Sōlace With a Side of Snapper

Running the Sōlace 37CS center console with the Dougherty family in hopes of a red snapper slay day.

By Charlie Levine

July 25, 2024

Ponce Inlet, the gateway to the Atlantic wedged in between Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach, Florida, was a complete circus. It was July 12th, and every able-bodied angler with access to a boat was headed offshore in the morning’s gray light to make the most of the Southeast’s single-day red snapper season.

All sorts of vessels, from jonboats to giant sportfishers, flooded the channel and motored toward open water. I was aboard the Sōlace 37CS center console powered by triple 350-hp Yamaha outboards with company founder Stephen Dougherty at the helm. I had a feeling we wouldn’t get stuck in the middle of the pack.

Once we escaped the no-wake zone, Dougherty punched down the throttles, and the 37CS leapt out of the hole and fired off toward the horizon. This boat runs on a stepped hull designed in-house that ventilates the bottom, helping achieve higher speeds and better fuel efficiency. We blazed past several boats at 52 knots in the confused seas and converging wakes. I leaned over to Dougherty and said, “That’s got to feel good.” His wide smile confirmed my assertion.

The Dougherty family has a long boatbuilding legacy. Stephen’s father, Bob, played a pivotal role in developing the unsinkable hull that made Boston Whaler famous. Stephen inherited the boat bug and accompanied his father to work as a kid. He quickly developed into a boat rat, hanging out at the shop, building things and learning the trade. He spent time in each department and worked on the assembly line. And when he wasn’t learning how to build boats, he expanded his knowledge by running them.

Growing up in Massachusetts, Stephen earned money clamming and lobstering. He’d catch bluefish to use for bait in his pots. He also painted boat bottoms, and most of his earnings went toward filling his boat’s fuel tank.

After a 30-year career at Boston Whaler, Bob Dougherty, with Stephen, founded EdgeWater Boats in 1992 and Everglades in 2002. As Stephen talks about boat design, he often mentions tidbits he learned while working with his father. Now 58 and manning this innovative boat laden with smart design elements, Dougherty is doing the same thing his father did: passing on his wealth of knowledge to his kids. Joining us on the Sōlace 37CS were Sarah, Stephen’s wife, business partner and a longtime boating executive. Sarah was the one who invited me out for the day, and I quickly got the sense this boating couple doesn’t take many days off. Their 15-year-old son Ryan had stocked the starboard live well with pinfish we’d be using for snapper snacks.

Ryan was busy stowing gear and prepping the tackle when I met up with them that morning at 6 a.m. The Dougherty’s niece Lena, an engineering student at Georgia Southern who is interning at Sōlace was also on board, as well as 12-year-old daughter Graycen; Sarah’s father, Randy, who is in his 70s; and Ashley Crawford, who has worked with the Dougherty’s since 2011.

When I stepped aboard the 37CS at the Miami boat show earlier this year, I was impressed with its versatility. This is a hardcore fishing boat designed to be equally at home entertaining family and friends. I was about to see it in action.

Running with the windshield open felt great, as the Florida morning was already muggy. Stephen Dougherty said he came up with the idea for the windshield years ago when boating at night to see fireworks on the Fourth of July. Initially the design was focused on improving visibility with the added benefit of increasing air flow and helping the skipper communicate with crew on the bow.

We cruised at 45 knots until we were far enough ahead of the pack to pull back the throttles a bit. Seas were in the 2- to 4-foot range and close together, but the 37CS did not mind a bit. This is a dry, smooth-riding boat.

We arrived to our first mark at 7 a.m. and spotted some life on the depth finder. I really liked the aft-facing screen on the hardtop for those of us fishing in the cockpit. There is a ton of room to fish on this boat. We had seven anglers fishing from the cockpit, down the side deck and one in the bow. There was plenty of room and no tangles. The transom is very well-equipped, with two live wells, a large insulated cooler space that pulls out to access the lazarette and tuna tubes.

Magnets installed under the gelcoat hold seat cushions atop the transom cooler, and a backrest slides into the rocket launcher. Getting rid of snaps is the way to go. It’s much faster to remove the cushions, and the cushions don’t slide around at all. I liked the view from the transom as we ran from one waypoint to the next. A cutting board for slicing up squid was stuck atop the port live well, also with magnets.

