Illustrations by Jim Ewing
GRAND BANKS 42 EUROPA
Designer Ken Smith’s Grand Banks 42 is an acknowledged cruising classic, a salty trawler yacht with an aft cabin, sturdy wheelhouse and workboat-inspired profile that was built for nearly 40 years. The Europa version was an offspring of that design. It rode the same semidisplacement hull as the original, but the look was more contemporary, and an extended salon replaced the aft cabin, capped by a hardtop that covered the cockpit and side decks.
The boat was first built in wood for the European market, hence the Europa name. Introduced in the United States in 1979, the fiberglass 42 Europa was in production for a quarter century, although with a brief halt.
There was plenty of room on board this well-built cruiser. The big flybridge had a helm and companion seats forward, and space for a table and chairs or an L-shaped lounge aft. A dinghy could be stowed on the extended hardtop.
The salon, accessed through sliding doors aft, had Grand Banks’ trademark parquet sole and satin-varnished teak. Chairs, a drop-leaf table and an L-shaped lounge made for a comfortable living space, which stretched from the lower helm to the cockpit on a single level. The galley-up was forward to port, the helm to starboard.
The boat’s two staterooms were forward, down three steps. The master had a queen-size berth, and teak joinery added a classic touch. The guest stateroom was set up with either twin berths or a double berth. In the shared head compartment were a VacuFlush head, a Corian counter with a molded sink and a stall shower.
Production paused in 1991, and a version with a larger forward cabin debuted in 1996. The new model had an extended cruising range with its 600-gallon fuel supply and semidisplacement running speeds. With Grand Banks’ solid construction and creature comforts, the 42 Europa was a boat that deserved to go cruising.
TOLLYCRAFT 48
When R.M. “Tolly” Tollefson founded Tollycraft Boats in 1958 in Kelso, Washington, he could hardly have imagined that he would become an icon in Pacific Northwest boatbuilding, or that his boats would be sought after as capable open-
water cruising vessels on both coasts. From 1952 to 1967, Tollycraft built four wooden models from 24 to 34 feet. They became the foundation of the company’s first fiberglass designs in 1967.
The Tollycraft 48 Motor Yacht was introduced in 1976. Noted Pacific Northwest naval architect Ed Monk Jr. designed the semidisplacement hull with a springy sheer, upswept bow, sharp entry and a modestly raked stem with a deep forefoot to handle large waves. With a draft of 3 feet, 2 inches, a full-length keel to protect the running gear and a displacement of about 38,000 pounds, the 48 had excellent seakeeping characteristics and a comfortable ride across a wide range of conditions.
The designer used the 15-foot, 2-inch beam to give the boat a modest cockpit and wide side decks with bulwarks and handrails that ran almost the full length of the boat. The layout included two staterooms, a raised salon, dinghy storage atop the aft cabin, and a wide flybridge with two captain’s chairs and an L-shaped lounge with a table.
Notable features in the main salon included a lower helm station to starboard, twin access doors to the side decks and internal stairs to the flybridge. The U-shaped galley was three steps down, forward and to port. Early layouts showed a banquet table to starboard and a large forward cabin with an ensuite head. The owner’s cabin aft had a double berth, abundant stowage lockers and en-suite head.
For the first 10 years of its production, the 48 Motor Yacht was powered by twin 210-hp Caterpillars or a pair of 320-hp Caterpillar 3208TA diesels. Later models were driven by a pair of 300-hp Cummins diesels or 375-hp Cats.
In 1991, the 80-year-old Tollefson took delivery of his own 48, a striking blue hull with Tolly on the transom. He spent the next 10 years cruising the American and Canadian coasts of the Pacific Northwest and took one trip to Alaska. He retired from cruising at 90 and passed away in 2011, four months after 165 “Tolly fans” serenaded him at his 100th birthday celebration.
DUFFY 35
This Maine-built Downeaster tops the list of the Atlantic Boat Company’s most popular models, with more than 370 produced in 36 years, and it’s been called one of the most popular lobster boat hulls of all time.
The Duffy 35 goes back to basics. It rides a built-down hull with a fine, clean entry and flattened after sections for speed and stability. There’s a full keel for stability at low speed and tracking at high speed, and a protected prop, which is a must in lobster-pot-strewn waters.
Spencer Lincoln is credited with the final design of the Duffy 35 hull. In 1978, he began working with boatbuilder Richard Duffy, who’d designed a 34-foot lobster boat in the kitchen of his Maine home. Lincoln wanted to take advantage of fiberglass construction and big engines. Speed was important to Lincoln, so he flattened the sides of the traditional hull, moved the center of buoyancy forward and brought the angle of the prop shaft closer to horizontal.
The Duffy 35 emerged in 1982 with a smooth-riding, easily driven hull that would be used on hundreds of recreational and commercial boats. The Duffy 35 was updated in 2002 with a new hull mold, and in 2003, two new deck molds were introduced to create more specialized models, including one for family cruising. The 35 is still built. There are galley-up and galley-down interiors, and a head/shower combination or separate head/shower. Owners can choose salon and stateroom layouts, along with engines from 200 to 700 hp, for speeds averaging 18 to 30 knots.
