This was my first 'real' offshore fishing boat. It's a 1996 Grady-White Strike 24 with a Yamaha 250. While shopping for the new boat, two boats really stood out: the Grady-White Strike 24 and the Pursuit 2470. The Pursuit dealer (Boat Tree, Orlando, FL) really really pissed me off, so I bought the Grady-White. Quote from the Pursuit dealer: "The Grady is a floating death trap".
I highly recommend this boat for someone looking for a 24' center console. It ran 47 MPH with a fairly full load @WOT, and got around 2.5-2.7 MPG while cruising along at 32 MPH. With the 150 gallon fuel capacity, the Strike 24 has a nice long range. One of the highlights of the Strike 24 is that it has a lot more cockpit space behind the console compared to most 24' center consoles. About the only thing I would have changed would be to get rid of the aft/transom seat.
Here's Bob and Amy enjoying a beautiful day offshore Port Canaveral on the Strike 24.
A couple of years ago, my parents took a vacation on an Italian (Costa Line?) cruise ship which traveled from Italy to the Caribbean and included a stop in Port Canaveral. I took them for a sight seeing ride around Merritt Island. We had the opportunity to give a commercial crabber a tow when the transmission on his boat stopped working.
The Strike 24 was a great boat, but after about a year, I decided that I wanted something that was bigger, had a cabin, could support an upper control station, and had 2 engines for more "peace of mind" on long distance trips.