North River Voyager

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

On a quest for halibut and lingcod, Norris Comer gets aboard a North River Voyager and meets a family whose life revolves around a storm-ready sportfisher.

I awoke in Seiku, Washington, from the quarter berth of Hooked Up, a highly customized 37-foot Voyager luxury sportfishing boat owned by avid angling couple Pete and Elizabeth Donnelly. If you’ve never heard of Seiku, I don’t blame you. The dot-on-the-map angler’s haunt is on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula, the American side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Besides the floating docks and their loitering sea lions, the Breakwater Restaurant a mile up the road that serves a mean prime rib is probably the main reason to stop. The Gut Hut, a shack by the marina office, is run by a kindly old man with a long gray braid. The filet knife wielding artisan can process and vacuum pack your fish with the practiced grace of a priest donning his garments before mass.

I spent a comfortable night aboard this North River Boats build, the Oregon company’s first major play into the mid-sized, aluminum sportfisher-yacht hybrid space. Pete, Elizabeth and their daughter Morgan joined me. Coffees were passed around as Hooked Up roared to life. The purple of night gave way to the soft gold of dawn. Fishin’ time.

“We’re going to shoot to The Prairie, which is on the outer edge of the fishing closure,” said Pete. The closure he referred to is a designated bottom fish—namely threatened rockfish species like yellow eye—sanctuary off the coast of Washington. The Prairie is a favorite fishing area for those with the horsepower to get out that far just beyond the southwest corner. The frontier tune Home on the Range free associated in my mind when talking about the promise of The Prairie, except where we’re going it’ll be halibut (“butts”) and lingcod (“lings”) who roam instead of buffalo.

“It takes about two hours of running time to get there,” said Pete. “Hopefully we’ll come back with our limits.”

“We’re going out to have fun, that’s usually our perspective,” said Elizabeth. “We just want to have a good time and if you catch something, added bonus.”

“We just love being on the water,” added Pete. Morgan settled into the V-berth. She is on the adult autism spectrum and has diabetes. According to Pete and Elizabeth, she’s not a huge fan of fishing, but does enjoy listening to her shows in the comfort of the cabin and bouncing around in heavy seas.

We cast off and the question centered itself in my mind: Can one boat do it all? Not only will Hooked Up have to prove itself as a true open Pacific fishing machine, but also live up to yacht-like accommodation standards. Throw onto it accommodating me, a random guest, and a neurodivergent adult with diabetes, and the ask of Hooked Up was substantial.

Roseburg, Oregon-based North River Boats was founded in 1974 and began with a focus on jet-powered, shallow-draft river boats. As the decades passed, the company got into the recreational fishing space. A big game changer came in 2002 with the purchase of Almar Boats, which heralded an expansion into commercial and government boatbuilding. North River prides itself on being one of the largest heavy-gauge aluminum boat manufacturers in the United States and its clients include the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. Today one can see North River Boats as fishing slayers serving lodges in Alaska, commercial pilot boats in Trinidad, California firefighting boats, and more.

All this work is done from their 10-acre factory compound in Roseburg and elements of their business and operations structure are unique. Effective in 2016, the company implemented an Employee Stock Ownership Plan to give qualifying employees ownership stake in the business. The company also runs a reputable in-house aluminum welding school, likely contributing to a standard of quality that’s served North River well over the decades and across heavy-duty sectors like the military and open water fishing.

Hooked Up is officially dubbed a Voyager 37 (despite its 41-plus feet LOA). It’s one of the company’s relatively new and highly custom Voyager builds that can be built from 33 to 45 feet. Other notable Offshore Voyagers include The Codfather II and Lucky Boy II, both 44s run by private owners who use them as Southeastern Alaska luxury sportfishing vessels.

The high degree of customization is immediately apparent when glancing at these three boats. The Codfather II features a walkaround cabin that grants sheltered access to the foredeck while Lucky Boy II goes for a larger pilothouse sans walkway. The Hooked Up interior may be the “yachty-est” of them all with warm teak woodwork, a full galley, and the quarter berth in which I slept. As far as owner accolades go, Pete and Elizabeth are very happy with North Rivers’ work and customer service.

