Island Style
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Many a proud and nervous father has spent anxious moments in a delivery room while his child enters the world, but rare indeed is the parent whose 42’ (that’s feet, not inches) long progeny has a birth weight of 32,000 lbs.
In this unusual case, the proud papa is Ocean Isle homebuilder Scott Quaintance, whose new baby girl might be a little less petite than average, but no one could say she wasn’t a beauty as she entered her watery world at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, June 30, at the new Ocean Isle Marina and Yacht Club.
An express sportfisher, Quaintance’s new Island Style Q42 express is the culmination of several years’ worth of work mating his profession, designing and building custom homes, and his passion, sport fishing.
With a lifetime of fishing for everything from red drum to giant bluefin tuna and marlin from a variety of factory and semi-custom boats, Quaintance had a pretty good idea of what he wanted in a boat. And at his wife’s urging nearly four years ago, he decided to make it a reality by building his very own fully custom sportfisherman right at home.
His idea involved blending the legendary sea-keeping qualities of a traditional Carolina hull with the style and look of classic Palm Beach boats, along with features like prop-pockets that help suit the boat to its home waters.
“I wanted some of the Carolina flare, but I didn’t want it over-exaggerated,” said Quaintance. “Plus, instead of going with a steep, Carolina-style shear line, we went with more of a Florida style, where it rolls back to the cockpit. It’s a bit of both worlds, while maintaining the handling of a Carolina boat in big seas.”
Prop pockets substantially reduce the Q42’s draft as compared to similar style and size boats, which is almost a necessity to deal with the shallow and constantly changing inlets characteristic of southeastern NC.
Additionally, the pockets reduce the angle of the shafts between the props and motors, improving the vessel’s speed and economy and keeping the transom from digging in when backing down on a hot gamefish like a bluefin tuna or a blue marlin.
To realize his ideas, Quaintance hired famed marine architects Donald L. Blount and Associates to draw up the plans for the boat. The firm’s reputation for designing hulls whose excellent ride at high speeds sacrifices no low speed maneuverability and control fit precisely with the homebuilder’s ideas for the boat.
Knowing that he knew how to build a custom house, but not exactly a custom yacht, Quaintance traveled to Wanchese, NC, to recruit Dennis Denzin, a 20+ year veteran of the custom boat construction and fiberglassing industries to head up his build team.
The Island Style Custom Yachts Q42 follows the traditional North Carolina custom construction method of cold molding, wherein the boat is laid out with a set of lateral jigs to which to which planks are glued to lay up the hull shape. Quaintance chose Okoume marine plywood for its strength, and the hull was glassed in after it was laid up, producing a highly durable hull that is also substantially lighter than a solid fiberglass production hull, further improving its speed and economy numbers.
With the pair of 865 hp Cat C15 motors that Quaintance selected for the hull, it will cruise at approximately 35 knots and top out around 42, definitely speedy for a 42’ boat.
Speed, ride, handling are all part of the equation for a top-line modern sportfishing yacht, but without fishing-minded features and layout, they won’t do a captain much good.
The Q42 features transom and in-deck insulated storage boxes, fed by an Eskimo ice maker, so the boat is not only capable of carrying anglers to a limit of yellowfin tuna with a few wahoo on top, it’ll also haul the resulting meat back in cold comfort.
A 45 gallon livewell and set of built-in tuna tubes makes the vessel as at home live-baiting the deep blue as it is fast-trolling a spread of ballyhoo or big game lures.
And a bait-prep station and plenty of tackle storage in a unique layout ensure that the lures and dead baits don’t feel left out, either.
With air-conditioning for both the helm and salon, captain and anglers alike can enjoy cool comfort on the way out and on the fishing grounds no matter what steamy tropical location the Q42 takes them to.
Of course, a custom homebuilder should be no stranger to luxury amenities, and it wouldn’t do for his custom boat to lack them either. To that end, the vessel features a teak and holly interior; teak cockpit, coaming, covering boards, and toe rail; mezzanine seating; headroom in spades in the salon and engine room; a 7’ double berth forwards; a full galley; and a full head with a separate fiberglass shower stall, to name a few.
With just a few finishing touches to put on the boat as it sits in its new berth at Ocean Isle Marina, just a long cast from Quaintance’s Carolina Bluewater Construction headquarters, the boat will be on her way to her first tournament next week, the Barta Boys and Girls Club Billfish in Beaufort.
Anyone interested in checking the boat out and learning even more can inspect Quaintance’s newest custom creation at the bulkhead slip on the Beaufort Town Docks from Wednesday, June 15, to Saturday, June 18, during the event. Any angler interested in a unique custom express fusing the ultimate in luxury and fishability owes themselves a look at the Island Style Custom Yachts Q42.
For more information on the boat or how to commission another one of a kind Island Style custom build (the cold molding process means Quaintance can build one of virtually any size), give Scott Quaintance a call at (910) 279-4950.