MONK 36
It’s been called a cruiser’s cruiser. The durable Monk 36 by Ed Monk Jr. helped to popularize the recreational trawler during the 1980s. It turned what was at first a niche market into one of America’s most popular boat types.
At just under 40 feet overall with a 13-foot beam, the Monk 36 was designed with a semidisplacement hull, a full keel, and a protected prop and rudder. The bow was tall and flared, and the hull had high freeboard all around, with molded-in spray rails.
The cabin had a master stateroom aft and a V-berth forward, each with its own head compartment. The salon was laid out with teak furniture, and there was a sliding door at the lower helm. (There was also a helm station on the flybridge.) Teak trim and teak-and-holly soles were used throughout. The L-shaped galley had a home-style
refrigerator/freezer, a three-burner stove and an oven. There was a bathtub in some early models, too.
A single 120- to 135-hp diesel provided an average speed of around 7 knots, where fuel use was a stingy 5 gph. Later models were equipped with a 220-hp Cummins diesel, increasing the cruise speed to 9 or 10 knots.
The Monk 36 was first built in 1982 in Taiwan, then in Nova Scotia in 1992. The model was in production until 2007, with more than 250 hulls delivered to owners.
When it comes to performance and seakeeping, this cruising-boat design became a gold standard.
MARLOW 65 EXPLORER
Company founder David Marlow was known for his long-distance luxury cruisers, but maybe more so for his hull designs, all of which were capable and efficient in deep water. Marlow co-designed the 65 with Doug Zurn, the Marblehead, Massachusetts, naval architect who gained fame with his Shelter Island 38.
“The 65 was our design No. 9954, which we started in 1999,” Zurn told Soundings. “It was built in Taiwan at President Marine, where the tooling was constructed to allow the development of several other boats with similar characteristics, notably the Marlow 61C and the 57C. The original boat was also called the 65C, with the ‘C’ designating a conventional stern and differentiating it from an ‘E’ for a Euro-style stern developed later.”
Viewed in profile, the underwater portion of the hull showed several distinctive features. There was the modestly deep forefoot curving upward to a clipper-
profile stem beneath substantial bow flare, a pair of lifting strakes between the shallow keel and a full-length chine, and a long, clean run warping to a 14-degree transom deadrise. A comparatively shallow keel with a depth of 4 feet, 5 inches added tracking ability. Abaft the keel, a pair of fin-like struts enclosed the run of the shafts to the prop, adding protection while helping to reduce the drag of conventional running gear.
For beauty’s sake, as well as a lower center of gravity, the profile of the deckhouse was kept low. On the flybridge was abundant room for RIB storage, large lockers, built-in seating and a centerline helm.
The lower helm was situated slightly to starboard of centerline, creating space for a lounge and table to port for those who wanted to keep the helmsman company. Two doors lead from the bridge deck to the side decks, which are covered by flybridge overhangs. The galley abaft the helm was large, U-shaped and well-positioned to serve those in the salon or on the bridge deck. Below, the accommodations included an amidships master stateroom, a large forward guest stateroom and a portside guest stateroom.
OCEAN ALEXANDER 50 MK I PILOTHOUSE
Debuting in 1978, the Ocean Alexander 50 MK I Pilothouse launched with an impeccable design pedigree. This was a liveaboard yacht based on a hull designed by one of America’s leading naval architects, Robert Edwin “Ed” Monk Jr., the son of pioneering trawler designer George Edwin William Monk (aka Ed Monk Sr.), who produced some 3,000 designs during a 40-year career that began in 1934. Working in wood, Monk Sr. produced powerboats that were not only practical and efficient, but, as author Dan MacNaughton put it, “interesting, harmonious and functional.”
With the Ocean Alexander MK I, Monk Jr. brought the family tradition of great design to a new generation of boaters. The comfortable, rugged yacht recalled the Alaskan trawler with its flared bow, high topsides and distinctive Portuguese bridge that protected a sturdy pilothouse. Monk started with a semiplaning hull designed to achieve speeds between 12 and 14 knots with a pair of efficient and relatively low-horsepower engines. Standard propulsion was twin 270-hp Cummins diesels or 320-hp Caterpillars.
The builder made practical use of the 50-footer’s interior space, as illustrated by the Ocean Alexander’s three-level layout, featuring a salon with lounge seating and dining for up to six, a complete U-shaped galley-up and a raised pilothouse with side doors and a watch berth. The master stateroom was amidships, with a queen-size berth and a head compartment with a shower. Alternate layouts with one or two guest staterooms (plus a guest head compartment) were available.
Built in Taiwan through 1983, the Ocean Alexander MK I Pilothouse remains a popular and enduring design that still attracts trawler boaters, more than a quarter-century after the final hull was built.