“They [North River Boats] are well built,” said Elizabeth. “We watched it [Hooked Up] being built from the very beginning all the way through the process.”

The Hook Up, When Pete Met Elizabeth

We all got to know each other as we raced out of Seiku in the early morning for The Prairie. The Cape Flattery Lighthouse stood on Tatoosh Island to starboard, the epic sea cliffs and monoliths of the coast to port. Pete and Elizabeth were one of those couples that seemed to mind meld as they ran the boat, prepping fishing gear, manning the helm, and checking Morgan’s blood sugar with a fluidity that required few words. I poked the duo. How did they meet?

“We met from a friend of mine,” said Pete. “He told me, I know a girl who’s exactly like you. She likes to go fishing, she likes to go bow hunting, she likes to go play … you guys would get along great.” Pete was invited to Elizabeth’s birthday dinner.

“He [the mutual friend] asked if his friend could come with him,” recalled Elizabeth with a smile. “I was single for a good seven years and so was he. We were totally out of the dating loop.’” The birthday setup led to dinner dates and more. But one fateful stormy day, the duo went fishing for the first time.

“It was stormy and nasty and I thought, let’s really see if she likes to fish,” said Pete with a grin. “We jumped in our little boat, came out to Seiku. It was nasty as hell and everyone else is out here looking at us like ‘You guys are going out?!’” The boat was an 18-foot center console with no top, leaving the duo to fish together in the elements. “And she killed it!”

“I had so much fun,” said Elizabeth, who landed a keeper salmon. The couple showed off Elizabeth’s prize when back in town. “I really truly love to fish.” Pete grew up fishing and running boats, and while Elizabeth grew up fishing, she didn’t have the same opportunities to really run boats. As time passed and the fishing duo became more dialed in, bigger-boat-itus set in. Their research led them to North River Boats and it was meant to be.

“We went down and looked at the North Rivers and just fell in love with them,” said Pete. “We ended up getting a 31-foot Seahawk, and we had that for four years. I think we put almost 800 hours on the mains and another 400 or 500 hours on the kicker. In that short period of time, that’s a lot of run time.”

“We just had so much fun doing it, and we wanted to go further,” said Elizabeth. “And bring out our family with us.” There are five grown kids between the two of them and plus ones are commonplace. Elizabeth and Pete wanted a boat that could keep up with their fishing ambitions while also serving as an entertainment platform for the dozen-strong family outings. Finding a boat that was yacht-like in accommodations but a performance sportfisher at heart was a challenge. The line between the two boat worlds was strict.

“I said many times to a lot of dealers we went to: they need to put them together to get more people out on the water,” said Elizabeth. “I kept saying that even to the owners at North River. You wait! Wait until we build this. You’re going to have people who want something similar to this [Hooked Up].” The two pushed the Voyager build into the luxury sportfishing category and consider Hooked Up their dream boat.

A Yacht in Sportfisher Clothing

Making way to The Prairie, the sky was clear and the May weather uncharacteristically summer-like, but the wind was up and the chop hairy. Hooked Up’s twin Yamaha XF425 XTOs pushed her smoothly along at a 26- to 30-knot clip, an easy cruise speed for the build. The Yamaha T50LB kicker waited patiently for fishing time.

The exterior of Hooked Up leans into the sportfishing world with heavy duty 5086—H116 aluminum bottom and sides and a forward leaning “attack angle” three-piece window shield on the house. This functional style is popular among the rugged workboats of the West Coast. Bristling with rod holders and downriggers, Hooked Up looks very much like a workboat-inspired fish killer.

The cockpit deck is where the yacht flavor starts to kick in. The boarding door to the starboard side lets in the guest to an open, generous space with GatorStep faux wood overlay.

Dual helm stations amidships give the skipper control of the kicker (port station) or mains with Yamaha Helm Master bow thruster and joystick for docking (starboard station). Everything on the boat is electric save the trolling motor, a feature of redundancy in case all goes wrong electrically and Hooked Up just needs to limp back home. The cabin overhang is extended 36 inches—a nice touch to give operators a little shelter from the elements.

