A spacious, well-designed cat clearly built for serious anglers.
By John Brownlee
Catamarans continue to gain market share as their popularity grows with the hard-core offshore fishing crowd, for many reasons. They offer a stable fishing platform, a smooth ride in most seas, and plentiful storage for everything from live bait to the day’s catch and loose gear. Who wouldn’t want those things?
Front Runner Boatworks of Green Cove Springs, Florida has emerged as a serious player in the growing cat market, with five catamarans among the seven total models they offer. The latest runs 43 feet and we recently got a chance to put it to the test out of the Conch House Marina in St. Augustine, Florida.
Capt. Tony Moore, mate Shane Sloane and Front Runner Marketing Director Alexis Maenza picked up Marlin Publisher Dave Morel and me at the dock, and we headed out. The Continental shelf lies over 50 nautical miles offshore of St. Augustine, but Moore assured us it wouldn’t take us long to get there. As we swung east in the inlet, he throttled up the quad 425hp V10 Mercury Verados and we soon reached a cruise speed of 55 mph.
The morning of our trip dawned with light winds from the east and a two-to-three-foot chop, which the big Front Runner largely ignored. Herein lies the main attraction of cats in most people’s minds: Their ability to run fast, really fast, in seas that would make some monohulls slow down. The twin-stepped 22-degree deadrise hulls, with a running surface designed by naval architect Erwin Gerards, cut through the chop effortlessly. In just over an hour, we found ourselves 60 miles offshore, where we put out a spread of baits.
As Morel and the crew deployed the spread, I explored the boat. With a 12-foot-plus beam, you have an amazing amount of fishing room, even with the standard dual-row seating. Along with the room, you get plentiful storage capacity too. Forward of the console, four huge boxes sit beneath the sole, two on each side, and they drain through a gulper pump. The lounge seat on the forward end of the console has two fore-and-aft insulated spaces, one set up as a fish box, the other for dry storage. Two boxes lie at the bow as well, one for the anchor and another for fenders.
Two huge livewells in the deck on either side of the console each hold 75 gallons, and two more in-deck boxes aft of those have the boat’s pump boxes mounted there. Two more big livewells in the transom, holding about 40 gallons each, bring the total to four, an amazing amount of livewell capacity. Outboard of the two wells in the transom, two storage tubs can be optionally fitted with tuna tubes.
The helm sported twin 24-inch Garmin MFDs and a standard dive door to starboard makes diving or landing big fish a breeze. And the dual-row seating made the long ride home go by quickly, once again at 55 mph. Front Runner has produced a truly impressive boat, built using resin infusion and top-quality composite coring for lower weight and strength. The final product will surely make converts out of even the most hard-core monohull fans. Front Runner Boats; frontrunnerboats.com
Specs: Front Runner 43 Catamaran
LOA: 43’6”
Beam: 12’4”
Draft: 22”
Deadrise: 22 deg.
Fuel: 1,000 gal.
Weight: 18,000 lbs.
Std. power: Quad 300hp V8 Mercury Verados
Note: This article originally ran as a “Small Craft Advisory” feature in Marlin Magazine.
