# New (to me) Boat - Prowler 246 Catamaran



## CLVL (Aug 17, 2005)

This is a story of coincidence and fate. I've been admiring Renaissance Marine's Prowlers since 2000, and went to the factory in June 2002 thinking I was going to buy one then. I was very impressed by the construction materials and methods, and thought this is the perfect (for me) planing catamaran. Unfortunately, just before the trip, the telecom company I worked for declared bankruptcy so I decided not to purchase at that time. By July, I was no longer with the company as I would not relocate that far from salt water. Good move as most of the people who stayed ended up losing their jobs.

After starting a new job later that year, I bought a 22' Twin Vee as I couldn't swing the cost of a Prowler. Prowlers are semi-custom, limited production power cats are made near Miami, employing high quality construction materials (vinylester resin throughout, for example) and methods (only 3 piece construction cat that I am aware of). Here's the link to their site if you want more info: http://www.renaissancecats.com/246_power_catamaran.php

Since that time, I've kept a database of Prowlers on the used market having a couple that I could afford bought before I saw the ad. An average of 2 come on the advertized used market each year, all on the east coast, from Florida to New Jersey.

I fished the Twin Vee as far out as Little Campeche over the last 5 years, but that was its limit on a good day. So to extend my range, I decided to sell the Twin Vee and get something else. I limited myself to a 25-26' cat or monohull (rather my budget and my wife  ) for a number of reasons such as not wanting to buy another truck to pull a larger boat, wanting a boat that would be relatively easy to trailer, and retaining fuel efficiency at 2+ mpg at cruise in addition to more range, improved sea worthiness, more speed, more room, etc. that comes from moving up in size. I am not going to touch on other boats I looked at as obviously I preferred something different. As I looked at other boats, the only Prowlers I saw were 2, in NC and VA. I seriously considered buying a monohull, but kept coming back to the Prowler. I had tried to arrange a trip to see the one in NC asking him to hold the boat for a week (trip fell thru), but family commitments and business kept preventing it. I sent the NC guy an email to sell his boat if he could as I could not see when my schedule would allow me to come see it in August saying "it's not like I can drive an hour and see your boat on a Saturday afternoon" as it's 1250 miles from here (literary circles would call that statement foreshadowing).

Here's the surreal part.

Meanwhile, with lots of interest in the Twin Vee particularly from a guy in LA, we worked out a deal for him to drive over to Houston, test drive, and give me a bank check if it checked out - very cool things this internet and email. He stayed the night with his cousin in Clear Lake so we met at the park on NASA Road 1 for the water test. While he and his mechanic were going over the boat and motors, I was talking to the buyer's cousin. The conversation turned to his asking me what I was looking for next (always another boat is assumed, right?) and I replied a 25-26 cat or monohull. He then said that he had a friend that had this a 25' cat called a Prowler - had I ever heard on those? - who had mentioned that due to lack of use he was thinking of selling, but didn't want to go thru the hassle of selling a boat so hadn't listed it. I said that I had never seen a Prowler on Galveston Bay, and he said the boat was kept behind the owner's house on a sling. He assured me that this cat was in mint condition, and gave me his phone number as well as the Prowler owner's phone number. Ever find a needle in a haystack? - I did that day. I'm not sure that there's another Prowler in Texas.

I called the Prowler's owner who had been forewarned by the Twin Vee buyer's cousin that I would be calling. He said that he would consider selling, but hadn't fully made up his mind. Later we talked, he said talked it over with his family and would sell if we agreed on a price so we arranged a time to do a boat test. I took a short, one hour drive on a Sunday afternoon (this was foreshadowed earlier) to look it over, accompanied by a friend as I needed someone objective, and he said he wanted to see the boat I had talked about for the last 4 years (we often buddy boated when I had the Twin Vee).

The boat is in excellent condition, very well maintained. It is a 2003 model with twin 2003 150 Hp Evinrude (Bombardier) DI outboards on a FloatOn aluminum trailer. The boat has 160 hours runtime, the motors have 3 years remaining on warranty, a custom hardtop, full cushion set, SS bimini for bow shade, windlass, etc. Prowlers are known for storage - this Prowler has an anchor locker, two front deck insulated (fish)boxes that run the width of the hull, two boxes in the deck forward of the console in each sponson, two boxes in the deck behind the console (a 128 qt ice chest/seat can be stored in one), a livewell, and a few other small storage areas plus a fairly nice sized console. All the large boxes have locking SS latches. I took a second, more extensive 1.5 hour water test last week. With 3 persons, full tanks (160 gallons), in a 1-1.5' bay chop we hit a top speed of over 48 mph - I think I could have gotten a little more, but that was ok. Cruising economy from 30 - 40 mph was ~2.1-2.2 mpg. I went in search of wakes since it was so flat and spotted a large container ship moving fast inbound in the channel throwing a good size wake. I hit the wake at 35 mph about 100 yards behind the ship and cut right thru - no pounding on the landing. Several repeat runs thru the wake at various angles confirmed this Prowler was the right choice for me. I think the ride even impressed a hard core monohull guy who will never buy a cat for his own reasons which I respect.

