Brunswick dumping Sports Yachts and Yachts. Where do we stand?

Ocean A and Sea Ray should consider a joint venture to build high quality, practical, mid range 45-55 yachts/motor yachts suitable for the us market. There seems to be a huge void right now if you want to buy a new boat of that design. Before the economy tanked in the late 2000's, the Taiwan builders were pumping them out like crazy. Obviously, there's a market. Don't over design it, don't overload it with crap half of us won't need or use, build it right, price it right and it will sell.
 
Ocean A and Sea Ray should consider a joint venture to build high quality, practical, mid range 45-55 yachts/motor yachts suitable for the us market. There seems to be a huge void right now if you want to buy a new boat of that design. Before the economy tanked in the late 2000's, the Taiwan builders were pumping them out like crazy. Obviously, there's a market. Don't over design it, don't overload it with crap half of us won't need or use, build it right, price it right and it will sell.

Lets face it, recent events have proven this out. It is not up the SR to do things like a joint venture. Brunswick has to agree - and their stated goal is cross sales across their product lines.
 
JV - Didn't you have a whole litany of warrantee, quality, and fit/finish issues when you first bought that boat? Or am I thinking of someone else??
Tom
No, that wasn’t me. I had a whole litany of initial issues with my previous new Sea Rays, but I chalk that up to “new boat punch list issues” that all new boat owners know about. It is best to let the first owner shake out all the bugs in the first two years and buy his two year old depreciated boat with all the bugs fixed. The Azimut I bought was on the boat show circuit traveling the northeast for 70 hours on the engines under dealer ownership, so if there were any bugs, they were worked out by the time I bought it. Azimut went through it with a fine tooth comb to address minor wear and tear from boat show attendees. It was turned over to me in perfect condition. Is it completely trouble free? No, it’s a boat. Stuff happens, you fix it. Don’t maintain it, more stuff happens. Maintain it, less stuff happens. None of the stuff is from low quality. Admittedly, there were a couple of what I’d call Friday afternoon factory shift goof ups. That happens at most factories using human labor.
 
I guess I was a visionary when I switched to Azimut through MarineMax in 2016. I looked at Sea Ray, Azimut, Prestige, Carver, and Cruisers. In my opinion, there were several challenges for Sea Ray to stay in this market. The greatest being to maintain the level of quality at the escalating price point with escalating labor costs and regulations. In order to stay ahead of competition, the models needed to change their design frequently and across the line. This required even more man hours of engineering and design. Sea Ray production, design and engineering was not global, but their sales were. In order to continue, they would have needed to globalize that which would have required tremendous capital.

What I have seen with Cruisers and Carver is a drop in material cost that is palpable in the product. Sea Ray would not have tolerated that evolution of its product. MarineMax had Bayliner already. Despite the drop in quality, the price escalated.

With Prestige, you have the largest boat manufacturer in the world with economy of scale, likely leveraging global design and engineering, and using Ikea level furnishings. That was also palpable to me, but probably not owners who had not experienced Sea Ray quality.

With Azimut, the design and engineering is sound. The material quality is as good or better than my 48DA. There was no skimping on fittings, hardware, materials, power or electronics. So far, the durability and reliability is holding up. The price point and equipment list was significantly better than the 510Fly. The design and engineering is as good or better. How did Azimut do that? My guess is that regulatory and labor restrictions are not as stringent in Italy. These are hand made vehicles, made one at a time. You can't automate the process.

I would have loved to stay with Sea Ray on a Yacht. I am still a huge fan of the brand. The bottom line was I was able to upgrade from what I had to a boat with equal or better quality that was better equipped at a much lower price point.

Don't argue with me on the quality or reliability because you Googled it unless you've owned one for 2 years. I am fully aware of what you have read online. Remember when Hyundai and Fiat first came to the US market? Some of it is that. The product has evolved. I have a theory about the other part. Here's my theory. People who end up in a Sea Ray yacht matriculated from a line of previous Sea Rays. They worked on their boats. They have the ambition and passion to understand how everything works and choose to get dirty trying to fix or upgrade it than to hire expensive dealer labor. These people who go to a Sea Ray Yacht still are hands on. They know the maintenance schedule. They know how to get something working again. With Azimut, you have new money people buying their first boat for flash. When something stops working, they call the dealer to flip a switch, open a seacock, replace a fried impeller, replace a dead battery, replace corroded lift rams because they didn't address anodes, and replace burned out 240V fridges because they didn't realize their European 240V boat that uses reliable European 240V shore power doesn't come with a boosting transformer like most Sea Ray yachts to address crappy American electric power and brown outs. There's the explanation for many of the electrical issues on Google.

My Azimut has been as reliable as my 48DA. Yes, the first thing I did was to install a boosting and isolation transformer. I crawl around in the bilge and engine compartment every weekend for hours learning every part and getting my hands dirty like I did on my 48. Look at every new Sea Ray owner's punch list on this forum. I had 2 new Sea Rays. Sure, there are items that needed to be addressed under warranty, but it is not different from any Sea Ray. The one and only difference is that occasionally, you come across something that needs to be ordered from Italy. Nothing that stops boating. Beyond the warranty, as things need replacement, you replace with US sourced equipment to negate that issue.

Even Azimut has its "Value" line, the Atlantis. There's your Italian Bayliner on par with Cruisers and Prestige. That's the higher margin product. Sea Ray doesn't have a "high margin" product. They have to compete with Bayliner, which is a difficult sell to a budget oriented buyer.

Well, that's my rant after a long absence from this forum on an Azimut. I hope to run into you on the water to show you for real.
 
You wrote this on your post for Azimut.
“I did was to install a boosting and isolation transformer”
Why do you need to do this and what is it?
 
You wrote this on your post for Azimut.
“I did was to install a boosting and isolation transformer”
Why do you need to do this and what is it?

Cleans up and boosts the power coming into the boat. Not sure if I can do the technical description justice, but when you have Power coming off the dock that is not as strong it evens out the power.

Others can provide a more detailed technical description.
 
Any transformer effectively provides isolation as the energy is transferred inductively. The "boost" amounts to increasing the voltage at the output windings. This is done by changing the winding count on one side of the transformer.

You remember those 12VAC transformers used to run lawn sprinklers? Same principle except in this case the voltage is stepped up instead of down.

You don't get something for nothing, so by boosting voltage you effectively decrease the current capacity.

As to the why of it, some electrical devices are very sensitive to low voltage conditions. Particularly HVAC compressors and other motors.
 

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