The iconic Shelter Island 38 Runabout, which got a lot of attention when Billy Joel launched hull number one in 1996, is now being built with outboards.
The original boat had twin 415-hp MerCruisers with Bravo 3 drives and counter-rotating props, delivering the “Newport by lunch” speed that Joel wanted. More recent versions have been powered by 370-hp Yanmar diesel sterndrives, topping out at 45 knots. Now, with twin 300-hp Mercury Verados, the top speed is about the same, but the outboards are quiet, and they can be lifted up for running in shallow water.
Almost 30 years ago, the Shelter Island Runabout was the brainchild of Joel, his friend Peter Needham, who owned the Coecles Harbor yard on Shelter Island at the tip of Long Island, and Doug Zurn, who had just opened his own design office in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
When he wasn’t working at his day (or night) job as one of the most famous musicians in the world, Joel was a boat nut. He grew up on Long Island, borrowing, and ultimately buying, small boats. After his singing career took off, Joel bought a Shamrock 20, and took it through some rough weather to Martha’s Vineyard with his future wife, the model Christie Brinkley. (He later named his Downeast-styled swordfishing boat after their daughter, Alexa.) He commuted from Oyster Bay down Long Island Sound to work in New York on a Steiger Craft 23 (saying he was happy to support a Long Island builder). He moved up to an Egg Harbor 33, a Wilbur 34, and then an Elllis 28 (finished at Coecles).
Photo by Will Ricketson
In an interview in his second-floor boating office on his waterfront estate in Oyster Bay, Joel told me he wanted something that was “fast but pretty,” and that would be built at Coecles “because I wanted to support Long Island boat builders.” He and Needham got proposals from several designers, but they settled on the one from Zurn.
At the time, Zurn had designed only one boat, a sailboat, on his own. The Shelter Island 38 Runabout would be his first powerboat. (Zurn, of course, is now one of the most successful designers in the United States, having drawn Joel’s 57-foot commuter yacht Vendetta, and other powerboats for MJM, Marlow, Hylas, New England Boatworks, Williams and now the Boston Boatworks 44 and the Barton & Gray Daycatcher 48, built at Boston Boatworks.)
At the time, a flurry of faxes went back and forth among Joel, Needham, and Zurn. Joel knew what he wanted, because he used his boats. “If we’re fishing offshore and something gets wrapped in the props,” he told me, “it’s Captain Billy who jumps over the side with a knife to cut it loose.”
Joel christened his boat, the first Shelter Island 38 Runabout, Nomad, when he launched it at the Newport boat show. The hull had been built at North End Composites in Maine with Kevlar and E-glass using resin-infusion, so it was light (about 10,000 pounds) and strong. Needham finished the boat at Coecles. It had a low profile, Downeast lines, a trace of tumblehome aft, and Zurn’s signature slender beam, only 10 feet on a 38-foot boat. There was a V-berth and head below, but that really wasn’t important; Joel said he only went below on his boats to use the head. (Later models have more comfortable interiors with a small galley below.)
The Shelter Island 38 Runabout was an instant success, the right boat at the right time. The idea of a picnic boat/day boat was catching on; it was the way people were actually using their boats. And the Shelter Island boat was faster than most.
Photo by Will Ricketson
So far, Coecles has made more than 60 of them, and is now offering outboards as well as the Yanmars as propulsion. Zurn redesigned the aft section of the boat, so the outboards are tucked inside the stern to keep the boat’s classic lines.
Peter Needham just wrote me, saying the new outboard boat “handles great, same as the I/O version, both feeling ‘sporty.’” The top speed with 300-hp Verados is basically the same as with the 370-hp Yanmar sterndrive boats. But Needham said what impressed him “is how quiet the outboards are. It is absolutely surreal!”
Base price of the new boat with twin 250-hp outboards is $869,800. Power options include outboards up to 400-hp.
Specs.: LOA: 38’7”; Beam: 10’0”; Draft: 2’3”; Disp.: 11,800 lbs.; Fuel: 200 gals.; Water: 39 gals.; Power: 2×300-hp Mercury Verado outboards.
Read more at http://chmarineyachts.com and see the video below:
