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The new and improved version of the Offshore 24 of the
late 1980's and early 1990's, this is a much better boat than the Offshore
24 reviewed on this site. The basic hull looks to be about the same, but
the deck shell has been greatly refined, from a completely different fore
deck to the cockpit. Following the trend, the transom has been moved forward
to provide for an external platform and motor mounts. They way they did
it is well done and notably lacking in stupid ideas.
Outboards aren't the greatest boats for salt water fishing because the
problem of keeping the fish out of the motors. The strong point of this design is that you
can stand back there and get a much better view to help you keep the fish from taking the
line into the lower units. But you'll note that this single engine boat has a motor well
big enough for twin engines, so your walk around space back there is a bit limited, but
generally good enough.
In fact, the aft platform area is unsually large. Eating up even
more of the cockpit space is the addition of a bench seat. Some fishinfanatics probably
wont like that seat, but I do. After too many years of sitting on the damn gunwale, its
kinda nice to have a decent place to sit. Particularly on those all night snapper gigs
where resting your butt on a hard gunwale for hours on end is not exactly Comfort City.
But for any kind of serious trolling action, its going to get in the way. There's
really no decent tackle box either - the one they give you is much too small - but the
underseat storage sort of makes up for it by being convenient to reach. The bait well has
been moved from the base of the seat module to the false transom partition, making it tall
and deep like it should be (shallow, flat wells will beat the bait to death as the water
sloshes around). The side rod coves will hold trolling rods but not longer spinning rods.
The helm has been redesigned but I felt the wheel was too low and the
engine control is poorly positioned for stand up operation. Let's face it, nearly all your
maneuvering is done in the standing position. And I still feel that there's too little
space between the pedastel seats for comfort. The windshield is now curved and looks to be
a very high quality piece of hardware compared to some of the junk we see out there. So,
too, are the cabin window ports. All anodized aluminum, but looking like its made to last.
The rest of the hardware is all stainless and no plastic junk.
The fiberglass molding work looks top notch, although there's too many
hard outside corners that are going to get dinged and chipped. Instead of the usual teak
cockpit trim, they've got plastic imitation wood grain trim pieces. Not only are these
going to fade, but the locations where they are placed do nothing for the boat
aesthetically, and in fact make it look a little weird. A minor thing, but its really
unnecessary. The deck has a large, removable plate that affords access to the fuel tank
and whatever other stuff is down there. But there are those dang round plastic inspection
ports again in the cockpit area and the motor wells, which is all the access you get to
the bilge pumps. Good luck trying to fix something with one arm in a small hole. Try to
rewire a bilge pump? Forget it, you need Houdini for the job. Things like this yank my
chain because I don't like paying $60.00/hr to do a job that should only take a few
minutes, but you pay for hours because they can't reach anything.
Its also got rolled and pleated vinyl belly bands, and rear seat backs. A
nice adornment, these things get beat to hell in a hurry and almost no one will pay the
high cost of replacing them. So in a few years your boat looks bad because of $600 worth
of upholstery that you don't want to write a check for. For all you folks who don't cover
your boats -- and that includes just about everyone after the first year of ownership --
the seats at least have removable cushions. You can store them in the cabin so they don't
go to rot and ruin. But the upholstered belly bands (perhaps we should call them
"thigh bands because they hit my leg just above the knee), you pay a lot of
money for something that isn't going to hold up.
The cabin area is basically the same old same old; not much you can do
with a space that small and you'd be better off chucking the cushions and just using it
for storage, which is all you really can do. They've also raised the bow rails up high
enough where they are actually of some value. Earlier models have a rail that is nothing
more than an ornament. This one had one of those Mickey Mouse anchor winches on it.
These things are nothing but rope retractors and not worth their weight in water. I
particularly like they way the machine twists the line up into hopeless knots.
The fore deck design is a whole lot better than the older models, which I
thought basically rendered the walk-around concept useless. It was hard to stand up and
gave you nowhere to sit. On this arrangement, the forward cabin trunk is raised up high
enough that it gives you a place to sit while fishing. But deck space is still too small
to permit easy movement. Personally, I don't like the walk-around style because of the way
it pinches both the forward cockpit area AND the cabin space. The walkways are very narrow
and not easy to negotiate, and there's no good reason to have two narrow ones on each
side. This design might be improved by having a catwalk only on one side, which would
allow the foward cockpit area to be a little wider. The beam remains the narrow 8'6"
for trailering.
As you can see in the above photo, the helm area is equally narrow and
cramped. They've added a recessed electronics cabinet, with a hinged plexiglas cover and
no gasket that isn't going to keep the water out. The cabinet is much to small to put
anything but mini instruments in there, and there's no place else to mount anything
either. This won't please anyone who wants to add a decent sized chart recorder. I don't
know about you, but I'm not a fan of small instruments with microscopic buttons on a
bouncing boat.
Still, I find that there are a lot of folks who love this design, and the
Voyager 24 is a vast improvement over the older models. You'll also find that reflected in
the price which is up by about 50% over 1992 models. At today's prices, its coming close
to high end. Its a nice boat to be sure, but I think the serious fisherman would like
something a little less cluttered and cramped than this one. Its fine for bottom fishing
or casting, but I can imagine what would happen with two guys aboard and running into a
school of dolphin. They'll be in each others face. Saltwater fishing three or four
guys in this boat is out of the question.
Its a fine choice for the casual fisherman, but fishin fanatics will find
better layouts in other boats the same size. I'll give it four stars on overall quality,
but knock a tad off for a layout that's only going to appeal to a limited audience.
| These are
"reviews", not surveys, and bear no resemblance to our survey
reports. We do not publish
the results of the surveys that we perform. Please note that the purpose
of these reviews is educational, to help you discern the differences in
quality among boats generally. They are not offered as a means to help
you evaluate any particular boat builder. We have no other reviews than
those posted. |
Posted July 11, 1998
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