Center Consoles Only

It’s a pretty tough test, having your equipment installed in three high-performance boats used at sea for thousands of hours under the gaze of a global social media audience. Simrad® has passed that challenge with flying colours as the marine electronics partner of choice for Miami, Florida-based Center Consoles Only.

With Center Consoles Only (CCO), you get what it says on the tin – the team running it lives and breathes center console boats. It’s a less concise sentence though when summarising this company’s operations – such has been its rapid expansion since launching in 2016.

Founding fathers Alan Blanco, Brian Gonzalez and Eric Taggart built great experience working together to create boat walkthrough video content on a previous project. That’s where CCO also started. A lot of videos were made and distributed via social media at a time when that was still quite advanced as a concept. CCO set a style for walkthroughs that go into great depth, looking beneath the skin by filming on the factory line in addition to coverage of the finished boat out on the water. This deep-dive approach rapidly attracted a strong following.

CCO then diversified into boat listings and sales, offering a free centre consoles for sale section on its website to assist its growing base of followers, together with a professional brokerage and financing service and even a waterside property sales division. The core video activity continues to grow however, and the team has recently been spreading its reporting even internationally, covering the Boot Düsseldorf show in Germany as one example.

A virtual taste of the boat

Alan explains: “We try to create experiences where people can almost feel like they're there with us to jump on a center console and grab lunch or go fishing. We capture as much as we can and dissect the boat.

“The experience we’ve gained while running this as a full-time business is probably more than anyone out in the industry. We've been on many makes and models with a large range of boat construction and performance styles. People now want to use our social platforms to promote their products, but we're very picky about that and don't share anything we haven't personally experienced or tried. Our followers know that if we put something out there, it will be of value.”

Test and charter fleet

Another logical progression for CCO was to create its own fleet of highly tailored center consoles for test and charter use. The current line-up starts with a Costa 264HC hybrid catamaran powered by twin Mercury 300hp V8 outboards which, at time of writing, was being raffled at the Miami International Boat Show to raise substantial funds for the Drive Dry and Captains for Clean Water initiatives. A replacement Costa 264HC will also be fitted with a Simrad marine electronics package.

The fleet topper is a 44ft Contender, geared for serious offshore fishing expeditions that will log between 1500-2000 hours each year. Quadruple 400hp Mercury outboards provide the impetus to drive this serious blue water center console to speeds beyond 70mph.

The latest addition is an Orion 29CC, also propelled to speeds in the mid 60mph range by powered by twin Mercury 300hp V8s. The CCO team were closely involved in its detail design and has just taken delivery in recent weeks.

Simrad® – the proven choice for CCO’s fleet

Significantly, CCO’s high-performance fleet is exclusively equipped with Simrad® marine electronics. “I got into Simrad originally with our first Costa 26,” Alan explains. “Ever since then, I've just had such a good experience with not only the product but with everyone involved in the company. I wouldn't want to use anything else. The equipment has done everything we've wanted it to do and more.

“We really like the bird-finding capability of the new HALO® open array radar and it’s also good for keeping a careful watch on storms. I wouldn’t leave port without it at night.

“I have also been impressed by the performance of the sonar. We ran tests on the Orion to see how quickly we could go before the S5100 CHIRP sonar module became ineffective due to aerated high speed water flow across the transducer. We got to 45mph, and it was still marking the bottom which was impressive and useful when you are trying to cover a lot of area. The SideScan function has also been game changing when fishing.

When I used to fish with my dad we went out every other week to mark spots and then return to anchor there. We would always try to figure out the current, but having used this latest technology I reckon we were probably missing the spot 99.9% of the time. The features available on our NSSevo3S™ mean you can hit a target dead on with little margin of error.

“There’s a plan to take the Orion to the Bahamas soon. The NAC™ -D autopilot, directed by an AP48 Autopilot Controller, will come into its own for that visit, as well as for offshore wahoo and tuna trips. Obviously if you're driving by hand you tend to steer a snake-like course. With the autopilot holding a straight line you get there quicker and burn less fuel.

“We recently recorded a video highlighting all the features available to us that we have yet to use, such as the photographs you can find on charts to help familiarise yourself with different ports. The more I dive into the system, the more features I find.”