A design that we were working on the spring of 2008 and I have great hopes of this being the next large boat for us to build in our shop. The customer came to me with a rather unusual request of a long-distance trawler capable of passages in any waters at any time of the year, especially hi-latitude type conditions. For those of you not versed in the disciplines of geography, the definition of hi-latitude is cruising in the far north Arctic and the far south Antarctic regions. A crew of two would be all that is required to handle her in those conditions but she needed to be able to carry several passengers with comfort to those remote waters.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how this design evolves. The customer has a background of working in Alaska on tug and fishing boats in the early 1970s, experience very similar to mine, and our evolved boating “eyes” are very much alike.

She is very much a blown-up and enlarged Sockeye 45 type of hull, much deeper and heavier of course, but with the same fantail stern that I am so fond of. Her pilothouse is medium-sized and placed further aft and it has a great flying bridge for piloting the boat when visibility is of the greatest importance. The galley is below down in the fo’c’sle area and there is room in the pilothouse for the entire crew to sit in warm, protected comfort. Keep an eye out for updates to this design as I work on it… — Sam Devlin