NorthCoast 415HT
“They’re already talking about a bigger boat. Give me a little break here,” C&C Marine president and owner Jose “Joe” Daponte calls out to his son, Craig, who is manning the helm of hull number one of their first 40-foot-class NorthCoast 415HT, aboard which we’re trolling for bluefin tuna somewhere south of Block Island, Rhode Island.
Daponte cut his teeth making the rounds through several boat yards–including C.E. Ryder in the 1970s and Albin Marine in the 1980s (whose hulls C&C Marine also manufactured for a time)–before purchasing the NorthCoast Boats brand name and hull molds in 2000, just after a time when they’d been the behind-the-scenes builders of center-console wizard Dick Lema’s designs.
Daponte took the two turnkey molds for 18- and 19-foot skiffs and went off to shows with the hulls, but the name Lema wasn’t ringing bells on the boat show circuit outside of the northeast, so he went in search of a name that might bear more prowess, settling on NorthCoast, which had recently floundered.
Rebranding proved fruitful, so Daponte continued production of the two turnkey molds and designed his very first: the 235, a 23-footer that is now NorthCoast’s bread-and-butter model.
“I grew up as a farmer,” the Azorean-born president and owner of C&C Marine tells me as we begin trolling daisy chains for bluefin tuna aboard hull number one of his brand-new NorthCoast 415HT, somewhere south of Block Island, just before daybreak. “Our little town was away from the water, but it was high. So every time I was on the farm, I’d look at the ocean and I’d see those boats going by. For some reason, it gave me some, you know, feeling about it. So when I came to this country, I said, I gotta try a little something.”
And that he did. The boating market moves in mysterious ways, and when Jose “Joe” Daponte first stepped off the proverbial boat from the Azores and into the brave, relatively new world of Bristol, Rhode Island boat-building just over half a century ago, he had designs on seafaring and boatbuilding, but he couldn’t have imagined he’d be plonking quadruple 300 hp Yamaha outboards on the transom of 41-foot boats. No one could have, to that end–at least not in the 1970s. But here he is.
The 415HT is a commendable first run for the small ma-and-pop manufacturer. We went three for three on bluefin–including Daponte’s first tuna aboard the new boat–and we’ll be detailing our trip and thoughts in a forthcoming issue.
