Sally Girl was just back from the Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament when I saw her in her slip at Pirate’s Cove Marina in Manteo, North Carolina. Like so many of Scarborough Boatworks’ creations, this boat represents a personal collaboration between the builder and the owner. Sally Girl was built for father and son Chauncey and Jason Krahenbill, of Edenton, North Carolina, both avid marlin fishermen who run and fish the boat themselves in tournaments, often against paid professional teams. In the few weeks since taking delivery, they had already taken fourth in the VBBT, fifth in the Pirate’s Cove Billfish Tournament and placed in the top 10 at the Carolina Boat Builders. Not bad, considering they had just a little over 200 hours on the engines.
General Appearance
Sally Girl is definitely a new‑generation Scarborough, lower to the water, with a more subdued bow flare.
The long bow, rake of the house and bridge, Carolina sheer and large cockpit are perfectly proportioned to give her a racy look. She’s done up with a dramatic Alexseal metallic Dolphine Blue hull that’s set off from the crisp white foredeck and house by teak toe rails and covering boards. Sans tuna tower, the helmsman steers from a nicely laid-out flybridge while the action occurs in an uncluttered work environment below.
Fishability was the first and foremost consideration. “I love the boat,” Chauncey says. “But I also love the family behind it. Ricky Jr. and his wife, Sarah, are special people, and when you build a boat with them, you become part of their family.”
Salon and Galley
The interior woodwork — salon, galley and staterooms — is teak, the joinery and finish work beautifully executed. The couches are done by Van Brunt’s Custom Upholstery, with spacious storage compartments beneath to store tackle. The floors are hand-fitted teak and holly, including the companionway belowdecks. The compact galley countertops and backsplash are done in beige speckled quartz, as is the vanity in the head. Kitchen components include three refrigerator drawers and one freezer, a sink, a two-burner electric stove-top and an oversize microwave/convection oven. There’s plenty of storage for dry goods, dinnerware and paper products. Dinner is served on a teak table with benches that seat four, and a large flat-screen TV is located on the bulkhead above it. Lighting is recessed, and the surrounding glass is tinted.
Sleeping Accommodations
Down four teak steps is a fisherman’s idea of what sleep quarters should be. The door to starboard leads to the boat’s only head, but it’s a complete one with a raised toilet next to a cabinet for towels and supplies, a large vanity with the sink set in a granite countertop, and an oversize stand-up/sit-down enclosed shower. The door opposite the head enters a modest master with a full-size berth.
Moving forward, the companionway opens to the full beam of the hull and a pair of old-fashioned daybeds. Below the full berth are six large storage drawers, and a storage area beneath the other houses a pair of cockpit kite rods, Lindgren-Pitman electric kite reels and four bent-butt 130s. Over the top of both lounges are rod racks for 24 more outfits, so the boat’s entire complement of tackle is on board at all times. Behind a door in the forward bulkhead is another stateroom, this one with two beds in a V-pattern over/under arrangement, one a full, the other a twin. There are storage drawers, a small LCD TV and a clear hatch overhead to provide daylight.
Flybridge
The helm layout is straightforward and uncluttered, with a teak pod for the wheel and single-lever controls. “I’m old-school,” Krahenbill told me. “I have a large fleet of trucks, and I wanted a full complement of mechanical gauges at the helm to keep track of the engines two floors down.” But he isn’t so old-school when it comes to electronics. Three Simrad 19-inch touch-screen monitors stretch across the helm cabinet and are also linked to provide engine data. To port is a compartment for the radios, transmission controls, switch panels and the hard-key control panel for the Simrad system. Three Furuno RD33s are situated in a recess in the hardtop just forward of the access door for the Miya Epoch US-9HD teaser reels. The outriggers are rigged so the long baits can be handled from the bridge, as is the center rigger.
Engine Room
Accessed through a hatch in the cockpit and down an aluminum ladder, the engine room contains twin 1,150 hp Caterpillar C18 diesels run through ZF 1.75‑to-1 transmissions under a mirrored ceiling. A ledge at the forward bulkhead is home to a Cat 21 kW genset, the engine-room air-conditioning unit, hot water heater, Headhunter Mach5 water pump and filters. There is a Spot Zero water-polishing system and filters that provide on‑demand fresh water to the boat’s washdown hoses on the flybridge, bow and in the cockpit.
Raw water for engine cooling comes through a pair of sea chests forward of each engine. The starboard engine is equipped with a crash valve should the unthinkable occur. All engine electronics boxes and gauges are found on the stern bulkhead, along with a Maretron NMEA 2000 backbone to feed operational data to the electronics at the helm. The fuel filters are backed up by a primer pump as an additional safety feature. A Dometic Eskimo ice maker, KT unit for the freezer box, Cruisair air-conditioning system for the living spaces, Voltmaster battery charger and Fireboy fire-suppression system are also positioned aft of the engines for easy access. Aft of the engine room is an access tunnel between the fuel tanks to the lazarette that neatly stores flying gaffs. Crawl through and you find the aft bilge pumps, rudder posts, rudder sensor for the autopilot and SeaStar hydraulic steering system, all housed in a dry, clean environment.
Cockpit
The 16-foot-6-inch beam creates a spacious cockpit with generous overall dimensions. A Release Marine fighting chair complements the meticulously finished teak decks. A large fish box is situated in the transom, with composite cutting boards on the reverse side of the hatches. Under the entire mezzanine couch is a massive freezer box, and hatches in the deck hide — from port to starboard — a refrigerated bait box, a storage space for cleaning supplies, engine-room access, a large drink box and an oversize ice chest that extends well forward. The bridge ladder mounts to the side of the multidrawer tackle station with a Wolf electric grill atop it. “There’s just something about the smell of hot dogs on the grill when you’re fishing,” Krahenbill says with a smile.
Performance
As we left Pirate’s Cove, I had an opportunity to see how the six-cylinder Cats and four-blade Veem props pushed the boat’s 55,000-pound displacement. They didn’t disappoint. From idle, the hull transitions onto plane imperceptibly. No bow rise, just the feeling of the hull form releasing from the water as it whisked its way up to a comfortable 32-knot cruise with the engines at 80 percent load, burning about 80 gph. At wide-open throttle, she hit 39 knots. Krahenbill showed off her maneuverability, running the narrow channel cutbacks to the inlet at speed.
The seas outside were modest, but Oregon Inlet is almost always gnarly. The hull handled it without a problem at 25 knots. Running offshore into a modest head sea was no challenge, and Krahenbill said the boat was right at home in every sea condition he’s had it in so far. At trolling speed, the wake is clean, and the engine’s low grumble should have the billfish all over the flat lines. In reverse, the boat is more than a match for a white marlin, turning and spinning like a ballerina. “I couldn’t be happier with every aspect of the performance,” Krahenbill said. “And the same goes for my son. Plus, she really raises fish.”
This new Scarborough 57 is a serious offshore angler’s dream. It’s beautiful, fast, seaworthy and purpose-built from the keel up for chasing marlin.
