them as like trucks, where the
issue has nothing to do with
comfort or style — it's all about a
boat that will work hard and for a
long period of time with
absolutely bugger-all maintenance.
Mike Jessop's Ocean Craft from Caloundra in southern QLD, has been featured in and out of F&B's pages many times over the years.
The concept behind them is to create what is arguably the safest boat on the water — no kidding! These are built and intentionally shaped like a rigid inflatable, with a massive buoyancy chamber right around the top of the craft in the shaped cylinders you can see in the photographs.
Originally, the Ocean Craft were inspired by the need for scuba divers to have a floating platform they could anchor off a reef and if necessary, expected to be fully washed over by breaking surf from time to time. Again, not kidding! As a result, this cylinder concept evolved, and a couple of smart fishermen realised it had huge potential in their field, too, not so much for its swamp- ability, so much as its massive load carrying capacity, durability, rough sea performance and inherent safety.
Jessop's boats are the ultimate statement in
pragmatism — they are unpainted (don't need
to be) they're all-aluminium with checker-
plate floors ..it' s probably best to think of
them as like trucks, where the
issue has nothing to do with
comfort or style — it's all about a
boat that will work hard and for a
long period of time with
absolutely bugger-all maintenance.
But there's a bit more to them than that — as it happens, they're all deep vee craft as well, because underneath those two fat cylinders running around the boat, there's a very cunning, rigid deep vee bottom which only becomes apparent when the boat is trucking along flat out — and then as the power comes off and the boat settles back in the water, the cylinders take up the buoyancy and presto — one amazingly stable boat. It's easy to see why hard working fishermen think these are the next best thing to sliced bread.
This is his new one, a 4600 powered by a 50hp Tohatsu and he's got a beaut special price on it now for the first F&B reader to call and put his name on the side.
For more information phone Mike Jessop at
Ocean Craft,
(07) 5499 6937 or
MOB 0416 293 686
Website: www.oceancraft.com.au
Email: sales[@]oceancraft.com.au
F&B
Fisherman & Boatowner April 2011
P.32
Contact Sales
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