The cabin interior is where the yacht factor takes control, complete with teak trim and high-end upholstery. The quarter berth sits a few steps below and to port and gets my slept-in seal of approval. Don’t expect standing headroom, but you should be comfortable down there with modern lighting controls and charging outlets.

To starboard is the galley with a counter than runs the length of the cabin from stern bulkhead to the captain’s comfortable NRB Ocean Master helm chair with Shockwave S5 suspension. Hooked Up also has a watermaker and reverse osmosis filtration system. Opposite to port is the L-shaped dinette, a traditional family-style seating arrangement that can be converted into a berth. The seating would be a bit of a squeeze and scootch for a larger person, but probably the best one could do with a boat of this beam.

The helm is to starboard of the V-berth companionway and two passenger seats are to port. These are the best seats in the house. Elizabeth did need some base adjusting when Hooked Up came out of the factory to make the seats high enough for her to see over the high bow. The tip of the bow rail also vibrates while underway, a strange but ultimately inconsequential quirk.

Down the forward companionway is all yacht, with a large berth and head with shower to port. It’s not the most sumptuous head in the yacht world, but it is downright palatial if you compare it to the other fishing boats running out to The Prairie around us. The well-sorted electronics panel is also down there.

I’ll confess, the sheer volume of beeps, boops, alarms, buttons, etc. are a little overwhelming, but that’s more of a contemporary boat characteristic and not necessarily solely a Hooked Up story. It’s worth noting our trip was almost delayed not due to any mechanical issues, but a software update that required a technician to be deployed after an engine refused to start. We were also baffled in the early morning on how to silence a mysterious beeping that ultimately resolved itself as we went about our day. I can’t really fault the boatbuilder on these. Welcome to the 2020s.

The Prairie n’ Back

Hooked Up got us to The Prairie no problem. We put rods on the bottom as fast as we can and started jigging. The bites came fast.

“Fish on!” Elizabeth shouted.

“Me too!” I started reeling and caught a smallish but keeper halibut right away while Elizabeth landed a nice lingcod. We each got two lings and a butt each to limit out. I even got a double header, two at once. Thanks to Hooked Up, we had all the ice we could ever need and our fresh catch went in the hold. Occasionally, Pete or Elizabeth checked on Morgan who was comfortably posted up in the berth enjoying Star Wars movies. I overheard affectionate exchanges of ‘I love you’ from below. The winds came down and the vibes were all summertime. By early afternoon, we were one butt shy of limiting out.

“Fantastic day!” Elizabeth said.

“Weather has been great, water a little rough but couldn’t ask for a better day of fishing,” added Pete. “I liked your double header! When you were both setting as quick as it hits the bottom and you were nailing them, man, that’s the way to do it.”

We moved around a bit, but when the fish are done, they’re done. Hooked Up headed for home and we passed Tatoosh Island to our port this time. I took the helm for a bit and enjoyed one smooth ride. As on the way out, Hooked Up’s happy cruising speed was in the 26ish knot range. At 26 knots, I clocked our fuel consumption at .7 miles per gallon and 43 gallons per hour at 4,400 rpm on both mains. We tried out some full speed turns and they were about as smooth as those get. She really is one sweet ride. Elizabeth usually docks Hooked Up, a point of pride and progress.

Elizabeth brought us into Seiku. We gathered up our fresher-than-fresh catch in an ice-filled soft cooler. The next stop would be the Gut Hut for processing. Morgan happily looked forward to an ice cream stop, her favorite part of the day.

“It was a great day of fishing,” said Pete. “I’m tired, it was a long day. But it was phenomenal.” He gazed over Hooked Up. “We’re so happy with the boat, almost every time we go out in it, one of us looks at the other one and says how much we love the boat.” As far as plans go, the two will be back for more halibut and salmon when the season starts. They have history in British Columbia too and would like to spend a few weeks up there soon.

“Hopefully next year, Alaska,” said Elizabeth.

“Alaska or San Diego,” said Pete. With Hooked Up, they feel just about anything is possible. “They [North River Boats] sure do take care of you, that company really does care. And they’ll be there for you if you need them, I can’t recommend them more. They are a step above.”

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This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/sportfishing/north-river-voyager