Capt. Karl Anderson

This story first appeared in the 2023 Issue of On The Rip, the magazine of South Jersey Tournaments

By Karl Anderson

Ocean City, Maryland has enjoyed a storied past in the history of sportfishing. Brought to the forefront of white marlin fishing by a relentless businessman, not the now famous tournament that draws hundred of boats as many folks think today. In the late 1950’s and through the late seventies, Pete Boinis and his famous Ships Cafe Marina, now known as Harbour Island, did more to promote and pull boats from out of town to come sample the white marlin bite out of Ocean City than anyone or anything. 

He was integral in starting the White Marlin Open and was a hard core white marlin enthusiast that would close his restaurant/bar in the early hours of the morning, get on his boat and wake up on the fishing grounds. Many local family members with names like Mumford, Simpson, Purnell, Bunting and Motsko played integral roles as well in building the sportfishing industry in Ocean City. Over time the City has grown and the fleet has shifted docks and the once sleepy beach town is now a bustling summer resort that gets invaded by the tournament teams for several weeks in August.

Not far from the Ocean City Inlet and the now famous Sunset Marina in West Ocean City is a nice new building with allot of buzz about it. Inside, a youthful and hard working crew along with an enthusiastic leader are adding another name to be etched into the log books of Ocean City fishing history and maybe even sportfishing history in general. Not just for the latest endeavor in boatbuilding but this guy and his family have shaken up the fishing scene for some time now. Jon Duffie has proven his skill in the cockpit, at the wheel and now is forging ahead in a boatbuilding enterprise. As of this writing have completed a 64-footer, and have three more under construction, a 70’, 79’ and 59-footer. 

The boating bug started with his grandfathers Hatteras, but the family, his mother, father, and brothers Jeremey and Justin started fishing in the 1970’s when Jon’s father got a 25’ Bertram with gas engines, often strapping jugs of fuel to the bow rail to get home from the canyon. Since then they have had multiple boats named “Billfisher” including a 34’ Luhrs, 46’ Post a 50’ Post that they fished during the weekends from the Ocean City Fishing Center starting in 1990. The boys would live on the boat during the week, as Jon says, “under the careful watch of the charter captains” when the folks went back to work. This brought opportunities for them to fish and learn from several well known charter captains of the time, Capt. Bob Gower, Capt. Mitch Pierson, Capt. Jimmy Garner and Capt. Mark “Hammer” Hill to name a few. 

The fishing fixation caught hold and the family fished together regularly with Mom even running the boat at times while they all shared the duties of a days fishing. Dad taught the boys how to navigate on paper charts and later to use Loran-C and GPS as well as to learn how to handle the boat to get it home in case something happened to him. 

Jon can still recite the Loran numbers for the Ocean City sea buoy like it’s his phone number. As Jon explains, “my Dad did a phenomenal job teaching all of us boat handling skills, boat maintenance, how to do oil changes so by the time I was 14 I was completely comfortable docking the 50-footer at the Fishing Center, putting it in the travel lift getting hauled out to the point when other boats needed to get hauled out for hurricanes and stuff the Dock Master would have me drive them.”

As far as the fishing acumen, as Jon explained, “For learning, the great thing about fishing from OC is that you can go flounder fishing or seabass fishing then go farther offshore and we would chunk for bluefins in July then charter fish for white marlin in August.” Obviously a student of the game and quick study, Duffie has had some remarkable catches including a day where he lead the Billfisher crew to 57 white marlin, “only” 57 due to a miscount, it was really 58! Quite a day for sure.

In the summer of 2021 Duffie launched his first big boat a 64-foot cold-molded sporfisherman. Later in August while fishing the Mid Atlantic they caught a tournament and Maryland state record grander Blue Marlin weighing 1,135 pounds and taking $1.6 million in tournament winnings. As if that was not enough, they returned with the 64’ “Billfisher” to OC in the summer of 2022 and during day 5 of the White Marlin Open brother Jeremy with Jon at the wheel caught a 77.5 pound white marlin with a tournament pay out a whopping $4.5 million dollars. As always, the family was together on the boat for these catches. So if any one doubts these folks know how to fish, they haven’t been paying attention, these folks are the real deal. 

Building a sportfishing boat today is no easy task. It’s certainly not an easy way to make money. Knowing so many of todays builders there is one common thread that makes them successful and builders of desirable fishing boats. Passion. They love the creating and building process. No where in the world is there a better group of boatbuilders for sportfishing. The iconic builders that started it all, the Rybovich family, still turn out masterpiece works of art under the watchful eye of Michael Rybovich and his sons. Roy Merritt is the third generation builder that has transformed the little family yard into a service and build mecca with his advanced composite construction known for turning out well built, robust, tough, long haul traveling boats.

