Center consoles
Center consoles for sale
The boat most people on Buzzards Bay, Nantucket Sound and the Florida Intracoastal actually own — and the deepest part of what Guard Yacht Group lists.
A center console puts the helm in the middle of an open deck, so you can walk and fish the whole way round the boat. There is no cabin bulkhead in the way, the cockpit is one working space from bow to transom, and everything else — seating, shade, rod storage, a head in the console on the bigger hulls — is arranged around that one idea.
It is the most useful shape of boat on both coasts this brokerage works. On Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound the appeal is a deep-V that can take a short, steep chop on the nose and still beach at Tarpaulin Cove in the afternoon. In South Florida it is an inlet boat: something that can run Jupiter Inlet on an outgoing tide, then idle the Intracoastal home without drawing more than a couple of feet.
Sizes run from about 21 feet — a bay and harbour boat, one engine, trailerable — to 40-plus feet with triple or quad outboards, a proper head compartment, and the range to fish the canyons. The jump most owners regret not making earlier is the one that buys a dry ride rather than more length.
Who it suits
- Fishing, especially anywhere you need to follow a fish around the boat.
- Families who want one boat for a sandbar afternoon and a tuna trip.
- Shallow water — most draw under two feet with the engines up.
- Owners who would rather maintain outboards than an inboard engine room.
Where we work
Where they run around here
Joe has run and brokered boats in all of these, out of Falmouth, Mattapoisett, Onset and Woods Hole in the north and Jupiter, Palm Beach and Stuart in the south. If you tell him where you keep the boat and what you do with it, the conversation gets a lot shorter.
Builders
The yards we know in this class
These are the center console builders Guard Yacht Group knows and works with. If the one you are after is not on the list, ask anyway — the brokerage market is far wider than any one brokerage's own inventory.
Common questions
What people ask before they buy
- What size center console do I need for Buzzards Bay or Nantucket Sound?
- For inside Buzzards Bay and the Sounds most owners are happy between 23 and 28 feet. The water is shallow and the chop is short and steep rather than long, so hull deadrise and how dry the boat rides matter more than length. If you plan to cross to the Vineyard or Nantucket regularly, or fish offshore, 30 feet and up with twin outboards is the more comfortable answer.
- Are center consoles good family boats, or only for fishing?
- Both, and that is why they have taken over. A modern center console usually has forward seating with a filler cushion, a head inside the console, a hardtop or T-top for shade and a swim platform — everything a family wants for a day on a sandbar — while still being a boat you can fish hard off. The compromise is weather: there is no cabin to get out of the rain.
- What should I check before buying a used center console?
- Engine hours and service history first, because outboards are the single biggest cost on this kind of boat, and a full compression and diagnostic download is worth doing before anything else. Then the transom and stringers, the fuel tank and its surrounding foam, the rigging tubes, and the electronics — a ten-year-old boat with current engines and dead electronics is a very different purchase from the reverse. A survey and sea trial covers all of it, and Guard Yacht Group coordinates both.
- Do you sell new center consoles as well as brokerage boats?
- Yes. Through the Legacy Marine affiliation, Guard Yacht Group can also put clients into new boats from Front Runner, Tidewater, Chris-Craft, Shallow Sport, SCB and Stingray, with Privateer coming soon.