So with coincidence and fate seeminly working with me instead of against, we closed the sale on Friday. I spent the day today going thru the boat cleaning this and that. If you made it this far, thanks for reading the story - I enjoyed telling it.

Andy

Here's a few pictures


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## wiserwithage (Jul 13, 2007)

Congrats! Sometimes the Lord just shows favor for patience. It seems to have tremendous fishing room. Hopefully we will see you out soon on the new ride.


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## nelson6500 (Jun 8, 2007)

Very very nice that was what I was looking for but just could not afford it yet. congrats.

nelson


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## offshoreaddict (Jul 26, 2006)

Wow good looking cat. It should eat up our gulf chop no problem......


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## jtburf (May 26, 2004)

Congrats Andy.....


Now that you have cleaned her get some blood on the deck!!!!

John


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## Unbound (Jul 12, 2004)

Man I got teary-eyed reading about how you two hooked up. I'm sure you'll have a beautiful future together. Congratulations!


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## Reel Blessed (Apr 7, 2005)

Sometimes things just work out. Its not by chance. Congrats on your "perfect boat."


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## TXShooter (Aug 13, 2007)

Congrats. Looks like a great boat, and that was a good story to go along with it.


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## Calmday (Jul 7, 2005)

Nice boat Andy. After all of the research and shopping that you have done I'm 100% sure that you found the perfect boat for you. Congrats.


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## Stay Bent (May 22, 2004)

"Bluetiful" That rig ought to be able to see plenty of Blue.
Looks like she has plenty of space, especially those 4 storage hatches on the bow. Nice!


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## CAPSIZED (Aug 10, 2004)

Awesome boat! The hull looks like a World Cat hull. Now go get some blood on it.


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## KNARF22670 (Jul 10, 2006)

Awesome !! You Got What You Wanted And That Makes It So Easy To Accept The Investment !!!


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## Bout Time (Mar 16, 2007)

Congrats and it is nice when you actually find what you want, I did the same thing on my cape horn, just seems destiny sometimes. Looks like a great boat and good luck and fishing with it, hope to see you out sometime.


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## Argo (May 21, 2004)

very nice boat....it really does look like a world cat, maybe a little wider though.


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## KD (Aug 11, 2005)

Congrats on the new ride - the Prowlers are sweet boats. You must be living right...


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## CLVL (Aug 17, 2005)

Thanks, all for the compliments, especially those that showed me their boats. There's never a perfect boat for all - this one is right for me.

To clarify for those questioning a similarity to a World Cat, while both are cats and a Prowler's lines may appear similar to a World Cat, there are several important design differences - I'll cover 3. 

First is the hull design - there's been many threads talking about the benefits of the semi-displacement hull design that WC uses, and lots of comparisons to the displacement design of a Glacier Bay. The Prowler is a planing hull with flat running surfaces aft (I'll post a pic later to illustrate) rather than a semi-displacement or displacement. The closest thing to the design of the P246 are the 94-mid96 Seacats which were planing hull designs (today, ProKat and KevlaKat build planing hull cats, but the implementation of the design is different that the Prowler). In mid 96, Seacat changed to the semi-displacement design now found in the WC. 

The second major difference is tunnel height. The easiest way to illustrate to describe each when sitting, then in motion. Resting, the WC tunnel is only a couple inches above the water at the transom while the Prowler tunnel is 10" or more above the water at the transom. When running, both rise up on plane - the higher tunnel in the Prowler is designed to move a high volume of water thru the sponsons whereas the WC clearance is not as great "compressing" air/water in the the tunnel - to be sure, the Prowler uses the air/water compression in the tunnel to soften the ride as well, but at the transom the Prowler tunnel can exhaust a higher volume due to a larger opening. There's also differences in the tunnel entry design. The tunnel design the WC uses will give a softer ride, I'm sure, for steep head seas, but the Prowler will run downsea better - all hull designs have strengths and weaknesses. The Prowler will be faster and more fuel efficient due to the planing hull (before the hard top was on, the owner said the boat topped out at 53 mph). Compare that with the boat test results on the WC 250DC which tops at 43 mph w/150s. 