For Jon Duffie, the passion started early. “Honestly, it has been a dream of mine since I was 12-years old. I would take balsa wood and carve frames and try to build plank and frame balsa wood models. My first taste of boatbuilding came during the build of the 50’ Post on trips to Mays landing, NJ to see the progress.” He continues, “Then in the late ’90’s we were building the new 60-foot Billfisher with Ricky Scarborough, I was in high school and that was my summer job working in the boat shop. I was just eaten up with it. It was just amazing to me to take a pile pf lumber and build one of these things.”

Then things got real serious according to Jon, “ Then we built another Scarborough and I went down there for the entire construction process driving Rick crazy, asking Rick Jr. a million questions and driving the guys in the shop crazy with a million questions. We fished that boat traveling to Mexico, the Bahamas and did a bunch stuff with it. Then we built a Spencer Boat, I went back down to Carolina for the build. So after doing a bunch of projects and building boats with different builders I was determined to build and knew that I was going to build a boat. I started out with a small 26’ center console and while I was building that I was designing the 64 in a pole barn building with me and three guys.” 

Going all-in on the builds was like doing a masters class in boat building. Satiating his thirst for knowledge by asking questions drove him deeper in and gut hooked him. Not everyone can put all the pieces together, it takes allot of vision, commitment, time, preparation and energy. The first boat took awhile to build, he started in the end of 2018 and finished in 2021 but he was still running the family boat full time in the summer and worked on the bridge and parts in the fall then he’d fly to Costa Rica to run their boat there, the Scarborough “Agitator”, then fly home to work for a couple weeks, then back to Costa Rica several times then come home in the spring and work in the shop, then run the boat in the summer again. 

As Jon tells it, “Finally in 2019, I told my folks if Im going to do this I have to stop fishing. So, I went to the boat shop and got her finished” When asked who his boat building mentors were he credits Ricky Scarborough Sr and Jr, Jim Floyd at F&S, John Bayliss and Mark Willis all of whom he counts himself lucky to be able to call and how they have the patience to talk to him and answer questions and offer advice.  

With a handful of boats to build, none of which are the same, he is becoming a true custom builder. “I’m in business to build custom boats. I want everyone to be happy. If you look at my 26, it looks like it was built in South Florida, the bigger boats obviously have the Carolina look. I like the traditional profile with the broken shear and classic, traditional window line but when you get up to the boat it has allot of modern curves and shapes with big nice flowing rounds on the cabin and the cabin sweep is not exaggerated nor is the flare or tumblehome. We’ve only finished one boat but we’re on our third evolution of our look. I love the creativity and artistic nature of doing this. That’s what makes each boat so special.”

There are not many builders that will stray from their “look”. But they all make concessions to build the owners dream. In Jon’s case he is going a step further from his classic broken shear look for one special client and building him a larger version of his previous boat that had much more modern shapes and looks nothing like what Jon is building for himself or his other clients. This is an incredible thing as few other builders would even bother to consider the build let alone go for it. The 79’ Duffie will be a special boat for its owner and the builder. 

With an in-house design team they are using computer design programs to model, shape, design and build the boat. Utilizing Computational Fluid Design they can load the specifications into the program and perform highly accurate tank tests to predict what effects slight adjustments will have on the boat. Having the ability to “load” the boat to determine center of gravity, carrying capacities and the like they can make adjustments to their bottom to get the best characteristics of what they are looking for in their running surface. 

Moving forward as a young company, Duffie also has a service business in Ocean City at Sunset Marina where they are performing repowers, paint, varnish, running gear repairs, doing routine and not so routine maintenance projects. In the new build shop are they are working on efficiency and recruiting full time workers. When asked where he’d like to be in ten years, Jon lays it out, “I hope in ten years we’ll still be plugging long with different ideas constantly trying to evolve our ideas on what we need to do in the boat and modernize it. The team I have is creative and we’re constantly talking about new ideas and coming up with better ways to do things. And hopefully in ten years people will be saying, ‘I wish I could get one of these boats’, that would be great.”

To say I’ve spent a few hours around boat yards and boat building shops in my life is a bit of an understatement. I’m a student of the game and a huge fan of boat builders. I had never met Jon Duffle previously but I walked away knowing I’d met a person that was driven and happy in life to have done and be doing what he love’s most, whether fishing or engaged in his latest endeavor of building custom sportfishing boats. That passion that comes from within can’t be taught, can’t be willed into someone. They have to have it intrinsically. Jon and his crew exude it with zest. They are a great ambassador for Ocean City and will advance even further the historical significance of the once labeled “White Marlin Capital of the World”. I hope I get to fish on one of his boats one day, it would be a great pleasure I’m sure, just as it was to spend a few hours with him in his shop.