Flash Gordon

SEE THE VIDEO AT YOUTUBE.COM/ STABICRAFTNZ

FLASH GORDON

WHAT ARE A COUPLE OF AUSSIES DOING IN ARIZONA IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST TALKING TO A FORMER SOUTH AFRICAN ABOUT A KIWI BOAT AND BASS BAITING? WHEN THE WORD CAME THROUGH FROM STABICRAFT HQ THAT A 1550 FISHER HAD BEEN SPOTTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT, THE CAPTAIN WAS FORCED TO INVESTIGATE.

WORDS & IMAGES by The Captain

Lake Powell, AZ United States

ake Powell is a 658sq km (254sq mi)

manmade reservoir on the Colorado River,

straddling the border between Arizona and Utah in the US. It is possibly not the first

place you’d expect to find a Stabicraft 1550 Fisher. It certainly isn’t where you’d expect to run into The Captain’s crew.

Long story short: When retired surgeon

Gordon Chait decided to spend his

golden years pestering fish, he needed a new boat. After

considerable research, he decided a Stabi would suit his

needs perfectly. It took him a while to track one down. A

few months later, he contacted Stabi HQ in New Zealand

to see if he could order a swim ladder for his new toy. The folks at Stabicraft were gobsmacked to hear one of their babies had made it to the American Southwest. As The

Captain’s crew was already en route to check out the Stabi salmon fishers of Oregon, they figured, what the hell? So

the boys were ordered on a desert diversion for a few days to check out Gordon’s new ride.

INTO THE DESERT

It’s a bit of a mission, but starts off cruisy enough as Gordon collects The Captain’s crew from Phoenix Airport, his blue and green Stabicraft already hooked up behind a Toyota Tundra pick-up, destination: Lake Powell, a five-hour drive. Then we hit traffic, a lot of traffic.

What seems to our jetlagged brains almost three years

later, we’re munching on burgers in Flagstaff, which we learn is just the halfway mark. At 900m (2952ft) above

sea level, it’s a little cooler than Phoenix, a bracing 14°C (57.2°F).

Back on the road, we keep climbing, the Tundra

effortless eating the hills. As darkness falls, Gordon

happens to mention he doesn’t see that well at night. We

take turns to keep him talking and eventually reach Lake Powell around 8.30pm.

The Captain learns a fair bit about Gordon during that

drive. He’s a 72-year-old South African from Cape Town who’s been living in Phoenix since the ’80s. After a bike accident ended his career as an ear, nose and throat surgeon, then a

heart attack gave him another scare, he decided life was too short not to be doing what he really loved — getting out on the water and fishing. For that he needed a boat.

“I used to fish off the rocks as a kid in Cape Town,”

Gordon recalls. “As a teenager, I built myself a boat

with a little engine from a plan in Popular Mechanics.”

(Captain’s note for millennials: this was a magazine kids

used to learn about DIY, science and tech back in the dark ages, pre-internet.)

“HE’S A 72-YEAROLD SOUTH AFRICAN FROM CAPE TOWN WHO’S BEEN LIVING IN PHOENIX SINCE THE ’80S.”

MEAT GORDON: Gordon doesn’t go anywhere without a solid supply of A-grade biltong.

RAMPING UP: You might’ve already guessed by looking at the boat ramp, but the water level at Lake Powell fluctuates greatly.

SO MANY BOATS, SO LITTLE TIME

Since those early days, Gordy has commanded quite a few vessels, including various inflatables. “After I came to the US, I had a couple of Boston Whalers. They’re safe boats,

but not too comfortable in rough weather,” he says. “Then

I bought a 5.7m (19ft) Mako, but didn’t love it, so I bought a 7.3m (24ft) Skipjack flybridge. That was an outstanding boat — very safe and a great ride. I sold that then didn’t have a boat for quite a while.”

