This 70mph Coota Craft Villain is the spearfishing boat of your dreams

Mark – no surname needed, he insists – is the talent behind Coota Craft, a low-volume business based at Mallacoota in Victoria’s east. He’s a boatbuilder on weekdays, creating family and fishing boats with names such as the Big Ram, the Gunshot and the Coldfront from his one-acre factory; bluewater bombers with big engines and a reputation for even bigger ability. Pictures posted on social media show his boats punching through the Mallacoota bar and getting plenty of hang time in the process.

On weekends, though, everything stops for his other passions; spear fishing and racing.

Ability is where his sleekest-looking model, the long and low Villain, comes to the fore. The latest version of the boat, painted in his racing team’s colours, will flip-flop between roles; straying up to 100km north or south of the East Gippsland coast to his favourite spearfishing locations one weekend, and then mixing hard core with the big boys in the Australian Offshore Championships the next.

The 24-foot Villain, launched in mid-2017, was an answer to Mark’s own desire to have a spearfishing boat that could get out to the grounds fast. The first version, with a single 350hp hanging off the back, would hit 77mph flat-out “with the wind behind it and a little bit downhill”, the equivalent of 124km/h over land.

His newest boat, teased on social media this week packing a Mercury 300X and clocking 68.5mph on its second test, will need to go faster. A different prop fitted for the next try-out should get it up to 70mph, but a 4.2-litre V6 Yamaha pushing 425hp after tweaks from Melbourne-based race tuning outfit Nizpro Marine – including a supercharger that will elevate it to the title of the world’s most powerful six-cylinder marine outboard – should push that to 80-85mph. That’s quick.

The genesis of the Villain came to Mark after he injured his back in a car crash almost a decade ago, and had to give up the rigours of fishing for the much gentler sport of spearfishing.

Realising he was hooked on his new pastime, Mark looked around for a craft that would be easy to use, and a comfortable hypermiler, and found nothing that suited. “I just wanted something that was fast,” he said. The Villain was born.

For $120,000, you’ll get a boat packing serious 400hp Mercury Racing punch. It’s ready to hit the water, with a 450L fuel tank, a pair of three-metre bunks up front, plenty of storage and an aluminium trailer to suit.

The Villain will take Mercury’s new 4.6-litre V8 outboards, and the supercharged Verado V6. The Merc hanging off the back of Mark’s latest boat, though, is one of the last of the two-strokes: “I just love the two-strokes,” he says.

The latest Villain, wearing Mark's "07" racing number, will bed in with a couple of offshore shakedown runs before lining up for the season opener of the 2019 offshore championship series at nearby Paynesville in late March.

His business, initially a hobby that started in 2004 with the Little Ram runabout, has grown to produce about 20 boats a year sold via the Mallacoota factory door, and agents in Melbourne and Newcastle. Coota Craft is now fielding inquiries from spearfishers in the US who, like Mark, are struggling to find a craft that suits all their needs.

Coota Craft will soon have two new hard-top additions to its line-up, the 25-foot Chief and the 28-foot Boss, as the factory diversifies its products. “We’re starting to build bigger boats,” Mark says.

But what’s next for the Villian? Mark hints that an inboard-engined version could push the performance envelope even further. Watch this space.