This sportfisher is a jewel box, inside and out

The original plans and documents are kept in the yard’s yachting library, and they show Frits de Voogt’s original concept. With a dramatically cambered foredeck, heavily flared topsides and deeply inclined superstructure, she’s the quintessence of a fighting boat.

The late Jim Moran, founder of Florida-based JM Family Enterprises, was the original client for the boat, which was a replacement for his 1973 18-metre Rybovich. “Moran sought a bigger boat with an enclosed flybridge, but Rybovich declined to build it,” Francis Vermeer, Feadship’s marketing manager, says. “He had toured a 42-metre Feadship named Carmac VI launched in 1981 for another American entrepreneur and, impressed with that yacht’s quality, thought asking if the Dutch would build him a sportfisher was worth a try. Feadship was game if they could build two of them.”

By the time the boat was unloaded into the chill, grey waters of the North Sea, the job sheet was still largely undefined. Feadship found out quite late that a refit project was heading its way. “We’d normally have six months’ lead time, so we can prepare the location,” Pier Posthuma de Boer, Feadship’s director of refit, says. “The benefit is that this was a smaller boat, and so we could accommodate it flexibly.”

The next step was to bring in designer Adam Voorhees, who had worked with the owner on previous boats. “The owner and I had walked the boat when she was up for sale, and within 30 minutes, a solid plan was put forward,” Voorhees says. “The boat had had an insane refit not so long ago to get her up to current condition, and it had been done well. In that sense it had great bones. [But] there was teak upon teak upon teak in the interior, so the design brief was to tone that down a little. It needed to be a relatively quick refit, so as not to invest too much time – just a couple of touches that resonated with the owner.

Finally, Wilson drew up a detailed schedule of the work the owner wanted to see. While decor changes were minimal, top of the list was to create an additional twin cabin below deck. Then there was to be a vast new teak foredeck in place of the slightly austere white painted finish, and a strong owner request for a hot tub and gyroscopic stabilization.

“The boat had an insane refit not so long ago to get her up to current condition, and it had been done well. In that sense it had great bones.”

Not even the experienced artisans at Feadship can conjure up extra accommodation, so something had to be sacrificed to create space for the new cabin. And here, the strategy was twofold. “The tender was stored on the foredeck and had a crane to lift it into the water,” Wilson says. “It had a not-insignificant foundation beneath it and removing that opened up a lot of space in what had once just been the wardrobe for the master cabin.”

The second tactic was to take a nibble out of the corner of the owner’s stateroom and build that into the new cabin. It may not have an en suite bathroom (this is the fourth cabin on an 27-metre sportfisher we’re talking about, after all), but there is plenty of space for two comfortable bunks and a convenient cupboard for clothes. And as Wilson points out: “If I hadn’t told you, you would never have known the cabin wasn’t part of the original yacht!”

Its light-coloured linen upholstery and rich teak panelling look just the same as the other cabins. They’ve all had fresh carpets, new headboards and attractive raw-silk effect fabric panels on the walls, so they share the same feel. The addition of ballast corrected the ever-so-slight trim created by the crane’s removal.

Turning the foredeck from a tender storage and anchoring area to an extra social space also involved a lot of hard work, but it looks as if the boat was designed that way. Three skylights, four mooring bollards and some deck fillers, which all look original, had to be painstakingly cut out, then raised by no more than half of an inch to account for the planking. “The teak makes a profound aesthetic impression and covers a huge area,” Wilson says – 560 square feet, in fact, according to Feadship.

These small changes stripped away some of the less-than-timeless original details without tampering with the boat’s character

Voorhees knew that time was of the essence, so he kept his changes short and snappy. Top of the list of easy wins were the loose furnishings and soft goods. There’s a soft, natural linen for the dining settee and sofas, and Foglizzo leather the colour of soft putty for inlays on counter surfaces. He also swapped the heavy marble tops of the main dining table and two wheelhouse side tables for a striking bronze patina. “Those are a continuity from a previous project,” Voorhees says. “On the owner’s previous boat, we developed an amazing cast bronze dining table that referenced a work of art by Alexander Calder.”

An idea to introduce stainless-steel trim around the horizontal surfaces was discarded as excessively time-consuming. But Voorhees did change all the handles on the boat – some 175 of them if you include every locker and drawer. “There are some little pieces of jewellery, such as the handles for cabinetry,” he says. “Originally, there were little teak poles, but we changed that out to polished stainless steel.” These small changes stripped away some of the less-than-timeless original details without tampering with the boat’s character. “Refined gentleman’s smoking lounge” is how Voorhees sums it up.

Within days of my tour, Catch was being loaded aboard another cargo ship in Rotterdam to head back to Florida. It was a moment that her owner was keenly anticipating. “Um, yes!” he says, when I ask if it’s felt like a long wait. “It’s a week before she lands, and I am anxious to have her at the end of my pier.”

The owner is not a mad fisherman himself, although his son is. For him, the attraction is something else. “The sportfish is a uniquely American style and there is none as pretty as Catch. It should also be noted that due to the rigidity of her aluminium hull and frames, she has 360-degree glass on the main deck – something few if any other sportfishers can have. It’s quite a vista and a lovely treat to take in all the sea has to offer.”

First published in the December 2023 issue of BOAT International US Edition. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.