Granny on Tour - Henriques Day

Getting to the Carolina Classic was easy compared to the next quest - the Henriques 30. This was 200 miles away and it didn’t exist. Well it existed but Hull #1 had been taken away by its owner (not unreasonable as he had paid for it) and Hull #2 was about three weeks from being sea trialable. But what the heck, what is 200 miles? And I suppose I had better come back and it has to be done in a day. 400 miles in a junk car not to go on a sea trial. I musty be nuts. The arrangement was to meet the Integrity Marine bloke in the car park of a Lone Star Restaurant off I76 from where we would go to the factory. I gave this sort of nonsense up years ago. I couldn’t miss him because he was in a big (and he wasn’t joking) black (and that was true as well) Chevrolet Silverado. I parked my heap of Korean crap in the car park (I don’t know why we didn’t take it with us as it would easily fit in the tray of the Silverado) and I was taken another hour to the Henriques factory. This is in the woods and invisible from the road. Thoughts of banjos crossed my mind and Boulder got a little closer to his free boat. But no worries, this was the real deal and Jack Henriques himself was the first person to make himself known. We then spent a couple of hours crawling all over Hull #2 of the Henriques 30 genre. If I was impressed with build quality of the CC28 yesterday this thing was in a different league. The fact that this boat is being built to such a high standard was even more striking than the dimensions of the craft. This is a very big 30-foot boat – very big indeed. There were other hulls at various stages of completion in the shed, a 35 and a 42 and all the boats under construction were express boats. The H30 is pretty much a scaled down H35 and the hull shape is nothing like the H28 which is closer in size. The H30 is a deep vee, has a small keel, three turned down chines and the props are in semi tunnels.

The more I see of these boats and the more I speak to people here that actually use them the more I am convinced that this style of boat will fit the bill for what want from a fishing platform. The northeast coast of the US is not the tropics and these jokers routinely run 60 - 70 miles off shore before they start fishing. A standard ‘day trip’ here is to leave in the afternoon, steam out for a couple of hours (30 knots X 2 hours = 60 miles – get it?), troll for a couple of hours, drift fish for the night, troll again in the morning and then charge home. People here do not seem to live on their boats. I get the impression that these people camp on their boats and that is what I wish to do. Mark you they camp in some style – the H30 comes with air-con as standard. Everyone I spoke to told me that the trend from flybridge boats to the express has been happening for the last ten years or so and the pace of change is, if anything, increasing. I am sure the express boat is an under valued boat form in New Zealand and I don’t care what you jokers think. A pair of Iveco 400s powered the H30 that was nearing completion and the first hull had Yanmar 315s installed. The thought was that something in between was probably going to be about right and hull #3 was going to be fitted with two Cummins 380s. it will be interesting to see what ends up as being ideal. I suspect there will not be a ‘correct’ answer as everyone’s needs will be somewhat different.

Things I really liked about this boat (in no particular order). The windscreen. Tempered curved glass with great visibility and you are looking through glass and not clears.

The non – skid. It really is and is moulded into the surfaces. Handholds. They are everywhere and you would never be short of somewhere to hang on to whether you be going to the fore deck (stacks of room for this) or up in the tower. The quality of build and attention to detail. Oh, I’ve mentioned that before ( and may do so again). The degree of customisation. As long as you don’t change the hull shape you can have pretty much anything you want.

Things I didn’t like about this boat. There wasn’t one ready so I could have a drive. I’ll have to come back. Price. All this doesn’t come cheap and the H30 is about US$100,000 more than the CC28. Its only money.

After the factory tour we went to the local marina to see a H35 Express that was complete. The finished article of a Henriques is even more impressive than the sum of the parts I had seen thus far. This made it even more galling that I could not go for a spin in one.

I had to return to DC for a free dinner so it was back to the car park of the Lone Star to pick up the Korean junk for the 200 miles back to DC. I had never been to Philadelphia and it was sort of on the way back so I drove through it just for the heck of it. I really am going nuts. Mr Hertz got his so called car back and he is welcome to it. A top day was capped off by my being shouted a steak the size of a small country by a Japanese equipment company.

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