boatdesigner

I have no direct experience with them, but they have a very good reputation in the Northwest. Their equipment is usually found on large vessels, although they did make some outboard equipment that looked fairly well made. I believe their main market is in large commercial vessels, like fish boats and ferries. If you have a large displacement vessel, you may also want to look into Summer Equipment of Vancouver, BC. They market themselves under the Wagner brand and make very good quality steering gear.

I agree, no one should be driving fast enough at night to launch their boat over another. While the lack of lights was a major factor, the Intrepid never should have been on plane after dark. I am always amazed at how fast people will go at night. Boats don't have headlights! If we still enforced maritime law, I bet the Intrepid owner would have been in some deep doodoo.

While the Pro-Lite is a step in that direction, there have been quite a few rolled edge skiffs built over the years. Please don't take that the wrong way, I like the Pro-Lite boats, especially since I designed the hull for the 20CC! I want to take it to the next level and actually design new hulls that are more efficient and build them with full liners so they are finished the way most people expect. Build them with modern materials to keep the weight down and you could have an efficient small boat with a fancy finish. Personally, I like the utilitarian nature of the rolled edge skiffs, but I am not the average boat shopper. One thing that may also be causing the costs of boats to go up is the reduced volume. During good times, a company can buy resin by the tanker load, around 40,000 pounds if memory serves. But if production drops too low, then you can't use it fast enough and it goes bad in your tank. So now you have to buy the resin in totes (2000 lbs?) or if things are really slow, drums. The less you buy, the more you pay. That goes for all the materials. Some of the builders are actually having trouble getting parts as the suppliers are so dialed back that they can't respond quickly to an order. The last statistics I saw estimate that as much as 75% of the marine industry is unemployed right now. It is really ugly for those of us in the business. One of my clients was selling quite few boats in the 25-30 foot range over the last few years. He said those sales have all dried up and he attributed it to the home builders going bust. Many of his buyers were contractors who were doing really well, now they can't afford the boats any longer. I think it is going to be a while before those buyers come back.

As someone who has been making a living designing boats for over 2 decades (some of you own boats I designed), I have been quite surprised by the lack of interest in more efficient boats. I see a 200 hp OB on a 20' boat and think it has double the power it should need. Are there people interested in 20' boats that can run 35 knots with 100 hp? How about a 25' CC that runs well with a 150? How often does the average boater get to run at 50+ knots in a small boat? Most places are either too crowded or too choppy to run comfortably at high speeds. I really thought that the relatively high costs of fuel, combined with the lower incomes most of us are experiencing would have created a market for inexpensive (not necessarily small or low quality) boats. My vision is basically "back to the future". Boats like the original 20' Seacraft or the old Mako 25. These boats had relatively narrow beams and were pretty simple. They were and still are seaworthy designs that could take a family out fishing for a day. They would be less expensive to build, own and power while still getting you out on the water. I didn't make it to the boat show, but I have seen absolutely nothing from any major manufacturer that says to me they have a vision for a less expensive, more efficient future. That is the thing that troubles me the most, the attitude that the world is the same now as it was 2 years ago and it will still be the same in another 2 years. Am I alone thinking this way?

Colts 42 - Saints 27