| The Legacy Profish 30 is a sports fishing boat designed by people who know exactly what they want. In 2002, four friends, headed by designer Roger Barnes decided that no one was manufacturing the style of sports fishing boat they wanted - so they decided to build their own. Having accumulated more than 100 years of sports fishing between them, owned almost every class of fishing boat from tinnies through to 60 footers, and fished from everything in between, the group had reached that stage of life where each had firm ideas about what they wanted.
But it wasn’t easy to agree on a design. As Roger described it:
"The preliminary thought process took us more than a year. During that time we must have examined a thousand designs. We trolled the internet, wrote to manufacturers, went to boat shows, spoke with friends. Gradually our ideas firmed up. It was an interesting time because we found that many other experienced sports fishermen also shared our ideas. So we knew that if we could find the right design, we'd have a winner."
In 2003 the search led to New Zealand where Roger met Tony West, the managing director of North Island based Legacy Boats. Tony had designed and built the original Profish 30 as an affordable, offshore-capable fishing boat with two levels and reasonable height.
"I wanted to put as much as I could into a 10metre boat, but retain walk around facilities and a cockpit close to 3m long," Tony explained. "The only way to do that is by providing a sports-bridge with a separate accomodation level below it."
The concept of a two level, walkaround boat arose from Tony's own experience fishing from smaller boats on which he often found it difficult to access the flybridge. He wanted to produce a boat that was easier to move about on.
"Older tradesmen like myself often have creaky knees and delicate backs, so I wanted the easiest access possible to the bridge."
On seeing the prototypes demonstrated and inspecting the moulds, Roger Barnes and his group decided that they had found what they were looking for. The quality of the mouldings were superb and the prototype included most of the features they been looking for, and it performed excellently. There was also plenty of potential for future development. So they bought the company, shipped the moulds to Australia and established the new Legacy Boats production center near Jacob's Wells in Queensland.
After a delay of a year due to other business commitments, Roger and his team set about further developing the Profish 30 and tooling up for production.
"Much of my early boating experience comes from offshore fishing in South Africa where conditions can be extremelly tough," Roger explained. "Because of this I recognised how well the Profish had been designed, in fact in many ways it had been over-engineered, the result of Tony's experience around New Zealand's offshore waters. As a result it was a simple matter to include modifications to suit Australian conditions."
The Australian Profish 30 was released at the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show on 24 May, 2007 and is now in production. For further information contact Legacy Boats Pty Ltd. Sa
email:info@legacyboats.com.auover Boat Show 24-27 May, 2007.
Click here to read about the Profish 30's design features. |
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