Aquasport, the Center Console Name That Keeps Coming Back

How a 1964 fishing boat started a category

Long before center consoles crowded every boat show, Fred Coburn and Lennox Sargent introduced a 22-foot modified-vee open boat with the helm placed in the middle of the deck. It appeared in 1964 and is widely counted among the earliest true center consoles. Anglers liked being able to walk all the way around the boat while fighting a fish, and the Aquasport name earned a loyalty that has survived every corporate change since.

The Genmar group eventually acquired the company and kept building Aquasports until it put the line on the shelf in 2005.

A Tennessee revival, a shutdown and a Florida restart

In the 2010s the brand reappeared at Ebbtide in White Bluff, Tennessee, a builder that also owned the old Hydra-Sports tooling. Trade coverage in 2019 described Aquasport as an Ebbtide Holdings division producing center consoles, dual consoles and bay boats. The Tennessee run stopped when the plant's owner, Limestone Boats of Canada, hit financial trouble and the doors closed.

Twin Vee PowerCats stepped in during June 2023, took over the idle White Bluff building and briefly built boats there before consolidating everything at its own base in Fort Pierce, Florida. In 2024 it introduced the 28AS, the first clean-sheet Aquasport in decades. Twin Vee's catalog is a fresh start, so it shares no hulls or tooling with the Tennessee boats.

Where the 2500 CC fits in the story

The boat most used-market shoppers encounter from the Ebbtide period is the Aquasport 2500 CC, which we review on its own page. It sat at the top of the three Tennessee-built center consoles, used a deep-vee bottom and hand-laid construction with Kevlar in the laminate, and earned a mention from Sport Fishing magazine in 2016 among the better consoles below 26 feet. Its full specifications, layout and price history live on the model page.

Valuing a boat from a closed chapter

Because each ownership era ended with the factory closing or the line being parked, older Aquasports generally sell for less than similar Regulator, Contender or Grady-White boats. There is no builder warranty to hand over, and hatches, gaskets or console pieces unique to a discontinued model may have to be found secondhand or made by a fabricator. On the positive side, the outboards that drive most of these boats are backed by their own dealer networks and account for much of the price.

Wide-beam Ebbtide consoles also exceed the 8-foot 6-inch trailer width many states allow without a permit, which matters if you plan to tow.

• Confirm the hull identification number and model year match the paperwork.
• Sound the transom and engine mount area for moisture or cracking.
• Look at stringer tabbing, fuel tank fittings and the T-top mounts.
• Get compression numbers and service history for each outboard.