Of Panga
It was easy to fall in love with this nimble yet tough little workhorse, especially since a colorful fleet of pangas adorns the working waterfront in La Paz, Baja California Sur’s nearly 500-year-old capital city. Strolling the malecon one evening, we watched fishermen rinse off their catch and wade ashore to load it into trucks. We also saw brightly painted signs advertising a whale-shark trip aboard this boat or a dive excursion aboard that one. Pangas are busy here, and there’s no question that the vessel is deeply woven into the culture. But did it originate here? Back home, I did a little digging.
A large, broad-bladed African knife used as a weapon or as an implement for cutting heavy jungle growth, sugar cane, etc.; machete. Origin of panga. Panga Marine — Serious Boats For Serious Fisherman The first and foremost builder of panga style fishing boats in the U.S. We've taken the original panga design and transformed it into a line of sophisticated fishing boats tailored to American anglers. View Our Panga Photo Gallery on Panga Boats USA, the largest dealer and customizer of panga style boats in the U.S. WIth the largest Panga Photo Gallery.
My search yielded a surprisingly small collection of articles that made brief references to a World Bank-funded Yamaha project four decades ago. I also discovered a labyrinthine series of online forum discussions among hard-core panga fans, all debating the boat’s true origins. This was curious. Was the panga the result of a worldwide Japanese engineering effort, or was it a product of its own environment?
In either case, how did it come to change the world? To find out, I had to return to La Paz. Panga Today, Mac Shroyer owns and operates the bustling downtown Marina de La Paz with his wife and son. When the Shroyers first arrived in Baja California Sur in the 1960s, however, the marina business was not his first calling. “I pursued what interested me,” said Shroyer, who originally worked as a teacher in California. He and his family sailed the Sea of Cortez in a boat he built.
The Shroyers settled in La Paz, then a sleepy colonial city of just 35,000 people. When they arrived, fishermen along the coast were still plying local waters with plank-on-frame double-enders, introduced from the coastal town of Guaymas on the Mexican mainland in the 1950s, or little plywood variations of the boats, which had a transom and could carry a small outboard. The arrival of ferry service and construction of the 1,063-mile-long Transpeninsular Highway in remote Baja California Sur — which wasn’t even a Mexican state until 1978 — changed everything. “All of a sudden there was a possibility that locally caught fish could be shipped on ice to the United States and mainland Mexico,” Shroyer said. The fishing cooperatives needed more substantial boats that could carry a 40 hp outboard. Shroyer had been building small plywood sport-fishing boats near the La Paz waterfront, but he quickly shifted gears to fiberglass. When we met, he shuffled through myriad papers in his modest upstairs office, unearthing the piece he sought.
It featured a 20-foot-4-inch boat with a beam of 6 feet 6 inches. Open, sleek and skinny, with a modified-V hull — innovative, yet bearing an unmistakable kinship with existing local craft, it had a slender shape, a notched transom and a rounded bottom.
Here’s how modern fiberglass pangas changed the world: They could be mass-produced quickly and cheaply from molds rather than crafted from wood, were incredibly durable and could handle an outboard engine — like the 40 hp one that Yamaha happened to be marketing to indigenous commercial fishermen around the world. Pangas could run in all kinds of conditions, and the large bow worked great for hauling nets. With cheap boats and power, local fishermen could run farther and faster to bring their fish to market, changing the local economies of coastal areas around the world. Places like La Paz. Today, the panga is changing the world in a different way, as we saw on our sea lion trip. In La Paz and all over the world, the panga is now the boat that drives the tourism industry. The sturdy little boats are carrying anglers, sea kayakers, divers, snorkelers and whale-watchers — and all the requisite gear.
Ben Gillam, owner of La Paz outfitter Baja Outdoor Activities, recognizes the pangas’ usefulness. “We have three pangas, all of which have 200-horsepower, four-stroke engines or bigger for high-speed transfers to the island,” Gillam said.
“A traditional panga is suitable for running right up on the beach, so it’s ideal as our support vessel for loading and unloading expedition gear. Even under heavy load, they draw very little water, allowing for entry into all the shallow bays.” The ecotourism boom and the ability of the panga to help support it ensured that the local population, including ex-fishermen, had a new way to make a living.
Panga Boats Made In Mexico
How fitting: From its pearl-diving ancestry to Mac Shroyer’s fiberglass panga, this versatile, unstoppable boat has once again saved the day.
The origins of a Panga boat are that of a work boat and a low cost fishing boat for shallow waters and designed to be pulled up onto a beach by village fishermen. Over the years the fuel efficient design has led to sales worldwide. Since then many times we hear about Panga boats priced considerably less than our already low priced Panga hulls and boats.
If you would like to know the facts why, please read on, then decide for yourself about Panga boats priced lower than our already low prices that include global shipping Our Panga hulls, are priced very affordable and built with the best quality you will find anywhere. Our are supervised and managed by U.S. Boat building experts using the best materials available. We price our boats with global shipping for less than what other brands cost without shipping.
Our customers in remote areas around the globe and U.S. Buyers coast to coast have a clear idea and budget of what they are looking for. Our customers do not need to worry about the inconvenience and added cost in dealing when comes to delivery. Another issue is quality in materials. Did you know fiberglass cloth and gel coat have an expiration date?
Did you know that after the expiration date gel coat losses its UV protection and will discolor after a few short months in the sun? Did you know when fiberglass cloth expires it absorbs moisture and becomes stiff causing a whole list of problems that are costly to repair? Did you know what happens to these materials when they expire on the supplier shelf? They are sold or donated to third world countries that have no standards of construction and build boats mainly for village fisherman who cannot afford boats made with new materials and U.S. Managed labor.
Here is our challenge. Go to any other build and ask them to build your hull customized just for you with the hull bottom 16 to 18mm thick and the sides 6 to 8 mm thick. But that is just how we build every hull so the customer can be confident when running offshore that they have the toughest hull made anywhere.