Bayliss

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I have known John Bayliss since his days as a first-rate tournament skipper, and having served as an angler in his cockpit, I can tell you that he sweats the details — type triple-A! Like many good fish-boat skippers he migrated from commercial fishing to a charter boat and then to the helm of a tournament boat. As a few of the very best have done, he banked his knowledge of fishing and the sea and draws on it to build custom tournament boats. This is where tradition ends, however, because Bayliss is one of a new breed of North Carolina boatbuilders and a recent launch, Uno Mas, is one of a new breed of Carolina boats (see the complete photo gallery).

There have always been boats to build on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Small fishing communities like Wanchese and Harkers Island still seem frozen in time, since major airports and Interstate 95 are inconvenient. Until the boom in tournament boats, the local focus was simple: stout boats built for the commercial and charter fishing trades. The boats that were built for recreational anglers remained genetically simple working designs, strip-planked and framed with juniper. By the 1980s builders began adding an exterior layer of plywood and fiberglass to “stiffen and fair things up.” A so-called charter finish was typically hand-brushed, and there might still be a bit of bark left on the frames.    

South Florida tournament-boat builders came from humble beginnings as well but were jump-started by wealthy anglers who vacationed in the area. The zen of modern tournament-boat building was born in the 1950s at Rybovich & Sons Boat Works in Palm Beach. By the 1980s most charter skippers in south Florida couldn’t afford the boats they had inspired. Skippers in both Florida and North Carolina began to enlist in the growing fleet of private boats, and the modern tournament fishing boat was born. What had once been a regional sport expanded to the Bahamas and beyond. Bayliss gave up his charter boat in 1997 to run several tournament boats for production-boat companies.



Bayliss’ creations are not defined so much by regional habit as by experience on the tournament circuit. Uno Mas is Bayliss’ 11th boat since he came ashore to launch his boatbuilding business in 2002. From the start, Bayliss has worked with Florida-based naval architect Robert Ullberg. “I drew the first boat on my kitchen table and drove to Florida to sort her out with Robert,” Bayliss said. Today, sketches migrate to the computer and are modeled in 3-D. New hull designs are tank-tested, and once things are locked in, full-size patterns are cut by computer. Gone are the days when a builder “set up” a boat working from a rough pencil sketch and shaped by eye on the shop floor.

While the products of builders with long histories tend to evolve, Bayliss started with a fresh piece of paper. Uno Mas is indeed a hybrid and defies even the expert eye attempting to pigeonhole her Carolina heritage. She lacks the distinctive regional features of heavy tumblehome and strong flam or, as locals prefer, Carolina Flare. The complicated compound curves of her deckhouse and bridge are a far cry from the practical charter boats of the past, where ease of construction led to slab-sidedness and radii defined by old coffee cans. The final product is a strikingly beautiful design that is built with a respect for purpose and tradition but is thoroughly modern.

While you may still find the beginnings of a strip-plank boat poking out of a shed, boatbuilding on the Outer Banks has matured and most builders are working in cold-molded wood or foam-core fiberglass. Bayliss prefers wood, because he believes it offers the most strength for a given weight. With the performance that tournament boats are capable of and the competitive nature of captains, Bayliss points out, the challenge is to keep things together. “Our boats are like our kids. ... I don’t want any phone calls in the middle of the night.” As for the mythical ability of wood in terms of raising fish: “Wood is good but the captain, mate and angler still make the difference,” says Bayliss with a competitive grin.