John Salafia and Briana “Bri” Smith got into boating almost a decade ago while they were living together in Essex, Connecticut. They were renting an apartment on Main Street, and, just a few blocks away, the Connecticut River was beckoning.
“We were so close to the boat launch, we just wanted a way to get on the water,” says Bri, who was introduced to boating 10 years ago, when she started working at Active Interest Media. She is now the design director for Soundings magazine.
John didn’t have boating experience either. He worked up the street from the river at the local inn and wanted to get on the water too. “It was hard not to have a boat, being so close to the water,” John says. That desire was fed by his boss, who took him offshore and got him started with the fishing bug.
The couple’s first boat was a 1989 Boston Whaler 13 with a 25-hp outboard that they kept on a trailer. They’d roll it down Main Street and use it on the Connecticut River. John would fish, and the couple would poke around on the weekends. Eventually, they put a 40-hp Black Max Mercury outboard on it after John hit a rockpile with the 25.
The Whaler got them out on the water, but it quickly became clear that a small boat could be too small. “Being on a 13-foot boat on the Connecticut River was sometimes scary,” Bri says.
They sold the Whaler after a year and a half, and moved up to a 2003 Trophy 1802 walkaround with its original 125-hp Mercury engine. That boat got them out on Long Island Sound, where John pursued his rapidly growing appetite for saltwater fishing, but he still wanted to go out farther and faster. “I wanted to be able to go out to the Race and beyond,” John says.
The Trophy was too big for daily launching and retrieving, so they found a slip in Westbrook. From there, John would fish near Branford and Old Saybrook, and, on the weekends, the couple would go exploring. “We would take it to Duck Island and scoot around the shoreline,” Bri says. In 2018, when John got a new job, they moved to Newport, Rhode Island, but slips and moorings in that yachting mecca were beyond their budget. They sold the Trophy and lived without a boat.
A year later, they purchased a house in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and got married. The house came with a driveway, and that got them thinking. “We knew we wanted to be back on the water,” Bri says.
When one of John’s good friends bought a boat during the pandemic, and John was out on the water with him all the time, he knew that he and Bri needed to get a boat of their own again. “John was sending me a boat on Marketplace three times a day,” Bri says with a laugh. They were trying to spend between $15,000 and $25,000. “Boats were so expensive during Covid,” Bri says. John adds: “The used-boat market was an absolute joke.”
Then, while driving through Jamestown, Rhode Island, John spotted a 1960 Kells 22 Brenton Reef Fisherman by the side of the road. The owner wanted $2,200, including the outboard and a trailer. John offered to take it off his hands for free and towed it home. The Kells Fisherman needed a ton of work, but John figured he could fix it up.
An online search yielded little information about the Kells, but John found someone in Tiverton who told him that the boats were not self-bailing and that some of them had sunk at their moorings. “There was a drainage issue,” John says. “I was going to raise the deck a few inches so it would self-bail.”
John stripped the Kells down to a bare hull and took the sole, stringers and transom out, but when he determined how much resin he’d need, he thought twice. “I needed 57 gallons of resin,” John says. “It became overwhelming. I didn’t think I could do it by myself.”
He found a local guy to glass-in the transom and the stringers. He dropped off the boat in the spring, but by summer, it hadn’t been touched, so John told the builder to forget it. By then, the boat had become an aggravation, and, in the heat of the moment, John brought it to the dump. “They smashed it right in front of him,” Bri recalls. “I think John cried a little bit.”
They sold the trailer and the engine. When all was said and done, they had broken even on the Kells.
Boatless once again, John threw himself into finding another used boat. He wanted to get a 25- or 28-foot Bertram, but used-boat prices were still high.
Then, John discovered pangas.
Pangas are simple, open, outboard-powered boats that are widely used throughout the developing world, including in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Fishermen often operate them off beaches.
The design’s origin story is somewhat murky. One version is that around 1970, Yamaha helped design a low-cost skiff for Asian fishermen to get on and off beaches, so Yamaha could sell more outboards. Another version is that the panga was developed around 1969 in La Paz, Mexico, by an American named Mac Shroyer to get local fishermen on and off the beaches of the Baja California Peninsula.
Both stories are true, but who did it first is still being debated. Regardless, the Japanese and Mexican designs have much in common. They each have a high bow, a narrow waterline beam and a delta-shaped running surface. The high bow provides buoyancy for retrieving heavy fishing nets, while the narrow beam and the delta-shaped running surface allow the hull to be propelled by a modest outboard. These boats often have a planing speed of 35 knots or more.
The World Bank financed the development of the design and promoted its use worldwide. The goal was to help improve the lives of fishermen with the simple, affordable, versatile boat. On a panga, a couple of people with nets or longlines could go through the surf, travel 40 to 50 miles, and bring back a sizable catch in a safe, stable craft that would still handle properly. The sharp hull entry, the narrow beam and the flat surface area aft allowed the boat to plane using very little fuel.
For John, who wanted to get offshore on a budget, the panga made sense. “I don’t know how I got fixated on a panga,” John says. “I found it on the internet, started looking at the fuel economy, and I was like, ‘This is the boat to get.’”
Initially, he looked at one from an importer, but then he found Panga Sports, a Tennessee company that offered a 22-footer with a 90-hp Honda on a trailer in the mid-$30,000 range. John talked repeatedly with Panga Sports owner Justin Davis, who has a fiberglass company that builds parts for other boat companies. Davis had purchased the Panga molds from a builder in Florida in 2019. “I bothered him to the point where he almost wouldn’t talk to me,” John says, “but the price was so good, I couldn’t justify buying anything else.”
