footers, but very few have this sort of presence.

This example also has the full cockpit seating, which changes the boat completely compared with the fishing-oriented Z44 we saw before. There is seating around the aft end, a table in the middle and access aboard on both sides. Storage sits beneath the seats, including room for the canopies, and there is a cockpit fridge tucked into the furniture. It is exactly the sort of layout you want for a day out with friends.

Then you start spotting the detail. The stainless steel that runs around the cockpit is oval rather than round, beautifully curved and finished with small Zeelander logos on the trailing edges. That sounds like a tiny thing, but there is a lot of work in it. This was always an expensive boat, and touches like these go some way towards explaining why.

Under the hardtop, a large sliding roof opens the cockpit up. The table folds down to half its size when you do not need the full dining setup, while the helm seat can turn around to face aft once you have stopped. The woodwork is excellent too, and the 2024 refit added modern Garmin electronics at the helm.

Seen from the side, the family link is even clearer. Put the Z44 next to one of the later Zeelanders and the relationship is obvious. The proportions have changed as the boats have grown, but the character was there from the beginning.

Go inside and the Z44 gets much more compact. There is a sliding door to close the cabin off from the cockpit and air conditioning, but this was never meant to be a full cruising boat. The interior is there so you can get out of the sun, make some food and spend a night or two aboard without feeling as though you are roughing it.

The forward section does two jobs. Leave it as it is and you have a large double berth. Remove the centre cushion, bring the table up and it becomes a dinette instead. That suits the boat rather well. You get somewhere useful to sit during the day without giving over half the cabin to a permanent bed. There is storage around here too, including one extraordinarily narrow bin which is, at least, very good for narrow things.

The galley is small but well equipped, with a hob, oven, fridge and a little freezer. It is enough for breakfast, lunch or a simple meal aboard, which is really all most owners will ask of it. Again, the point is not to turn the Z44 into a floating cottage. It is to make an afternoon boat useful enough that a night along the coast is no hardship.

Then there is one feature you really do not expect to find down here - a Seakeeper gyro. Getting gyro stabilisation into a 44-footer takes up precious space, but on a boat that will spend a lot of its time at anchor it is a very worthwhile thing to have. Guests may never see it, but they will certainly appreciate what it does.

The heads is also more than a basic day-boat arrangement, with a toilet, basin and separate shower. That separate shower matters if you are actually going to stay aboard rather than simply use the cabin to change after a swim.

Further aft is another sleeping area beneath the cockpit. It is snug rather than grand, but there is a privacy curtain to close it off and even a television. Between that and the forward double, the Z44 is perfectly capable of putting people up overnight.

You could spend much longer aboard if you really wanted to, but that rather misses the point. Buy a Princess V50 or something similar and you will get far more cabin space for your money. What you will not get is a boat that looks or feels like this one. The Z44 suits an owner who wants to head out with friends for the day, run somewhere else for dinner and perhaps stay the night before coming home the next morning. For that, the accommodation is quite enough.

Cabins

The main sleeping area is right forward. In bed mode it gives you a good-sized double, but the centre section can be removed and the table brought up to turn the space back into a dinette. There is a curtain that runs around the area if you want some privacy, and even a television tucked in here. It is not a separate owner's cabin with a door and a lobby, but for a night aboard it does the job perfectly well.
There is another sleeping area further aft beneath the cockpit. Again, it is a compact space rather than a proper second cabin, but it gives you somewhere else to put guests and makes the boat far more useful for a weekend away.

That is really the way to look at the accommodation. If you want two big private cabins and lots of standing room, there are much better boats for the job. The Z44 gives you enough sleeping space to stay aboard when you want to, without allowing the interior to dictate the shape of the boat. For the odd night away after a day on the water, that is probably all most owners will need.

The Z44 has a pair of Volvo Penta IPS600s, each producing 435hp. The pods sit right aft, which keeps the machinery package compact and suits the Z44's sleeker layout. Zeelander was also an early adopter of IPS, and it is easy to see why the system works well in a boat like this.

Top speed is a little over 30 knots - roughly 32-34 knots - with the mid-20s a more natural cruising pace. At those sorts of speeds, the transcript puts range at around 300-400 nautical miles, depending on sea state, speed and the usual variables.

Around 30 Z44s were built between 2012 and 2021, before the model was discontinued and replaced by the Zeelander 5. Most are now well into their second decade, so condition, maintenance and refit history are more useful than simply chasing the newest hull.

In September 2026, YachtBuyer MarketWatch puts the average asking price of the Z44 at around €616,000, with boats spread from roughly €496,500 to €790,000. That is a big range for one model, and it tells you something about the way these boats age. A well-kept or heavily refitted Z44 can be in a very different part of the market from one that still needs money spent on it.

The 2013 boat toured is a good example. It had a refit in 2024, including modern Garmin electronics, and that sort of work can make an older Z44 far more appealing than its build year suggests. But it is worth finding out exactly what any claimed refit involved.  

It is also worth checking that the cockpit is configured the way you want it. The previous Z44 reviewed had been set up more as a fishing platform, while this boat has the full seating arrangement.

Our YachtBuyer MarketWatch currently shows an average time on market of 597 days (as of September 2026). This is a specialist boat, and the pool of buyers looking specifically for a Z44 is much smaller than the pool looking for any other conventional 44ft cruiser.