CONTENDER 44ST, C1

ontender Boats founder and president Joe Neber started building boats in 1984 with the singular focus to build the toughest, most competitive semicustom center-consoles on the market. His vessels set the bar in terms of performance, livewell capacity, durability and more, each carefully engineered and handcrafted in South Florida for delivery around the world. Building on that early reputation, Contender evolved to the current model lineup, which includes a 25-foot bay boat and marches upward boats having fished under the Team Contender banner in South Florida, this particular build would be different. It would be designed and crafted to take on an entirely new challenge for the brand: tournament fishing for billfish and tuna in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.