WESMAC 42
In its 30-plus years, Wesmac Custom Boats has built more than 600 vessels at its yard in Surry, Maine. Customers include commercial fishermen, law enforcement officials, research labs and hardcore recreational boaters. The business started on the telephone.
It was 1987, and fisherman and boatbuilder Steve Wessel and his partner Mac Pettegrow were finishing hulls for a Maine builder. Then the phone rang. It was a retired engineer who happened to be a Chesapeake Bay boater. He wanted Wessel and Pettegrow to come up with a new design, one that incorporated the hard chines of the fast, skeg-built (with keels bolted onto flat bottoms) Chesapeake Bay deadrise hulls, but that also had the stability and efficiency of Downeast “built-down” hulls, with keels integral to a rounded bottom.
The Wesmac 42 was the result. Its 42-foot, 3-inch
fiberglass hull had a full built-down keel, but the upper edges where it met the bottom were angled, as they would be in a skeg-built deadrise hull. The gracefully flared spoon bow made a sharp entry; the full forward section became a straight run to a flattened, planing stern with squared-off, molded-in hard chines running the full length. There was a tuck-in at the curved transom with a modest tumblehome to handle following seas.
Standard power was a single diesel, up to 800 hp, that would deliver a cruising speed around 17 knots and a top end of about 21 knots. The layout included a V-berth forward and a stateroom aft, along with an enclosed head with a stall shower. Four steps up, the salon was arranged with an L-shaped settee that converted to a double berth. The galley, to port, came with a stove, an oven and a refrigerator/freezer. The list of amenities ran from air conditioning to a teak-and-holly cabin sole. The cockpit controls were Chesapeake style.
Fans of the Wesmac 42 have called it a classically pretty shape that sails easy and runs fast. That’s high praise for a Downeast-deadrise hybrid that’s floated many cruising fantasies since its launch.
ROSBOROUGH 246
Today, quite a few boatbuilders use the term “pocket trawler” to describe the models they build. But back in 1987, this husky little cruiser out of the Canadian Maritimes just may have been the first of that genre.
Designer and builder James “Doug” Rosborough founded Rosborough Boats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the 1950s. The yard was known for traditional wooden sailing vessels until, 30 years later, his son, James (known as “Bob”), took over the business and turned the focus toward fiberglass powerboats. The younger Rosborough experimented with an 18, a 28 and a 35 before settling on a trailerable 25-footer for couples to take on weekend cruises. The Rosborough 246 F debuted in 1987 and caused a buzz. The “pocket trawler” was born.
There were two versions of this model: a wheelhouse and a sedan cruiser. In both, the standard layout included a V-berth that converted to a table and seating area; an enclosed head compartment with a marine head, sink and shower; and a dinette with bench seating and a table that converted to a berth. Galley gear could include a refrigerator/freezer and stovetop, along with a sink and stowage. The steering station was to starboard, with a pedestal seat and a sliding door to the deck. Recommended power was a pair of outboards—150 hp maximum each—or a single diesel of about 190 hp.
Rosborough produced about 500 of the boats through the early 2000s before selling to Eastern Boats of Milton, New Hampshire. Now marketed as a series from Rosborough Boats USA, there are three models in the line: Halifax, Digby and Yarmouth, with each of the names reflecting the design’s Nova Scotia roots.
MIDNIGHT LACE 44
Designer Tom Fexas, born in 1941, began his professional life as a nuclear submarine engineer. In the early ’70s, he decided to design an “ideal boat, without any thought to the wants or needs of the marine marketplace,” he said. The Midnight Lace 44 was long and slim with a black hull. Built at Golden Wave Shipyards, which was founded by Hong Kong-based Cheoy Lee shipyard for Fexas’ creation, the boat was a standout from the beginning.
The 44 closely resembled designs of the ’20s, with slender, easily driven hull shapes. As Fexas put it, these were the “slippery old hulls that were developed during the age of the rumrunner, both elegant and fast.” The Midnight Lace 44 had a fine entry, narrow forward sections and rounded chines to reduce drag. Buoyant after sections reduced squatting at the transom. The Lace didn’t so much plane as slice through the water.
Twin diesels were placed well aft to allow more room for accommodations. Tests of the prototype with a pair of 210-hp Renaults showed a cruising speed around 27 knots, using 18 gallons of fuel an hour. Renault called the performance “a tribute to the design of the bottom of this yacht.”
The Midnight Lace debuted in 1978 at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, standing in stark contrast to the beamy, bulky, white fiberglass cabin cruisers of the time. The art deco look featured rounded edges and swept-back structures, a forward station with an old-style crew windshield, and plenty of varnished wood trim. The appointments in the double-stateroom layout were fit for a cruising yacht from the Gilded Age.
Around 20 of the 44s were built over the years. Fexas began a redesign in the early 2000s but died in 2006, leaving the Midnight Lace 44 behind in her original design only.
This article was originally published in the April 2026 issue.
