For more than 25 years the midsized sportfishing express boat, with its raised bridge deck, swept-back windscreen and fish-friendly cockpit, has been one of the vessels of choice for anglers.

Running from 30 to 45 feet and mostly inboard-powered, these express machines are built around offshore hulls and carry hefty fuel supplies for their size. And while their overnight accommodations range from spartan to spectacular, even the fanciest doesn't require the upkeep of the more complex closed convertibles. They are, in the words of one express fancier, "a more casual kind of boat."

Today these tested fishing boats continue to appeal to serious anglers, who like their speed and range, and overall fishability. But cruisers and day boaters have jumped onto the express bandwagon because the boats go fast and far - and look good doing it.

New boats from production builders Grady-White, Pursuit and Rampage epitomize the emerging dual-purpose express, combining angling topsides and true cruising comforts down below. Semicustom builders from Florida to the Carolinas are offering cruising layouts to the new breed of buyers who choose to cruise.

"Just in the last two or three years, I've noticed a customer crossover," says Jana Stolper, 39, vice president of Dynatech Mfg., which builds the Palm Beach (formerly Stolper Sportfishing Yachts) lineup. "Our boats have traditionally gone to ardent fishermen, but suddenly people are coming to us for the hull shape, the looks and the performance. So we offer cruising accommodations packages below. Now, we have customers who don't fish at all."

There's an analogy in the automobile market, says Michael Matlack, 58, who builds Gamefishermen express boats in Stuart, Fla. "It's like buying a nice Porsche," he says. "You don't have to race the car just because it goes fast. Sometimes you just want to ride around in style.

The Palm Beach Look

The sportfishing express boats have a certain look all their own. They're low-slung with angled superstructures, and often are topped by a tower. The high bow and low transom give them a sense of motion, even when they're standing still. The boats are usually white, light on graphics and trimmed with just enough varnished wood to accent a toe rail or cap the cockpit gunwale.

Florida's semicustom and custom builders offer boats that tap the Palm Beach look: a soaring bow, a strong broken sheer and a fiberglass windscreen, sometimes topped with a short venturi windshield. The helm station is capped by a tuna or marlin tower, the foredeck is long and open, and the whole package looks fast and capable.

It would be hard to get more "Palm Beach" than the Palm Beach 32, the latest boat in Peter Stolper's stable of Florida-built sportfishing vessels. The 32 is derived from a classic, the Palm Beach 30, still built in Costa Rica. The 30 is made of wood; the 32 employs the latest in vacuum-bagging and foam core technology.

It cruised at close to 40 mph with twin diesel power and carries more than 200 gallons of fuel.

Grady-White and Buddy Davis Boatworks have stuck with their North Carolina roots, Buddy Davis giving its new 45- and 50-foot express boats the trademark Carolina bow flare of its other sportfishing boats. The result, says Buddy Davis, 52, turns heads with an allure that's akin to a sports car with its top down. You see one, and you want to be in it, he says.

"A lot of guys like these boats for the styling and finish," says Gamefishermen builder Matlack. "They're classic designs."

'My kind of boat'

Anglers took to the express design immediately, and early versions from Bertram, Trojan, Topaz, Blackfin and Phoenix were big hits in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Some of these older boats still command attention in the used-boat market.

"The express is my favorite style," says Michael Peters, 47, a Sarasota, Fla., designer. "Your up high on the bridge deck with good visibility, yet you're sheltered. The express looks utilitarian to me, without a lot of superfluous stuff."

From the bridge deck of his rakish 45 at the Miami International Boat Show, Buddy Davis eyes the big express cockpit: "This is my kind of boa. This is what I'd have."

From his vantage point, it's easy to see the express boat's main attraction. The design puts the driver in the middle of the action, and Buddy Davis stand just a few quick steps from the fighting chair.

"The guy up on the flybridge gets a beer and a sandwich, and a compliment every now and again, but for many boat owners, that's not enough," says 30-year-old Joe Corvelli, who builds the semicustom Liberty 39. "In the express, the cockpit is two steps down from the bridge, so the driver is right there. A lot of people come to [the express] from a bigger convertible because they want to feel more in common with the people who are fishing."

The appeal is as strong as ever, and it's no coincidence that some of the production builders - Rampage, Grady-White and Pursuit among them - are offering new express boats this year. The market demands them.

Pursuit says it took orders for 10 of its new 3800 Express before the design was even finalized. "We've already sold hundreds of boats in the low 30-plus range," says Paul Perry, 58, Pursuit's vice president of sales and marketing. "But people just kept asking for an even bigger boat."

Grady-White expects its new 330 Express, also displayed at the Miami Show in February, to be a big hit, too, says Joey Weller, 41, customer relations manager. "Our boats always attract the fishermen," he says. "But this year, the cruising couples came by, too. We had a lot of ladies tugging on the husband's arms to take a look below."

The affordability factor

Price is part of the attraction. Compared to the convertible, the next step up, the express is somewhat more affordable, ranging from around $150,000 for a 30-footer to $400,000 or $500,000 for something closer to 40 feet. Add-ons and semicustom features certainly can swell those figures, but the express still can be a relative bargain compared to its bigger cousin, especially where fishability is concerned. While a $1 million convertible adds a different dimension of luxury, that's not what everyone is looking for. "The cockpit on a 35 express might be 8 feet long," says Peters. "On a 50- or 60-foot convertible, it might be 10 feet. That's paying a lot to get 2 more feet of fishing space."

Speed and range

Cruisers and day boaters are turning to express boats for the same basic qualities that make the boats work for anglers. "The convertibles were a hot deal a few years ago," says Perry. "Now the sportfishing express boat is getting the attention."

