Somewhere in the early to middle 2000s while working for Powerboat magazine, I fell in love with a 36-foot center console from Concept Boats. Such are the affections that grow when a boat saves your ass.
Allow me to explain.
Then the magazine’s associate publisher, Vicki Newton and I had just finished a photo shoot off the Middle Florida Keys when—in minutes—the Atlantic Ocean went from fair to foul. We didn’t mind the rain or frothy following seas, which jumped from relatively flat to four to six feet as I pointed the outboard engine-powered 36-footer back toward our Hawks Cay Resort home-base.
But the nearby lightning strikes? Yeah, those bothered us. A lot. So I pushed the throttles as far forward as they would go and we hung on.
I didn’t know a boat could displace that much water at 50-plus mph. We were a speck between tall white curtains—at least that’s how imagine us—all the way back to the channel leading into the harbor. We were soaked, but that was the extent of the damage. The same went for the boat.
Once we reached protected water, we giggled the way people do when they’ve just experienced something that wasn’t very funny.
On that day, the 36 Concept center console became my dream boat.
Of course, I told that story to my many 36-foot Concept-owner friends during the years. Among them is Dave Patnaude, the former president of the long-gone New Jersey Performance Powerboat Club. Patnaude nodded and smiled as I recounted the tale.
“I had my 36 for 11 years and always ran it hard,” he recalled. “From the gelcoat to the lamination to the rigging, the workmanship was always first-class.
“And the people who run that company are some of the most genuine folks in the industry,” he added.
Patnaude was talking about Concept Boats founder Luis Avila and his wife, Belkys, both Cuban immigrants. The couple had several children, and their 29-year-old son, Eric, is now the vice-president of the Opa-Locka, Fla.-based center console builder.
Luis started now-40-year-old Concept Boats 11 years before Eric was born. The company has grown to produce “classic” and “luxury” center consoles from 27 to 53 feet long.
By the end of this year, the Concept will have its first catamaran, a 40-footer.
Where Luis is quiet and reserved and doesn’t like being in public, his son is social and charismatic and loves it. In that way and countless others, from their shared creative vision to ferocious work ethic, they are the perfect pairing.
“My dad and I are a team,” Eric explained. “We work together every day.
“He has been a huge mentor to me,” he added.
From a 36-foot classic center console to a 53-foot luxury model, Concept has a dozen builds—as well as catamaran hull No. 1—in progress at the factory. Naturally, the top-of-the-line 53-footer is the kind of posh creation that gets into your head, at least as a fantasy. That’s how I see it, anyway.
But the 36-footer? That one always will have a well-earned place in my heart.