The bench seat abaft the leaning post folds down to reveal tons of tackle storage and provides a nice flat surface for rigging. Another flat surface atop the tackle storage is handy for holding more gear, and somehow Graycen managed to curl up and take a nap there. There’s a Frigid Rigid cooler under the seat.

Dougherty and his team did a fantastic job creating a safe place to store everything including pliers and knife holders and a slick gaff holder under the gunwale that has a cutout just the right size so the hook sits perfectly in place. There’s even grill storage inside a slide-out drawer. The number of rod holders is significant, and just about every one has a cup holder or a magnet next to it.

Another design element that I’m sure required a ton of thought and tooling was the integrated trash bin under the gunwale as you walk forward to the bow. There’s a small cutout on a hinge that stays closed with a magnet. When you push it open, you can drop trash into the bin. It’s much better than using a bucket on deck that will inevitably get in the way or let trash fly out of the boat when you come up to speed. Dougherty said he got the idea for the trash bin while going through a restaurant drive-thru.

Sarah caught the first snapper of the day, laughing as Ryan teased her a bit. It was nice to see the family enjoying the moment together even though the fish wasn’t big enough to toss into one of two in-deck fishboxes. I had a nice knock-down that I fought for a minute before the line parted, likely by a shark. Still, we had a steady pull of blue runners, almaco jacks and grunts.

Hooking red snapper requires positioning the boat right over the fish. Dougherty used Yamaha’s SetPoint functionality to keep the boat in the zone without dropping the anchor. You can then use the Yamaha joystick to jog a bit in any direction, a handy tool. We were fishing depths of 60 to 120 feet and made several moves over the course of the day. Anchoring would’ve been a time-consuming endeavor but one made much easier by the 37’s windlass.

Dougherty landed our first keeper on a live pinfish. Ryan gaffed it, and I opened the fishbox so he could swing the snapper onto the ice.

“That was probably the most expensive red snapper ever caught,” Sarah joked.

“Let’s not do that math,” I chimed in.

At one point, a fishing line got wrapped up in one of the props, and I was impressed with how calm and cool everyone remained. There was no stress and no yelling. Standing on the deck between the outboards and the transom, Dougherty was able to free the line. These things happen on boats — it’s not worth getting upset about it.

On our final spot of the day, I kept losing my bait to micro fish, so I grabbed a rod rigged with two small hooks, baited them with squid and dropped it down. I instantly hooked up and reeled in a pair of grunts about the size of my palm. I put the small fish in the live well, rebaited and handed the rod to Graycen, who spent most of the day napping and telling her brother to leave her alone. She hooked up immediately and reeled in another double, then another. She made a point to tell Ryan she caught “twice as many fish as he did.”

The day flew by as it often does on the water, and around 4 p.m. Dougherty made the call to head home. Heading in, the Sōlace cruised comfortably at 40 knots, netting an impressive 1 mpg. With triple 350s, the boat tops out at 53 knots. If you move up to triple 400s, Dougherty said it will run upward of 60 knots.

“I tell people the top-end speed is a byproduct of a boat performing well at cruising speed,” Dougherty says. “You have to have an efficient bottom and light weight so the boat is not working hard at cruise. It’s not just about top-end speed; it’s also about how slow you can run. This boat planes at 10 mph — most stepped hulls won’t do that. It performs through the entire range.”

Visibility from the helm is wide open, and I like having the steering wheel on centerline. Three captain’s chairs are mounted on shock absorbers, and there’s a thick helm pad to stand on. As I get older, my joints really appreciate this extra cushioning. The switches on the dash are easy to access, and the two large Garmin MFDs are flush-mounted for a nice, clean look.

The 37 holds 512 gallons of fuel, a fair bit more than most boats this size, which gives plenty of range to cruise from Florida to the Bahamas for a weekend and back without refueling. The cabin forward of the helm includes a berth for two with rod storage underneath, a wet head, and access to the batteries and electronics. It also has air-conditioning which is powered by an inverter system. This fishing boat would be equally happy as an overnighter or megayacht tender.

As we entered the channel, Dougherty pulled back the throttles to idle speed and I asked him about his take on boat design. He said there are three ways to get an efficient hull: throw money at the construction process to make the boat lighter, add more horsepower or come up with a better design. Sōlace sticks to the latter ideology, and you can see it from stem to stern.