Bri wasn’t so convinced. Getting her to spend more than $25,000 would prove a much taller order. At one point, John told Bri he was going to build one, but by then, they were expecting a baby, and the Kells project was still fresh on Bri’s mind. “I was like, ‘No projects,’” Bri says.
Eventually, John got Bri hooked on the idea. “He told me we’d get more bang for our buck,” Bri says. So, they bought it sight unseen and paid a shipper to bring it up from Tennessee.
The boat, trailer and engine arrived in spring 2022. Except for electronics, the boat was ready to go. John added a 9-inch multifunction display (he upgraded to a 12-inch within a year) and made small improvements. He added a thru-hull for the live well, which had been hooked up to the sole drain and would sometimes leave a couple inches of water in the stern. He also added a Fusion stereo with speakers.
The couple love their new Panga Sports 22. It has turned out to be nearly perfect for the way they boat. In almost two seasons, they have run it all over Rhode Island—to Jamestown, to the Newport Folk Festival, way up Narragansett Bay and to Block Island. “It’s a short ride on a nice day,” John says about the run to Block Island. “It’s not even a half hour.”
They keep the boat in nearby Jerusalem on Point Judith Pond at a friend’s slip—a huge financial break for the couple, since a local marina wanted 250 dollars per foot. Jerusalem is a five- to 10-minute drive from their home and allows John to go fishing at the drop of a hat. “I have to keep it in the water,” he says about satisfying his fishing affliction. “I go out at 4 a.m. before I go to work. I fish around Point Judith for a couple of hours and I’m at the office by 8. If I had to trailer it, I would never get out during the week.”
The boat’s fuel economy has been a boon for their budget, too. At about 26 knots, they average 5 to 6 miles per gallon. With a 40-gallon tank, the boat gives them a 200-mile-plus range. When he’s out fishing, for safety, John doesn’t turn off the engine. “I just leave it running,” he says about the 90-hp Honda. “The fuel efficiency is unbelievable, and the range is probably my favorite part.”
The boat has also lived up to its tough offshore reputation. “It’s a lot more seaworthy than it looks,” John says. “Everybody thinks it’s going to be very rocky, but it’s almost like a Carolina Skiff. It’s flat in the back for drifting, but it has a pointy bow for cutting through the water.”
He adds that there is a limit to how comfortable the boat can be offshore. “We pick our days when we want to go far,” he says. “If you have to drive into a 2- to 3-foot headwind in a chop, you’ll hate it, but it’s good downwind and in a quarter. We probably sacrifice some ride quality, but it’d be hard to stuff that boat. The bow never dips. You can’t really beat it.”
The boat is safe, but when the weather kicks up, making longer runs can be challenging. “The boat could be more comfortable,” John says. “I’m a big guy. On the last fishing trip, we did 125 miles. I’m a little sore, but what you make up for in fuel economy outweighs the discomforts when you have a 6-foot beam and a little flatter bottom.”
Besides fishing, the Panga’s shallow draft allows the family—which now includes 2-year-old daughter Nella—to beach the boat and go gunkholing. “We have a salt pond, and everybody likes to anchor and hang out,” John says. “We can go into a foot and a half of water.”
Bri also loves the boat. “It’s great for our family,” she says. “It does all the things we want to do: beach up, anchor up, take the baby to the salt pond, go offshore fishing, and we pay nothing for gas.”
Like her parents, Nella now has the boating bug. “If we’re anchored and we can’t go to the beach, she gets restless, but she loves the water,” Bri says.
John says that overall, the couple is happy with the purchase. “I literally beat the crap out of it,” he says. “I think I have 280 hours on it, and I’ve done 2,500 miles in the last season and a half. I put this thing through hell with no cracks or anything.”
John wants to do more offshore fishing. He’s already caught tuna and wants to catch more. The farthest he’s taken the Panga Sport 22 is 5 to 8 miles past Tuna Ridge, a 30-mile-plus run, but he says he plans to take it even farther: “I can get out to the gully on a nice day. I don’t think it’s a huge risk taking it out that far, but I have a daughter now, so it feels a little different going out there.”
When he knows people are fishing out at a spot called “The Dump,” which is another 20-miles-plus farther out, he’ll remind himself that he’s at the limit he previously set based on that day’s forecast. “I have a pretty strict set of conditions to go that far,” he says. “If anything is out of place, I don’t go. If there are no fish here, we go back to Block Island, go have a drink, fish there or go home.”
Even though the 22 is doing the trick, John’s already thinking about a bigger boat. He’s eyeing a Panga 28. Panga Sports has plans to make a 26, but it doesn’t build a 28 yet, so he’s looking at Imemsa or Eduardono, two of the original panga/Yamaha builders from the 1970s. “That’s probably who we’ll go with when we get a bigger boat,” John says.
When asked if she knows that John is already talking about buying a bigger panga, Bri laughs. “He can be a little OCD,” she says, “especially when it comes to boats and fishing.”
Panga Sports 22
LOA: 22’3”
Beam: 6’2”
Draft: 0’11”
Base Power: (1) 90-hp Honda outboard
Fuel: 40 gals.
Dry weight: 2,000 lbs.
Base price: $38,995
This article was originally published in the October 2023 issue.