The dual-purpose boats like to go far and make it there fast. Nearly all the new entries in the 30- to 45-foot range carry twin inboards under the bridge deck, with big fuel loads and 30-mph top speeds. "That's the magic number for the market these days," says Stolper. "The old days of 24-knot top speeds are gone."

Grady-White's new outboard-powered 330 Express tops that, doing 40 mph with its pair of Yamaha Saltwater Series II 250s.

Fuel capacities are surprising, considering the size of the boats. But the big tankage contributes to range, and the express can wander far afield in search of fish or a port of call. The Rampage 30 Open carries 250 gallons of fuel in its 31-foot hull, Grady-White has room for 350 gallons of fuel aboard the 330 Express, and Pursuit's 3800 has a motoryacht-like 450-gallon capacity.

Capacity is important to both the fisherman and the cruiser, says Perry. "We gave it enough fuel to get from here [Fort Pierce, Fla.] to the islands. Or to Cabo if you're in California, or out off Montauk or Nantucket in New England."

Accommodations cover the basics and then some. "If it's going to be a multipurpose boat, then it needs a decent interior," says Dean Travis Clarke, executive editor of Sport Fishing magazine. "It used to be the wife wanted the luxury, but that's changing. The guys are into a bit of comfort now, too. They want more than just a couple of bunks and a 5-gallon bucket."

Builders are complying. The Rampage 30 sleeps four adults, and the layout includes a master stateroom, and enclosed head and shower. The weekender-style galley, well-placed at the foot of the companionway, has a stove, sink and refrigerator to go along with a microwave and a coffee maker. Cabinetry is cherry; the sole is teak and holly.

The Buddy Davis 45-footer offers one- and two-cabin layouts with a full convertible-style galley, a head with a separate shower, and trimmings such as television, CD/stereo system, and phone/modem outlets. Cabinetry is teak, maple or cherry.

A dual-purpose boat

As nice as the new interior are, it's still what's outside that counts, and it's taken 30 years of design work to get the boats to where they are today. In the process, a true dual-purpose fishing/cruiser is being created.

Hull shapes have been refined as designers search for the best ways to deliver both fast, efficient offshore performance and the slow-speed stability covered by angler and cruiser alike. "In general, you want a hull that takes a good wave at speed and doesn't roll too much when you're out there fishing," says Peters. "You'll want a boat that tracks well, too, so you're not wrestling with the handling all day."

Stability is just as important to cruisers as it is to an offshore angler. Most builders today use a fine entry, often carried well aft, with a moderate 15- to 18-degree deadrise at the transom. "Everyone has pretty much gotten away from the real high deadrise," says Peters. "There's just too much instability. My old Bertram 25 will rock you to death."

Another way to help quell the motion is with chines. "The big, wide chines aft add a dimension of the flat bottom and the boat sits on those chines at slow speed," says Charles Jannace, 67, designer of the Liberty 39, among many others. "One of the nice things about the express design is it doesn't have much superstructure, so it has a decent motion to begin with."

Stability also comes form beam, says Jannace, and the express boats tend to be on the wide side. Rampage's 30 ahs an 11-foot, 2-inch beam, the Pursuit 3800's beam is 14 feet, 2 inches, and Buddy Davis' 45-footer is 16 feet wide. "You want a big, fat tail and a low profile, with the engines sitting down in the bottom," Jannace says. "That's where you get stability."

With all this room, the express boats attract some pretty nice accessories, too. The big dashboards and overhead electronics lockers hold some of the most sophisticated gear available, from GPS/plotters to radar and fishfinders, sometimes in combination. The Ryco 39, built in Riviera Beach, Fla., by Michael Rybovich, sports a North Star GPS/plotter and a mini television in the cockpit bulkhead, in addition to twin Volvo TAMD 74s and a two-speed transmission. Pursuit's prototype 3800 is laid out with a Scoponich fighting chair, all Raytheon electronics and big twin Volvo diesels, 480-hp each, says Perry. "All these things add to the boat's appeal," he says. "They help sell it."

They're getting bigger

The express boats are getting larger, too. Boats such as the Gamefisherman 37 and Liberty 39 now form the heart of the express lineup.

Matlack, of Gamefisherman, launched his first boat 16 years ago and has built a host of expresses form 30 to 40 feet since. "As our name implies, we are building fishing boats," he says. "We're not in competition with Hatteras to build multistateroom cruisers."

Matlack designs the boats himself, beginning with the cockpit. "We start the process from the stern and move forward," he says. "The cockpit has to accommodate the fisherman, first. I make the [design] compromise up forward, in the cabin"

The look is Palm Beach, low and sleek with some nice finish options - teak and varnish, or painted-out cap rails and toe rails, or teak cockpit sole. Gamefisherman builds six to eight boats a year, for boaters who've "been around," says Matlack. "We don't get the dot-commer who's just made a million and wants a boat. That's not our crowd."

The Liberty 39 also is an angler's boat, but with an emerging cruising component. "We've designed it to go offshore, that's the principal characteristics," says Liberty's Corvelli. "Functions comes first, form comes after."

Virtually all the Liberty 39s have been bought by anglers - until now, says Corvelli. "We've got one finishing up for a guy in Massachusetts who wants to cruise it," he says.

"People want a boat they can call their own, something a little different that separates them from the crowd," says Corvelli. For many, the sportfishing express fills the bill. "This whole 'picnic' boat thing is bringing some cruising customers into our shop for a look," he says. "We're happy to oblige."

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