When Gordy finally decided to buy another boat he came

across Stabicraft totally by accident, in a rum-stained issue of The Captain, he laughs. “I had a 4.6m (15ft) Highfield RIB with a Honda 75, but there wasn’t enough space for

fishing, no storage and the freeboard worried me out in the ocean. I wanted a dedicated fishing boat to take out on the lakes, but also to go offshore in San Diego or Mexico. I was

also interested in the Frontier model, but they don’t import them to the US.”

While visiting his brother, Gordy tracked down what

was to become his Stabi at a boat dealership in Everett,

Washington. He’s still a bit embarrassed by his rather inyour-face choice of paint scheme. “It’s Seattle Seahawks (NFL) colours and I’m a St Louis Cardinals fan, so I try to block it from my mind,” Gordy says. “They only had two boats left. I took one for a test drive, liked it and

they were happy to sell it without an engine. I’d kept my

Honda 75, which is a good power for this boat, especially with three or four people aboard, bait tank full of water and a tank of gas.”

MAKING THE CUT

At 5.30 the next morning, we’re dressed in every bit of

clothing we own yet still freezing our balls off when Gordy collects us for the drive to the boat ramp via a bait shop

where we collect some — appropriately — frozen anchovies. He informs us the temperature is around three degrees C (37.4°F). The sun can’t come up soon enough.

Gordy tries to distract us from our self-pity with a Lake

Powell travelogue. One claim to fame is that it was the location for filming Planet of the Apes in the 1960s.

“It’s like nowhere else on Earth, such a unique landscape

with these huge sandstone mountains with flat tops called mesas — ‘table’ in Spanish,” he explains. “The water is intensely blue because we only get clouds in Arizona

during thunderstorms. In the shallow canyons, the water is so clear you can actually see the fish.”

With a shoreline of nearly 3200km (1988mi), Lake Powell

is one of the largest manmade lakes in North America and

was built in the 1950s as part of a controversial hydroelectric dam system that submerged many Native American

archeological sites. With a maximum depth of about 180m (590ft), it features numerous narrow canyons and is now an extremely popular fishing and recreational boating

destination visited by about two million people each year. “You see every type of watercraft here in summer —

from houseboats, kayaks and jet skis to wakeboarding, waterskiing and paddle boarding,” Gordy says. “Then there’s the fishing, including bass tournaments.”

Apparently the lake was stocked with so many striped

bass in the 1960s that for a while they upset the balance with other species. Gordy says the upshot is there is no

limit on how many you can take. “There a lot of striped, smallmouth and largemouth bass, also pike, walleye,

sunfish, crappie and shad baitfish. And lots of catfish.”

At this point, we’re in the Stabi attempting to make our

way out to the main part of the lake via a narrow cut that is

proving a bit hard to find, especially since we get distracted by almost immediately running into a large school of

(ABOVE) BAIT BUCKET: Gordon has installed a custom live bait tank in the back of his 1550. It takes up a bit of fishing room, but holds a stack of liveys.

BOAT SPECS STABICRAFT 1550 FISHER

Length: 4.72m (15.5ft) Beam: 2.02m (6.6ft) Deadrise: 15° Max persons: 5 Dry hull weight (approx.): 415kg (915lb) Fuel capacity: 60L (15.8gal) Standard HP: 50 Max HP: 75 ENGINE SPECS Model: Honda BF75 Type: 4-stroke SOHC 4-cylinder/16-valve Displacement: 1496cc Weight: 163kg (359.3lb) CONTACT Stabicraft Marine 345 Bluff Road, Invercargill, Southland, New Zealand +64 3 211 1828; www .stabicraft.com

“APPARENTLY THE LAKE WAS STOCKED WITH SO MANY STRIPED BASS IN THE 1960S THAT FOR A WHILE THEY UPSET THE BALANCE WITH OTHER SPECIES.”

(ABOVE) NEXT GEN: Gordon’s granddaughter Charlotte named the boat The Beast and loves fishing the local lakes.

“MY EIGHTYEAR-OLD GRANDDAUGHTER LOVES COMING OUT ON THE WATER WITH ME.”

