Barkley Sounder

Some builds come with a straightforward brief. This wasn't one of them.

The client needed a vessel capable of running campers and supplies out to the Broken Group Islands, a remote archipelago sitting in the middle of Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island's rugged west coast. It's beautiful water. It's also demanding water. The build needed to be passenger-certified, commercially capable, and tough enough to handle regular runs in conditions that don't leave room for error.

But there was one more requirement: when the work was done, the boat needed to fish.

That's the kind of brief we live for.

The Build

The Barkley Sounder came in at 26 feet long and 10 feet 6 inches wide, a footprint that gives you the stability and capacity for serious commercial work without sacrificing the handling you want when you're running coastal water. She's Coast Guard certified and passenger-rated for 12, which means every system, every weld, and every design decision was held to a standard that the open water demands.

Power comes from a 250 horsepower main engine with a 99 horsepower kicker, giving the operator both the muscle to move people and gear efficiently and the reliability of a backup that earns its keep out there.

The Challenge

The Broken Group isn't a quick run from the marina. Getting campers and supplies out there requires a vessel that's dependable, spacious, and purpose-built for the task. That meant engineering a seating configuration that could comfortably accommodate 12 passengers for the crossing, while also being flexible enough to reconfigure for fishing when the schedule opened up.

That dual-purpose requirement drove a lot of the design decisions. Storage had to work for both gear and supplies. The layout had to feel organized under a full passenger load and functional with a couple of rods in the water. Nothing could be bolted on as an afterthought, it all had to be built in from the start.

The Result

The Barkley Sounder is exactly what it was designed to be: a working vessel that doesn't feel like one when it doesn't have to. She runs the Sound with 12 passengers aboard, handles supply runs to remote locations, and fishes beautifully when the day allows for it. Built in marine-grade aluminum, certified to the standard, and finished to last.

The coast asked for a lot. We delivered.