Last March, while fishing with author Greg Breining, I towed my
Maverick flats boat down to the natural ramp at Blue Beach. Greg
was in Vieques to do a fly fishing article for the New York
Times. That kind of publicity demanded a good trip. Of course
the wind was typical for March (howling) and the only sheltered
water on the island that day was the fantastic bay of Ensenada
Honda. Getting there by sea from my usual route, launching in
the town of Esperanza, would have been an eight mile suicide
mission. I tried it two days before and turned back after a mile
for fear of sinking my 17 foot skiff in six foot seas.
I decided to drive the four miles past Garcia Gates in my first
attempt at launching from an unpaved ramp. That part went well.
Backing the boat into the water was no problem at all and we
were fishing in minutes. Greg and his photographer saw lots of
bones and permit that morning, giving the island’s fly fishing
some valuable publicity. Fortunately, Greg didn’t write about
the ordeal of getting my boat back out of the water at the end
of the day.
My Maverick Mirage was the lightest skiff around when it was
built 14 years ago. The hull weighs only 750 pounds, but throw
on a 300 pound engine, 28 gallons of gas, a 500 pound trailer,
and the weight shoots up a lot. The result that day was a very
stuck Jeep with a reporter and photographer looking on.
We pulled my rig out of the sand 45 minutes later thanks to my
wife’s giant Toyota 4-Runner and a tow rope. I realized then
that I needed to find a reliable way to access this area no
matter what the weather. The obvious solution was a lighter
boat. At first I thought about hanging a five-horsepower
outboard on my canoe but that wouldn’t look too professional.
The other end of the spectrum was buying a 2007 Mirage HPX, the
newest 500 pound carbon-fiber version of my classic skiff. The
only problem there would be the almost $40,000 price tag for the
fly fishing equivalent of a Mercedes 500SL. A great boat, but I
can’t justify writing that kind of check for a something only 17
feet long.
After a lot of Google-searching and calls to friends in the
States, I found a small company called Beavertail Skiffs. They
were located in central Minnesota of all places, and making some
of the slickest looking flats boats I’ve ever seen. When I
called them up the phone was answered by a gentleman named Mark
Fisher, who turned out to be the owner of the company. This was
instantly my kind of boat builder. Not only did I get a real
human located in the USA on the phone, but a CEO who was willing
to talk to me about building the exact boat I needed for Vieques
despite the fact that we were 2500 miles apart.
Mark’s company started out making duck hunting boats and
expanded into the flats fishing market in 2002. Despite never
having seen one of their boats in person, I decided to order a
17 foot model called the B-2 (like the Stealth Bomber) and rig
it with a 50 horsepower Yamaha outboard. The price of this boat,
including the motor and trailer, was just about half the cost of
the newest Maverick Mirage.
Click to Enlarge! |
I took delivery of my B-2 less than three weeks ago and have
been more impressed with it each time I hit the water. It floats
in an honest five inches, exactly as advertised. That’s about as
shallow as a bonefish will ever swim and the boat is almost
impossible to run aground. If I ever did manage to do that I
could simply pull it back to deeper water by hand. The Yamaha 50
pushes it along at 25 knots and sips about two gallons of gas
per hour. The best part is that I no longer need to make the
long and often frightening eight mile run from Esperanza to get
to my favorite flats on the whole island. The big bay of
Ensenada Honda is now a four mile drive down the dirt road
through Garcia Gates and a 10 minute boat ride from the natural
ramp at Blue Beach. At the trip’s end the 500 pound B-2 pulls
right up onto its trailer without burying the rear tires on my
Jeep in the sand.
The new Beavertail has more than proved its worth to me in the
short time I’ve owned it. This past week I’ve been booked by a
gentleman from Manhattan on his first trip to the island. Of
course the wind has been blowing in excess of 20 knots every
day. In my old boat, this would have been a washout and his
vacation a big disappointment. But instead of watching the surf
pound in from his hotel balcony we’ve been out on the flats,
jumping a few tarpon between the whitecaps. This wouldn’t have
been possible without my new B-2 bonefish skiff, the slick
little boat built 2000 miles from the nearest bonefish.
Capt. Gregg McKee,
WildFly Charters