THE FRAME GAME By Mike Stenton

THE 1550 MIGHT BE SMALL IN SIZE , BUT IT’S GOT A FEW INNOVATION FEATURES THAT JAMES BOND’S Q WOULD’VE BEEN CHUFFED TO COME UP WITH.

The Stabicraft design team was challenged to come up with a walk-through windscreen that was strong and safe, that looked good and could be operated with minimal effort. Not only that, it had to be minimalist in construction and easy to put together. Big ask.

Early concepts were fully framed with thin acrylic. The Stabi scientists thought they could do better. So they 3D-modelled and rendered some frameless options, then developed a prototype. The 6mm prototype had too much flex. So it was stepped up to 8mm, then 10mm for maximum strength. That created a weight issue, so gas struts were needed. The team then designed new extrusions for mounting the screen.

Like most Stabicraft innovations, it was a full team effort, with minute detail in the design. But the overall outcome ticked all the boxes and is a big contribution to the 1550’s success.

baitfish. On the plus side, it’s warming up.

“This is where local knowledge is important,” Gordy says.

“If you don’t know where the cut is you can spend hours going up canyons trying to find it.”

After a close encounter with a houseboat, we squeeze

through the cut and out into the lake without scoring

any more abuse. The lake is so vast, with so many canyon offshoots that it’s easy to get lost. Fortunately, Gordy is

happy to go old-school and a trusty chart soon gets us sorted. We can spot baitfish and a few big boys on the screen, but the water is so clear we can watch fish chasing the lures

down. We catch quite a few smallmouth bass on soft plastics, but Jack from The Captain’s crew turns out to have the

most luck late in the day. “He hooked two striped bass with anchovies on a slightly weighted hook, just casting it out

and letting it drop was really effective,” Gordy says. “Nick

the camera man used a little popper on the surface with a

Zebco reel and caught a few smallmouth. It was pretty cool to get some from the bottom, some from the middle of the

water column and a few from the surface. Overall, the frozen anchovies seemed to work better than the plastics today.”

THE NAME OF THE BEAST

At one point we find ourselves venturing up a high-walled canyon so narrow it almost hugs the boat. Gordy shuts the engine off and lets the wind push the Stabi along.

“Fortunately the sandstone is very soft,” he says. “It won’t damage your boat, just dirty it a bit — but the aluminium deck is easy to keep clean. It’s also surprisingly OK to

walk on when we get hot summer days in excess of 110°F (43°C).”

A little later, The Captain’s crew were getting a few action

shots from the shore when Gordy blasts towards them before throwing the Stabi into a tight turn. “I was on the driver’s

side, then suddenly I was on the passenger side with my legs

in the air, still holding the steering wheel,” he laughs. “It was an interesting experience.”

It’s getting dark as we head back to the ramp, Gordy

enlightens us as to why his Stabi rejoices in the name of The

Beast. “My eight-year-old granddaughter loves coming out on the water with me. The first thing she said when she saw the Stabicraft was, ‘That boat looks like a beast!’”

He says the Stabi always attracts attention. “Everywhere

I go it takes me a long time to actually get on the water

because people want to talk about it — especially guys with big boats! One time I was out fishing off La Jolla and didn’t realise I was in a fish sanctuary. The Coast Guard turned

up, but were more interested in asking about the Stabi than giving me a hard time for fishing in a restricted area.”

EASY RIDER

Once everything is squared away, and despite our

intriguing aroma of sweat and bait, we check out a local

Mexican restaurant, pigging out on steaming hot chicken and fish fajitas. We agree Mexican beer is some of the

best in the world. Over a Dos Equis or three, Gordy tells us how to make the excellent biltong (jerky) we were

munching out on the water. “The secret to perfect biltong is to use really good meat, a good spices combination — and preferably get someone else to make it for you.”

