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| Is there such a thing as the perfect boat? |
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Every mariner goes through life in an epic, never-ending quest: the search for the perfect boat. And if we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard a thousand times that there simply is no such thing. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a load of BS. I’ve tested the perfect boat not once, not twice, but three times—and after learning about those three tests, you’ll know how to find the perfect boat, too.
No Pain, No Gain – Test #1
The bow seemed to run up a ramp, jutting skyward as we climbed a foaming white-cap and launched into the air. The waves were (insert favorite awe-inspiring narrative of rough sea conditions HERE) really, really big. At least, those one-footers seemed big, because I was getting my ass pounded to a pulp, trying hold on as my 16-foot fiberglass eggshell of death careened from aquatic speed bump to oceanic pothole. Ouch, ad infinitum. Later in life I will blame this boat for my chronic back pain, my wife will blame it for a dislocated shoulder, and my fishing buddy Scotty will (rightfully) blame it for a testicular injury that caused his cojones to swell up like terrorized blowfish.
This boat is built so lightly that its gunwales wiggle when you shake them. The “unsinkable foam floatation” consists of Styrofoam blocks shoved under the bench seats. Its bottom design is about as complex as that of a barge. And yet I love this boat with a passion, and will continue loving it until the passion is finally surpassed by the ecstasy of selling it. It is my boat. It is my ticket to the Chesapeake Bay, the fish and crabs that dwell there, and the unmatchable feeling of freedom that comes with pursuing them—no matter how painful it may be. This boat is an Apache Skiff 16, and if you’re ever invited on one, you should both jump for joy and run the hell away.
The Apache has two redeeming features which set it apart from the competition: it’s very light so it runs efficiently with a small powerplant, and it’s cheap. Very, very cheap, with a hull-only price tag just north of two grand. In fact, when I got mine it was the cheapest little 16-footer around—which, at the time, made it the perfect boat for me.
Specs:
LOA – 15’9
Beam – 5’8”
Displacement – 560
Power – 30-hp. two-stroke outboard
Cruise speed/fuel burn – 22-mph/2.2 GPH
Top speed/fuel burn – 28-mph/3.1 gph
TEST NOTES:
Construction – Extremely light; the gunwales wiggle, laminated bench seating cracked where it met the hullsides, and there is no liner or deck.
Performance – Speeds and handling are average for a boat of this size and nature, though it goes a bit faster than most boats with similar power, because it’s so light.
Seakeeping – Hold on tightly, and make an appointment with your chiropractor before leaving the dock.
Stand-out Features – This boat is so darn cheap, even a recent college grad working for minimum wage can afford it. To thousands of people, that makes this the perfect boat.
The Two Happiest Days blah, blah, blah – Test #2
The day I bought a Twin Vee 19 Bay Cat, the Apache ceased being the perfect boat and became that damn old thing I couldn’t wait to sell. Flash-back to the first time I ever ran a Twin Vee 19: I’ve been staying in touch with the local dealer, waiting until we have a steady 20-knot breeze to do the sea trial. When that day came we launched in the Severn River, and rounded Tolly Point to discover a steady three foot knock-your-teeth-out chop Chesapeake Bay chop. Perfect. The boat handled this chop unlike any I’d ever tested before, skipping from peak to peak more like a hovercraft than a boat, with impacts that were a small fraction of what I expected. Often I caught myself clutching the grab rail in anticipation of the blow as we raced towards a particularly large wave, only to discover it was completely unnecessary; this was without a doubt the smoothest-running 19-footer I’d ever set foot on. When we hit the dock, I wrote out the deposit check.
Through the next seven years of non-stop Twin Vee testing, I discovered that short of a hurricane, there really wasn’t anything the Chesapeake would dole out that the boat couldn’t take. It was the most competent 19 feet of fiberglass I’d set foot on, much less owned. It proved able to run to the Ham Bone, 34 miles offshore in the Atlantic; cross the bay in40-knot gusts when a summer squall hit; and run Bogue inlet when the wind and current collided, creating ominously sheer walls of green-blue water. At the same time the boat was an ideal fishing platform, with far more deck space than other boats of the same size and price, the ability to run in a mere foot of water, and low gunwales that made landing fish easier than usual.
