Whenever a simple and delicious Mexican idea migrates north across the border, it tends to get fancied up, often to its detriment. Consider the nacho, once an unpretentious tortilla chip crowned with a slice of jalapeño and melted cheese, now a heaping muddle of meat, sour cream, onions, olives, and herbs. Herbs! Sam Devlin’s new Pelicano, a liberal translation of the Mexican panga workboats, has likewise been garnished with such gringo delicacies as windscreen and wheel steering, but it’s hard to complain that it’s been spoiled in the process. Devlin’s version is saucy-looking, efficient, and seaworthy, and still unfancy enough that an ambitious amateur can realistically aspire to building one.Devlin got acquainted with pangas on his occasional winter trips to Mazatlán, one of which also acquainted him a few years back with a delightful woman named Soitza, who became his wife. Mazatlán glares out at the open Pacific, and Devlin says he was impressed by the pangeros’ willingness to motor out into the big water to fish—at least in the mornings, before the afternoon trades boil up—and then drive the boats right up onto the beach around noon. He liked the pangas’ no-nonsense functionality and tough character, but the all-fiberglass execution left him cold.For his interpretation, Devlin shortened the hull from a typical 22' to 18' 4" for handier trailering. He added a deck, kept the beam slender at 6' 6", and gave the bow an arrowhead-fine entry with a prominently extruded stem. “I’m a big fan of parting the water,” he says. It’s a semi-displacement hull, so its transition to plane is gradual and subtle, and Devlin’s design objective is the best possible compromise between low-speed fuel efficiency and high-speed—well, speed.
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In my opinion, the features of panga include; lightweight, narrow beam, floatation bulge around the gunwale, and delta pad.
Comparing to a J-18 Imemensa panga. J-18 is 473lbs Pelicano is 1490lbs. J-18 has a 60″ beam, Pelicano ha a 78″ beam. J-18 has a floatation bulge around the gunwale and a delta pad, Pelicano has neither.
I love the boat, particularly the Shrimper model. I think some strip planking above the chine midship to the bow would remove the feature line forward and I would be in love. Great job, Devlin.
Great Boat, right up my alley. More like the practical cruisers that are made in UK and Europe. Fuel efficient. Like cars in US if more was done for fuel efficiency like slower speed limits and less weight we would not need to go electric. Devlin has good practical boat designs. Saw my first at the Seward, Alaska, boat dock years ago, a Devlin small tug type of some sort. I bought a 19′ cruiser last year here in Alaska. Wondering what it is? A Glen-L or? A couple of photos are linked here. Many folks here are not very water savvy and get huge aluminum or glass boats to play at bottom fishing etc. Many are afraid of water/seas so have to go large.
Transom view
Side view
Seen Pangas here in Hawaii. My cousins are watermen in the two Rivers (Rappahannock and Potomac) area of Chesapeake Bay. To me, this hull shows more descent from Chesapeake Bay deadrise workboats than Pangas. When I see that sharp entry and deep vee forward flattening out as you go aft I think of blue crabs and oysters!
Being from the Chesapeake myself I have to agree with you. A lot of Chesapeake boats descended from work boats further North like New York, but I guess all the various US designs had their original ideas from Europe. Chesapeake watermen boat builders up until the ’80s could build Rack O’ Eye that means from memory, no boat plans or many measurements.