Picture the end of the day rather than the middle of it. The boat is anchored, the music is down, and four people are in the water off the back. Someone wants to get out. Where do they climb?
On the Sea Ray SLX 350 the answer is: anywhere. The transom is clear across its whole width, because this boat keeps its engines inside the hull.
There Are Two SLX 350s. This Is the Sterndrive.
Sea Ray sells a 36'0" SLX 350 with MerCruiser sterndrives and a 38'0" SLX 350 Outboard with transom-hung Verados. Same badge, different hulls, and the specification blocks confirm it in every row that matters.
This one is 36'0" long, 10'6" across, and 14,235 pounds dry. It draws 37 inches with the drives down and 26 inches with them up, carries 160 gallons of fuel, and Sea Ray publishes a wide-open throttle band of 44 to 52 mph. Every one of those figures is different from the outboard version except the beam and the fuel. If a listing quotes you 38 feet or 48 to 64 mph, you are reading about the other boat.
Who It's For
This is the large dayboat for the owner whose water time is social rather than solitary, and who cares about what the back of the boat looks like when the engines are off.
The sterndrive layout puts all 14,235 pounds low and inboard. Nothing hangs behind the transom, so the swim platform runs uninterrupted and the boarding ladder is reachable from any point along it. Sea Ray will even fit an automated submersible swim step — a step that lowers into the water — which is an option the outboard SLX 350 does not offer, for the obvious reason that there is no room for it between two V10s.
It is not a fishing boat and not an overnighter in the way a Sundancer is. There are no berths in the specification block and Sea Ray publishes no "Sleeps" row for this model. What there is, is a genuinely enclosed private space, which is the next thing worth talking about.
The Cockpit, and the Port Hideaway
The cockpit is where the money went. An expansive social area with a standard wet bar — standard, not an upcharge — and an aft-facing lounger that converts to a sunpad at the water's edge. The transom loungers conceal: they fold away flush when you want the deck back.
Then there is the Port Hideaway. Sea Ray's name for it is unhelpful; what it actually is, is an air-conditioned interior space on a bowrider, fitted with plush seating, filler cushions, SeaDek flooring and a television with input ports. On a 36-foot open boat in August, an air-conditioned room to put a napping child, a sunburned guest or a phone that has stopped charging is a more useful thing than another cupholder. A berth upgrade is on the option list if you want it to sleep someone; Sea Ray still publishes no berth count, so treat that as a comfortable retreat rather than a stateroom.
The head compartment sits below, served by a 27-gallon holding tank, with a macerator and seacock interlock available as an option rather than fitted as standard.
At the helm: dual 9-inch Simrad SelectResponse GlassDash touchscreens, 12-inch optional, carrying Mercury VesselView Link engine data, chartplotting, depth and fishfinder. Joystick Piloting is part of the standard propulsion package, which is the difference between a 36-footer being a two-person docking job and a one-person one.
Power Is a Ladder, Not a Choice
Standard is twin Mercury MerCruiser 6.2L MPI ECT on Bravo Three X drives with Joystick Piloting, 300 hp a side. From there Sea Ray offers a genuine ladder: the same 6.2L with SeaCore closed cooling at T-300; the 6.2L at T-350 with and without SeaCore; and the 8.2L MAG ECT at T-380, again with or without SeaCore. Six published propulsion configurations, which is more choice than most builders give you at this length.
Two of those decisions are worth real thought. The first is SeaCore. If the boat lives in salt water, closed cooling and corrosion-resistant components stop being an upgrade and start being maintenance you have pre-paid. The second is Dynamic Running Surface, Sea Ray's optional system for automatically adjusting pitch and roll — it flattens bow rise on acceleration and holds a set attitude, and on a 14,235-pound hull with a 21-degree deadrise it changes how the boat feels to a passenger more than any horsepower step does.
Sea Ray publishes 44 to 52 mph wide open and nothing else about performance. No cruising speed, no fuel burn, no range. That band is a real, builder-published figure — treat it as the ceiling, and get the rest yourself on the water: hold your actual cruise, read the flow off the VesselView screen, and divide 160 gallons by it with ten percent held back.
What Sterndrive Ownership Actually Asks
Be clear-eyed about this, because it is the honest cost of the clear transom.
Bellows inspection, gimbal bearing service and drive work are annual realities, and outboard owners simply do not have them. MerCruiser is the most widely serviced sterndrive platform in North America, so parts and technicians are not the problem — the calendar is. You are trading a maintenance schedule for a swim platform and a lower center of gravity.
What comes back the other way is coverage. The SLX 350 is an SLX Sport Boat, which puts it under Sea Ray's five-year SURPA5S+ bow-to-stern factory warranty, plus a Limited Lifetime Structural Hull/Deck warranty to the original owner. Sea Ray excludes only the SLX 400 and SLX 400 Outboard from that scheme — the 350 is inside it, and five years bow-to-stern is longer than most of this class gets.
Published Specifications
| Specification | SLX 350 (sterndrive) |
|---|---|
| Length Overall | 36'0" |
| Beam | 10'6" |
| Draft | 37" drives down / 26" drives up |
| Dry Weight | 14,235 lb |
| Deadrise | 21° |
| Fuel Capacity | 160 gal |
| Water Capacity | 30 gal |
| Holding Tank | 27 gal |
| Standard Propulsion | Twin MerCruiser 6.2L MPI ECT, Bravo Three X, Joystick Piloting (T-300 hp) |
| Optional Propulsion | 6.2L SeaCore T-300; 6.2L T-350; 6.2L SeaCore T-350; 8.2L MAG T-380; 8.2L MAG SeaCore T-380 |
| Wide Open Throttle | 44–52 mph |
| CE Capacity | Yacht Certified |
| Cruise Speed / Range | Not published by Sea Ray |
Where to Start
Sea-trial this boat and the SLX 350 Outboard on the same day, in the same water. They are two feet apart in length and 1,208 pounds apart in dry weight, and everything you are actually deciding between shows up in the first ten minutes underway and the last ten minutes at anchor.
Then stand on the swim platform with the engines off and decide whether that clear, full-width deck is worth an annual service appointment. For a lot of owners it plainly is.
Talk it through with us: TS@MintedYachts.com, +1 (404) 805-9819, or the form on this page.