That crucial piece of information out of the way, he then

expands on why he loves his Stabi Beast so much. “The design is so good — it’s got a lot of fishing space and a

high freeboard and transom so it feels safe. It’s also a very dry boat. Any water that gets in is picked up by the bilge pump so all the storage stays dry — and there’s a lot of

storage all over the boat and under the gunwales. The dual batteries are raised off the floor so they keep dry as well. And the Arrow foam-filled pontoons not only make it a

safe boat, but also very stable to stand on the gunwales to

fish. It adds a little bit of weight, but also deadens sound.” Gordy also loves how the Stabi rides, especially in a

following sea. “I was out by myself off San Diego recently, with a storm coming in from Mexico. Coming back was unbelievable. I was riding pretty fast down these huge

swells and the boat just sat on top of the water. There was

no worry that the nose would dive or that I would broach.”

The Beast has a built-in 60L (15.8gal) tank and Gordy

has added his own bait system. “It takes half a scoop of sardines or anchovies I buy from a bait barge,” he

boasts. “My bait table is circular and set up in front of

the engine, so doesn’t get in the way and you don’t bump

into the corners. I can filet and then send the bait straight overboard. The bit of extra weight is hardly noticeable.”

Gordy runs a four-speaker Fusion stereo and is — as The

Captain’s crew painfully discovered — rather partial to

good ol’ boy music. “The fish always want to listen to a bit of country and western and we can do that,” he says.

SMALL BOAT HEAVEN

Several beers in, Gordy’s faith in his trusty Stabi steed

remains unshakable. “Today I had three adults on board

and camera boxes all over the deck,” he says. “At one stage, when the fish were biting, it was like controlled chaos — shit all over the place. But the boat cleans up real easy.”

One of his favourite features is the access to the bow via

the hydraulic windscreen. “I often launch and retrieve the boat by myself, so I like how easy it is to get to the bow.”

Asked to describe the Stabicraft Fisher 1550 in five

words, Gordy comes up with: “Good design, safety, looks,

easy to maintain, just a great boat. I like being out on the water, always have. I also enjoy being out on the ocean

by myself. I don’t often see boats smaller than mine, but

safety isn’t a concern because of the way it’s built. And it’s easy to tow and fits in my garage.”

GO, GO GADGET As a retired surgeon, Gordon is no stranger to the world of gizmos and gadgets. After doing a fair bit of research, he decided that a four-speaker Fusion system, a Garmin VHF radio and a Garmin Echomap Ultra 105sv with GT54UHD-TM transducer was the best fit for his Stabicraft 1550. The sunlight-readable 10-inch screen fits neatly on a bracket mount on the driver’s side dashboard and offers awesome visibility, even when Gordy is fishing down the back of the boat.

During our session on Lake Powell, we marked huge schools of bait surrounded by bass, as well as sunken wrecks and steep drop-offs. Using the sounder, Gordy was able to put us on a drift right along the edges of these zones so we could fire lures and drop down baits.

Now you’d probably think Gordy’s favourite feature would be the all-in-one transducer with CHIRP, ClearVü and SideVü scanning sonar? Or how about being able to create personalised fishing maps with the Quickdraw Contours software? Nope, Gordy’s numero uno feature is the quickdisconnect bail mount that lets him install and remove the unit with a flick of the wrist — no more fiddling with cords and plugs. It’s the simple things, eh?

The Echomap also supports the optional Panoptix LiveScope LVS12 transducer, without requiring a black box. This means Gordy gets to take advantage of Garmin’s live-scanning technology, which shows the fish swimming in real time. His only criticism of the unit is that the long transducer caused a bit of a rooster tail off the back of his 1550. No problem. He went down to Home Depot, bought a PVC toilet fitting, cut it in half and mounted the top section above the transducer. Problem solved.

ONE-MAN ARMY: Gordon might be 72 years old, but he can launch and retrieve his 1550 Fisher solo.

“ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE FEATURES IS THE ACCESS TO THE BOW VIA THE PNEUMATIC WINDSCREEN.”