You say you want a center console fishboat big enough to sport triple-wide seating at the helm, room for multiple anglers on the bowdeck, livewell space for dozens of baits, and tuna-sized fishboxes? You want it to have the chops for offshore runs as well as days on the Bay? And, you want to enjoy a few of those luxury touches that are generally found on yachts rather than boats? If you’ve been spending your fishing time on an average 20-something boat common to the Chesapeake you may need to step into an entirely new class of vessel—one like the all-new Robalo R300.
With an LOA of 30’6” and a beam stretching to 10’6” the R300 delivers gobs more elbow room than your average center console and Robalo lays out the boat to take full advantage of this fact, starting at the helm. Three cushy flip-down bolster seats sit behind a three-sided enclosure with an electrically actuated front windshield that swings up for a breeze on nice days and is swiped by a dual-speed wiper on not-so-nice ones. At the helm there’s room for a pair of 16” MFDs, and you’ll discover inviting perks like dual cell phone charging docks, a JL Audio system (with eight speakers, two subwoofers, and 1400 watts of amplification), and if you opt for it, joystick steering.
The bow cockpit is another area where XL accommodations are apparent, with U-shaped wrap-around seating and a removable dinette that a half-dozen people could sit around with room to spare. Drop the table to the seat’s level, pull those cushions, and you now have an XL casting deck. And note that the hatches accessing stowage/fishboxes under the bow seats are on integrated latches so when the cushions are in place you don’t have to fumble around to open them.
There’s additional bow seating integrated into the front of the console, which does double-duty as the front-opening console head compartment door. Again, there’s more room here than on the average center console, with over six feet of headroom, a countertop with sink, and a dedicated rack for stowing that removable dinette table.
It’s the spacious fish-fighting arena back aft, of course, that we anglers will be most interested in. The cockpit is kept open by incorporating a swing-down transom bench seat between the flanking 28-gallon transom livewells. Common folding transom seats are a cause of flummoxing fumbles—we’re sure you’ve wrestled with one a time or two—but this one is electrified so it folds flush and deploys at the press of a button.
More evidence that size matters: Swing open the large centered hatch, and you’ll find a space designed to accommodate a Seakeeper 2 gyroscopic stabilizer; swing open the hatches to either side, and you’ll discover a pair of whopping-big 70-gallon fishboxes; swing up the seat base of the aft-facing mezzanine-style seat, and you’ll see a 65-quart Yeti cooler.
For its spacious attitude and comprehensive equipping, the biggest surprise about this boat might just be its performance. The R300 comes with a pair of F300 or F350 Yamaha outboards, which doesn’t exactly sound overpowering for a boat of this size and nature. Yet with the F350s top-end pushes into the upper-50s, and at a 4500-rpm cruise this rig runs at over 40 mph. Dial it back to 3500 rpm and about 30 mph and efficiency sits at around 1.5 mpg.
The boat’s performance marks an improvement over the old R300, which was a slightly smaller (29’2” LOA) and lighter (8200 pound) boat. Credit goes to a new Michael Peters Yacht Design hullform, which is backed up by Robalo construction including a Kevlar-reinforced hull, a foam-filled molded stringer grid that’s glassed in and gel-coated, and a poured ceramic composite transom. Additional construction touches to take note of include the use of Sileather silicon upholstery to resist mold, mildew, and UV rays; waterproof Deutsch connectors in the tinned-copper-wire electrical system; and an extensive use of stainless-steel in everything from hardware to the toe rails.
Aw, shucks—one problem with checking out a center console this big is that there’s so much to cover, we sometimes run out of space on these pages before we can cover each and every attribute. We’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to the boat’s luxury attributes (there’s a freshwater shower integrated into the hard top!). We haven’t talked fit and finish yet (lids are RTM molded so they’re fully finished inside and out!). And what about available options (how about a 115-pound thrust Minn Kota Riptide Terrova Quest on the bow)? It turns out that when you’re looking at the Robalo R300, space is at a premium in more ways than one.
Robalo R300 Specifications
- LOA – 30’6”
- Beam – 10’6”
- Displacement – 9900 lbs.
- Draft (min.) – 2’0”
- Transom Deadrise – 21 degrees
- Fuel Capacity – 280 gal.
- Max. Power – 700 hp
For more information visit the Robalo Boats website, or FishTalk supporter Anchor Boats, North East MD, (800) 773-2628.