The third design difference is 2 piece (WC) vs 3 piece (P246)construction. Both methods, if built correctly, provide strong hulls. However, a 3 piece hull deck is open from the side of the hull to the side of the hull. This allows a natural toe kick and enables use of the sponsons for large storage areas, and gives a very large deck area (as Argo noticed - beam is 8'6" like the WC). 

There are other differences but I don't want to bore you (I know, too late!). I had plenty of time to do the research (ok, no kidding), and being an engineer, liked going into the detail. Let me know if you have any other questions.


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## CLVL (Aug 17, 2005)

*Prowler 246 planing surface pics*

To illustrate my earlier description of the planing hull, here are two pics at the stern, the second a closeup of one sponson. Prowlers have a flat keel pad which gradually disappears as it goes forward with two symmetrical planes which transition into a reverse chine. If you've seen a World Cat hull, then you will notice the difference in sponson shape.


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## Aces Full (Aug 10, 2005)

Beautiful Boat!!! You have done your reasearch and it looks like it has paid off. Thanks for all the info as one of these days I hope to be making a similar move.


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## Glass78 (Jul 25, 2006)

Congrats on the great boat, can't wait to get blood on her! Note to the audience - while Andy covered a lot of detail in the story, believe me, there's a lot more he could have said. He really knows the subject of cats and whenever he started leaning towards a monohull during his search we'd remind him of his love of the Prowler. We're all very happy he got what he really wanted instead of settling for something a step below his dream boat.


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## hillbilly deluxe (Jun 7, 2007)

So what is a good price on a used prowler?


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## Hotrod (Oct 11, 2006)

I like it alot! Very nice boat.


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## fish_eater (Jul 11, 2007)

nice story and boat. im in Houston. let me know if you need a fishing buddy to go offshore.


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## CLVL (Aug 17, 2005)

*Prowler Used Prices*



 hillbilly deluxe said:


> So what is a good price on a used prowler?


Like any boat, it depends on how old, what power, and options. They appear to hold their value well due to limited production and limited resale. Recently a 2001 w/115 Yamahas, TTop, curtains, etc on an aluminum trailer sold between $50-$55k in VA.


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## Capt. Bruno (May 28, 2004)

I was the OTHER guy on the test ride and I do generally have a preference for monohulls. As some have pointed out, there's a right boat for everyone however I was sold on the Prowler from the first ride. The boat looks and feels top quality throughout. I have seen other cats and was not equally impressed with the others - won't say names becuase I know the each of them was/is probably the perfect boat for someone else. I was on the front of the Prowler as CLVL was jumping wakes of the ship- for some reason, 37mph seems to come to mind when I think about the first ship's wake that we jumped. The hair was standing on the back of my neck but the landing was impressively soft. I can best sum up my ride experience by answering Hillbilly Deluxe's question about price, let's just say that CLVL paid a lot less than what I was willing to offer for the boat - of course I couldn't bid against CLVL but I was standing by just in case he decided not to move on it.

Fine ride! Need to get it wet!


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## CaptnKirk (Aug 26, 2005)

*Andy's the CAT Man!*

Well Andy, you finally did it!!! you are the reson I bought my 27' Worldcat as opposed to the monohull I was considering.

It was a great choice for me.

I know you will enjoy it! I cant wait to run long with you and bloody the decks!

Captn Kirk


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## CLVL (Aug 17, 2005)

CaptnKirk said:


> Well Andy, you finally did it!!! you are the reson I bought my 27' Worldcat as opposed to the monohull I was considering.
> 
> It was a great choice for me.
> 
> ...


You got a nice boat! Yeah, we need schedules to line up, then pick a place and go. Capt Bruno's on the first trip after going on the water test with me - still trying to convert him to the dark side.

It's tough going over the boat doing maintenance and familiarizing when I could be fishing, but lots easier if I find something and fix it in my driveway. I'm hoping the weather will lay down and I can get it out soon.


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## Freshwaterman (May 21, 2004)

*I'm a cat fan too!!*

CLVL, congrats and it truly is a great story. I am a big fan of the prowler 246 and the 306. You are one in a handful of people that actually own a renaissance cat in texas. I know of one other which is a 306, but it is kept in louisiana. They really are a incredible boat. The 306 is my dream boat. What a great blessing from the LORD? We all need to hear stories like yours.


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