Already 62 miles from his home pore of Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and with the day half gone, Capt. Murphy Creef was prepared to burn even more fuel and run even farther if that's what it took to ensure a good catch of fish for a paying charter. "Pick 'em up, L.R.," Creef called to his mate from the flying bridge of the shiny new 52-foot Buddy Davis Boatworks built charter boat Dare Devil. "Bobby Sullivan's got the main group located about 15 miles farther offshore."

Outer Banks men are not prone to knuckling under in the face of adversity. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is a phrase that could have been coined to describe the boatmen who ply the turbulent waters off North Carolina-and their boats. Creef's Dare Devil itself would never have come into existence if Buddy Davis had not demonstrated the Outer Banks resilience to fight his way back up after the company he had spent years building, Buddy Davis Yachts Partnership, Inc., succumbed to the economic pressures of the early 1990s and closed its doors in June '93.

When I visited his new company, Buddy Davis Boatworks, located in the old Buddy Davis Yachts factory in Wanchese, N.C., Buddy looked fit and trim and seemed to be his old, soft-spoken self. "All the creditors of the old company have been paid off and we honored all claims for warranty work," he told me. "My wife, Barbara, and I bought the plant in June '93 and we'd have built anything to keep going. Now we've bought all the molds for the 38, 44, 47, and 61-foot boats, and we're also building 52- and 67-foot boats by modifying the existing molds."

Buddy Davis Boatworks is able to build more than one size of boat from a given mold by damming off a fiberglass female hull mold, laying up a shorter and proportionately beamier boat in an existing model's mold. Or a hull is laid up without a transom, and another fiberglass "part" that consists of the transom and several feet of hull is laid up and added to the transomless hull to make a longer and proportionately less beamy model.

Full-length stringers of Divinycel foam encapsulated in glass are laid up and set in place after the hulls are extended and the two pieces of hull are overlapped with three feet of transitionary glass to ensure the strength of the secondary bonds. "It's major overkill," says Davis, "but we need to know that more than enough strength is there. The funny thing is, some of these boats, like the new 52, run better and ride better than the original hulls they are based on- and the old 47 always ran great!"

Noted naval architect Donald Blount works with Davis to calculate engine, fuel tank, and bulkhead placement to ensure optimal longitudinal centers of gravity. Depending on a customer's needs, any one of a wide range of custom boats can be built with the cost efficiencies of production style fiberglass construction.

"We have a unique ability to build an all-fiberglass custom boat. We have a modern plant with overheads cut to the bone and we have found a niche between the one- or two-boat-a-year custom boat builders and the big mass-production companies. We want to build seven or eight boats a year, on order. We don't need an inventory of boats and no fancy brochures, caps or T-shirts," Davis says. Two new molds, for a 56- and a 74-footer, have recently been added.

In the factory, the 70 workers swarming over five boats in various sizes and stages of completion seemed an impressive operation, but this is just the lean and mean remainder of what had once been a company with over 250 workers and 45 office staff.

"The luxury tax certainly did hurt the industry," Davis allows, "But the industry just plain had too much capacity for the demand. We have learned some lessons and we aren't going to build boats now until we have them sold."

I had deliberately asked for a ride on a charter-boat version of one of Buddy Davis' new 52-foot sportfishermen when I heard that Detroit Diesel V-692 engines had been installed. These are relatively small-horsepower engines for a boat of this size, and while you can make almost any boat run fast with big engines and enough horsepower, speed and economy are hard to come by.

In fact, on our run offshore, Capt. Creef was making just over 20 knots at slightly under 1950 rpm. That is a very respectable speed at a low power setting that would ensure the long engine life and easy fuel consumption that are essential for a successful charter operation.

Both north and south of us we could see other boats also running offshore to look for the weedline and schools of dolphin. Although there is stiff daily competition both for charter parties and fishing results, the proud and independent Carolinians work together to cover the hundreds of square miles of blue water accessible from their home inlets. The result is one of the best charter fleets ever assembled, with a great worldwide reputation both for the area and the men who work its waters.

Almost immediately after we started trolling down the edge of a broad band of golden-colored sargassum weed floating on the surface of a current slick, several shiny blue-and-gold dolphin (the fish, not the mammals) came leaping in after our trolling baits. As the hooked fish were brought in, Dare Devil mate L.R. Hastings wound in the other lines, put the large trolling rods to one side and handed each angler a smaller, lighter, dolphin "bailing" rod.

As Hastings threw small cut-up pieces of fish chum overboard to attract and hold the school of hungry dolphin behind the boat, the anglers Mark Perry and Duane Smith let out small pieces of cut bait on the lighter rods. Every bait got a strike as soon as it hit the water. As soon as the fish could be fought to the boat, Hastings would flip it into the large fish box molded into the transom and deftly unhook it. He would rebait the hook, drop it overboard, and a dozen more of the tasty dolphin would race for the new offering.

Watching a trained professional crew bail dolphin, one is awed by the speed and efficiency with which the fish are brought aboard. If a novice angler becomes all thumbs in the excitement generated by the heat of the nonstop action, the mate either quickly untangles the resulting backlash or immediately replaces the snarled rod and reel with a fresh one. Meanwhile the charter captains maneuver around each other in a close-quarters drill that would make less knowledgeable skippers take immediate evasive action to avoid what would appear to be impending collisions. Always there are fish leaping, swirling, and pulling against the rods of excited, is training anglers. :

"Well boys, that's about the limit and I've got a long way to go to get home," Capt. Creef called from the bridge after 45 minutes of frenzied activity. There were no complaints from the happy and tired chatter team as Dare Devil came up onto plane and started the long run home. Back at the dock, a team of professional fish cleaners would take away the day's catch and an hour later, return to the happy fishermen with a cooler full of tasty fillets packed in clean plastic bags.

Whether you want a nicely finished plain-vanilla charter boat or a luxury fishing yacht with all the finest fixtures and elaborate custom joinery, Buddy Davis and his Davis Boatworks have the boat for you.

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