May 1, 2020

By Charlie Levine, OUTBOARD magazine

A pilothouse with windows that go up and down as opposed to side to side, shock-absorbing seats and a retractable awning. Those were the three must-have items Jimmy Buffett requested when he sat down to draw out his next fishing boat. But what he ended up with is one of the most unique sportfishing vessels to hit the rip in a long, long time.

To make this boat a reality, Jimmy and his longtime captain, Vinnie LaSorsa, reached out to Freeman Boatworks, builders of the most sought-after, high-speed catamaran center consoles on the market, and Merritt Boatworks, a venerable custom builder of sportfishing yachts. They asked these revered builders to do something quite a ways out of their wheelhouse — take a 42 Freeman hull and install a custom, Merritt-built house.

“When we were first approached about doing this project, I tried to sough it off because it’s not what we really do, but they kept working on us,” says Roy Merritt, owner of Merritt Boatworks. “After a while I said ‘Alright, we’ll build it, but I want to draw it.’ It ended up being a really fun project. Sometimes, if you’re like me, you like to do something different. This was an interesting project and very satisfying. The boat came out very nice.”

Putting a house onto a 42 cat with the mean, sexy lines of a Freeman, and getting it to look right, is no easy task. A pilothouse can give a boat a commercial presence with boxy corners and squared glass. However, a pilothouse makes a lot of sense for boaters in colder climates who like to push their season to the very fringe of what is considered comfortable cruising weather. A bit of shelter comes in handy when the bluefin tuna are biting south of Nantucket and the water is in the 60s. The same could be said when escaping the heat while trolling the edge of a cobalt blue drop-off in the Bahamas. And those are two of Jimmy Buffett’s favorite spots to fish.

Freeman experimented with a pilothouse model several years back and built one 33-footer with an enclosed helm, which just so happens to be owned by a certain musician who likes to croon about pirates and sailors. At the time, Jimmy was about to repower his 42-foot Rybovich, so he’d be without a fishing boat for a few months, and he didn’t want to miss the summer season.

“We were looking for an interim boat, and I said to Mr. B that I’d love to take a look at a Freeman,” LaSorsa says. Jimmy said that he’d like to see a Freeman with a pilothouse. LaSorsa knew that Billy Freeman had built one pilothouse cat and approached the builder about making a second one. That idea got shot down; the project would take too long and would slow down production. But LaSorsa knew Freeman had built a 33 with a house so he reached out to everyone he could think of to track down the owner of the boat. And he found him.

“Through mutual friends, texting everybody and putting together pieces of information, I found the boat at Outer Banks Marina in Wanchese, North Carolina,” LaSorsa recalls. “I called the marina and asked to speak with the boat owner. I didn’t tell them who I worked for. I just said I was interested if the owner wants to sell the boat.”

About a week later, Tim Anderson, the boat’s owner from Virginia, called LaSorsa back and said his son and fishing partner was having a baby and he’d consider parting with the boat. Jimmy and LaSorsa went to meet the owner and check out the boat. They spent an entire day going through the vessel and talking with Anderson, asking him what he loved about the boat and any things he’d change.

“That whole first day Tim had no idea it was Jimmy Buffet,” LaSorsa says. They were just two guys chatting about boats. “Later on that night, I texted Tim a picture I took of him and Jimmy sitting on the covering board talking. He texted back: ‘Thanks, cool pic. BTW I meant to ask you, what does your boss do?’”

LaSorsa responded, saying his boss was a singer, and Anderson asked what kind of singer. LaSorsa fired back: “He sings Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise …”

“He called me instantly and said ‘Shut the f— up!’”

Needless to say, they got the boat, which already had a seafoam green hull. It was like it was meant to wear the name Last Mango, which Jimmy had used on a number of vessels.

They outfitted the 33 Freeman in Florida and ran it to Montauk, New York, where they spent the summer chasing striped bass and tuna. “We had a great time fishing it,” LaSorsa says. “The 33 is a great little boat. At the end of the summer we had the idea of building a bigger version of the pilothouse Freeman, and that’s when we started drawing it up.”

After a couple of meetings with Billy Freeman and the company’s vice president, Scott Cothran, the plan began to come together….