The trip you keep not taking is the long one. Not the run to the reef and back — the one where you leave before dawn, cross something open, and stay two nights on the far side of it. That trip needs three things at once: fuel range you can plan around, a cabin somebody other than you is willing to sleep in, and enough fishing capability that the whole thing is not just a hotel with props. The Pursuit OS 355 is built to do all three at 37 feet 11 inches.
It runs triple Yamaha F350 V6 Offshore outboards, carries 388 gallons of fuel on a 12-foot beam, and its cabin sleeps four behind an enclosed head with a shower. Top end is 56.5 mph. The number that matters more is further down the sheet.
Who It's For
This is a boat for the owner-operator who has run out of range before running out of interest. You already fish well and you already own the electronics; what you want now is the ability to be 100 miles from the ramp without the fuel math being the loudest thing in your head. You want air conditioning and a generator that came with the boat rather than a purchase order. And you want to hand the helm to a joystick when the wind pins you against a face dock.
There is a second buyer for the OS 355 who matters just as much: the person coming down from a bigger boat. Thirty-eight feet with outboards, a 3-foot-3-inch drive-down draft and a joystick is a boat one person can handle, dock and maintain. Nothing about it requires a crew.
What Pursuit Publishes
Pursuit puts out a real performance bulletin for the OS 355 — rpm, mph, gallons per hour, miles per gallon and range, tested 3/11/2024 at a full boat test weight of 21,509 pounds with three aboard. Range is calculated on 90 percent of the test-condition fuel, which is the conservative and correct way to state it.
| RPM | MPH | GPH | MPG | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 21.3 | 24.0 | 0.89 | 307 |
| 3,500 | 30.2 | 30.1 | 1.00 | 348 |
| 4,000 | 37.3 | 38.6 | 0.97 | 335 |
| 4,500 | 43.2 | 47.2 | 0.92 | 317 |
| 5,000 | 48.8 | 65.2 | 0.75 | 259 |
| 5,950 | 56.5 | 92.7 | 0.61 | 211 |
Three-fifty rpm is the headline: 30.2 mph at exactly 1.00 mile per gallon and 348 miles of range. For comparison, the best cruise-speed range its Offshore siblings publish is 326 miles for the OS 325, 317 for the OS 405 and 303 for the OS 445 — and this one comes at a speed you would actually choose to travel at. Push on to 4,000 rpm and you pick up 7 more mph for 335 miles — a 13-mile penalty for a meaningfully shorter day. That flatness between 3,500 and 4,500 rpm is what makes the boat useful: you can run 30, 37 or 43 mph and the range only moves 31 miles across the whole band.
Wide open is 56.5 mph at 92.7 gallons an hour, which is a number to know and mostly not to use. Acceleration is 0 to 30 mph in 10.7 seconds, quicker than the OS 325 despite the OS 355 carrying nearly 5,000 more pounds of test weight — that is what the third F350 buys you.
The Cabin Is the Story
Pursuit rates sleeping capacity at four, and the way it gets there is the clever part. The forward V-berth is an electrically actuated seating arrangement with fixed cushions that converts to a queen-size berth at the touch of a switch. No filler cushions to wrestle out of a locker, no rearranging at midnight — the dinette becomes the bed and becomes the dinette again in the morning. Aft of it, the mid-berth is a recessed, wood-framed space with a full-size six-inch innerspring mattress and a filler cushion, its own hanging locker to port, and horizontal storage for four rods.
Light is the other thing Pursuit went after. There are hull-side windows port and starboard in the forward berth with accordion-style blinds, and the difference between this cabin and a typical 38-foot outboard cabin is that you can see out of it lying down.
The galley runs a Corian countertop with a backsplash and LED surface lighting, three maple drawers below, a pantry locker with shelves and hardwood keepers, upper cabinets with Corian tops, a 12-volt 4.6 cubic-foot stainless refrigerator and a 120-volt stainless-faced microwave. Four-point-six cubic feet is a proper refrigerator — enough for a long weekend's food without a cooler on the deck.
The head is enclosed, fiberglass, to starboard: a vacuum-flush marine toilet with a 22-gallon holding tank, macerator and deck pump-out, a full-height linen closet, and an acrylic bi-fold shower divider with a hot/cold mixing valve, shower wand and an adjustable-height bar. The bi-fold divider is the detail that separates this from the OS 325 — you get a shower you can close off, not just a wand over the vanity.
And the comfort equipment is standard rather than optional. The OS 355 comes with 240-volt reverse-cycle interior air conditioning at 16,000 BTU with a sound shield, an 8.0 kW Fischer Panda diesel generator with a sound shield and a service slide, and a 28-inch LED TV with its own amplified audio system. Cockpit air conditioning is the option, not cabin air conditioning.
On Deck
The bridge deck sits behind a single-piece optically clear windshield, with a Garmin package of dual GPSMAP 9217 displays, a custom Pursuit interface, a B175M 20-degree 1 kW CHIRP transducer and VHF. The triple F350 package includes digital electric steering, Helm Master EX and Yamaha joystick control with Set Point and autopilot as standard — on this model you do not pay extra to dock it sideways.
Fishing capability is not an afterthought: a 28-gallon livewell, two 45-gallon fish boxes, a windlass with a 22-pound plow and 200 feet of rode, and a maximum rating of 1,050 horsepower. Deadrise is 20 degrees at the transom, hardtop clearance is 9 feet 9 inches, and the hull draws 2 feet 2 inches with the motors up.
Where It Sits in the Line
Inside Pursuit's Offshore family the OS 355 occupies the sweet spot. Against the OS 325 it adds a foot of beam, a third engine, the convertible berth, an enclosed shower and — the real difference — standard air conditioning, a standard generator and a standard joystick. Against the OS 405 it gives up a separate aft stateroom with a solid-wood privacy door, a Seakeeper gyro and Stidd helm seats, but it also gives up 8,000 pounds and a great deal of fuel burn: the OS 405 cruises at 0.73 mpg where this boat does 1.00.
The Honest Limits
Two of them. First, the cabin sleeps four but it does so in one open space plus a mid-berth — there is no door between the forward berth and the saloon. Two couples aboard is a friendship test, not a floor plan. If you need two separate cabins with doors, that is the OS 405 and up, and it is a different boat and a different marina bill.
Second, 92.7 gallons an hour at wide open is a real consumption figure and the reason the range collapses to 211 miles up there. This is a 30-to-40 mph boat that happens to have a 56 mph top end, and the sheet is honest enough to show you exactly where the wall is. Buy it for the 3,500 rpm line, not the last one.