So, why hasn’t everyone else in the world come to the conclusion that the Twin Vee 19 is the perfect boat? There were some details that might disturb some people. Like a deck that wasn’t completely level, which stressed the T-top leg attachment points unevenly. Eventually, bolts started ripping out. The deck also cracked near the transom, which allowed water to slowly make its way into one of the hulls and saturate the foam in its belly; drying it and resurfacing the deck was a significant repair. Yet despite these perceived deficiencies the Twin Vee remained, in my eyes and at that time, the perfect boat.
Specs:
LOA – 19’0”
Beam – 7’6”
Displacement – 1,195
Power – 140-hp. four-stroke outboard
Cruise speed/fuel burn – 27-mph/6.1 GPH
Top speed/fuel burn – 40.2-mph/12.0 GPH
TEST NOTES:
Construction – Solid, but fit and finish is not slick and clean. Sloppy quality control in deck construction led to repair jobs after about five years of hard use.
Performance – Speeds are what you’d expect but handling is a bit quirky because the boat stays flat when turned, instead of banking.
Seakeeping – This one won’t compress your spine, even when it’s rough out.
Stand-out Features – Up-swept transom design will keep the outboard’s powerhead above water, even if the boat becomes swamped; it’s incredible competency in rough seas, smooth ride, and great fishability make it the perfect boat—period.
Three’s a Charm
Perfection is elusive, and it finally eluded the Twin Vee—when I purchased a 22 Glacier Bay. The Glacier was significantly larger than the Twin Vee, and with a full load of three kids joining me on virtually every venture these days, I needed the space. But, could it hold up to the other boat’s past of perfection?
At first, I had my doubts. I bought the Glacier Bay with dead motors, and intended to rebuild this boat from the hull up. To finance the endeavor I had to first sell the Twin Vee, which meant the only functional boat I had for a period of three months was a 12 foot polyethylene bathtub. Those three months were torturous—mostly for my wife, who claimed I acted like a complete a-hole for 90 days straight. Once the boat was up and running, she made me promise to never again go for an extended period of time without a boat. As I nodded in agreement I knew that regardless of how the boat panned out, I’d found the perfect woman.
With new outboards on the transom, new wiring in the rigging tubes, and new electronics at the dash, the initial sea trial would be a full-on family fishing trip. And a short eight hours later the boat was plastered with smiles from gunwale to gunwale—I knew that once again, I had found perfection.
Specs:
LOA – 22’0”
Beam – 8’6”
Displacement – 3,500
Power – Twin 90-hp. four-stroke outboard
Cruise speed/fuel burn – 22-mph/7.9GPH
Top speed/fuel burn – 26.8-mph/16.8 GPH
TEST NOTES:
Construction – Extremely solid; this is a hull that will never die.
Performance – Speeds are lackluster, but that’s what you get for running a semi-displacement hull. Newer models plane more and go faster. This one also turns funny, with a slight outward lean.
Seakeeping – In this regard the boat is a shining star—you won’t find a 22-footer that runs any smoother. In a beam sea, however, expect some rock and roll.
Stand-out Features – Huge amounts of deck area make you feel like the boat has four or five more feet of LOA. There’s a mini-cabin in the port hull, with a head compartment. Every member of the family practically begs to go out on it, each and every weekend, and that makes its perfection undeniable.
After testing literally thousands of boats for magazines and web sites, and more importantly, owning these three boats which constituted incredibly in-depth long-term tests, I have reached one final conclusion: the old saying that there’s no such thing as the perfect boat is dead-wrong—in fact, every boat is the perfect boat. Because what makes one model or another “perfect” is the state of mind it puts you in.
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