Origine boston whaler

Price Drop info. Power-all-power All Power. Aluminum Fishing. Antique and Classic. Center Console. Cuddy Cabin. Dual Console. Express Cruiser. Freshwater Fishing. High Performance. Motor Yachts. Saltwater Fishing. Ski and Fish. Sport Fishing.

Sports Cruiser. Personal Watercraft. Pwc-all-pwc All PWCs. Small Boats. Small-all-small All Small Boats. Dinghy Power. Tender Power. Sea Ray. Boston Whaler. Yamaha Boats. Boston Whaler Models. Fuel Type. Hull Type. Engine Type. Perhaps he wanted to retire early; perhaps he wanted to get back to other pursuits, to tinker around with other inventions; maybe he just wanted new challenges. After the sale, Fisher stayed on as a consultant until Eventually they would assemble a stable with strong brand names and high quality products like Nordic Track and The Nature Company.

Boston Whaler was CML's first big acquisition, and they seemed to be a good fit with the Whaler corporate culture. Sales boomed and more models were added to the product line. In the Outrage appeared. In the Outrage was introduced. In the first Revenge model was created. In the foot hull was added.

Many other models and refinements continued throughout the 's. The 's continued strong for Whaler, and catalogues from this decade feature an amazing number of different length hulls, different model trims, and hundreds of accessory options. Redesigned hulls in the Outrage and Revenge series from 18 to 25 feet were added. Many consider Whaler boats from the late 's to be the most desireable of all the older Whalers. In to expand the manufacturing operations Whaler acquired a plant in Edgewater, Florida from a defunct boat builder.

In a new company headquarters building was opened in Rockland, Massachusetts, and featured in that year's catalogue as well. The Boston Whaler catalogue also contained the following paragraph, which these days one might call a corporate mission statement:.

Charles M. Leighton the CEO and "CML" of CML-Group was being honored by his alma mater, Bowdoin College, in part because his company was "a model of how an enlightened businessman can bring a number of small companies together without dampening their creative fire, without forcing unsympathetic management on the entrepreneur responsible for their identity and success.

CML stock was one of the most hyped issues on Wall Street, and as a result heavily shorted by traders. They must have been on to something. Athletic shoes sell at huge multiples of their manufacturing cost, their design is driven almost entirely by style concerns, they are typically made overseas by the cheapest labor available, and as a product they have a life span of a year at best. It his hard to imagine that ownership of Boston Whaler could have come from a more different corporate background than Reebok.

Reebok described itself as a "marketing" company. Their products, athletic shoes, were often made by subcontractors. Reebok marketed them quite successfully with an upscale image. Intent on building their sales and expanding, Reebok went looking for acquisitions and found Boston Whaler.

Whaler would be their first manufacturing company. With the sale of the company to Reebok, that changed. By early Dougherty left Whaler, taking with him thirty years of experience in designing, engineering and manufacturing the Boston Whaler boat. He had already relocated to Florida when the Edgewater facility had been purchased a few years earlier, and like many Florida boat builders before him, he left one boat building company and started another one almost next door, producing a line of boats called Marlins.

Marlin soon became Edgewater Boats. Ironically, the boats Bob designed and produced at Edgewater began to look more like Boston Whalers than the newer designs from Whaler itself!

A new chief designer meant new designs, and in they began to appear. When the catalogue was published, all the previous "classic" hulls were neglected. They were mentioned on only one page of the literature. The entire rest of the catalogue was devoted to announcing and showing the new boats, all with new hull designs.

In several cases the new boats were shown only in sketches and drawings; they were so new and innovative there were no pictures available! The new boats took on a more rakish appearance. The beautiful teak and mahogany trim and components disappeared. Gelcoat colors switched to white. Hulls became deeper V's. At dealer show rooms, only the new styles were encouraged. The classic boats were not to be seen, relegated to special order status. There is an old saying: "What's the best way to make a million dollars in the boat business?

Answer: "Start with two million. Esthetics of the new design aside, the new boats tended to have increased weight and manufacturing costs. Boston Whaler continued to produce only the highest quality boat possible, but as production costs increased, lack of pricing flexibility and decreased demand did not allow for much profit. The year was not the best in the history of the boat business, as a nation-wide economic recession hit the industry hard.

On top of this, for Whaler there was considerable resistance from the customer base to the new designs. An advertising strategy of running down the classic boats did little to drum up customers, many of whom left and never came back. In there was one glimmer of hope. The Rage was like a cross between a Whaler and a Jet Ski, and it appealed more to youthful wearers of athletic shoes than to salty old fishermen.

Its OMC engine would prove to be about as durable as a pair of fancy sneakers, too. Unfortunately, sales of jet boats came mainly at the expense of classic Sport sales, further eroding the future customer base. Whaler's new owner, Meridian Sports, also made Mastercraft, a competition style ski-boat designed for operation in calm, protected water, powered by inboard engines, fitted with plush carpet and upholstery, constructed with conventional fiberglass laminates, and designed not so much for the ride it produces but for the wake that it doesn't.

Millions of people use their Whalers to go water-skiing, but I am still waiting to see the first guy salt-water fishing from a Mastercraft. While Reebok-ownership had been a rough ride for many old-time Whaler boats and employees, having Meridian at the helm would turn out to be a near capsize! To be fair, they started from much less of a position, as the catalogue of Boston Whaler boats now had only two of the Dougherty-designed classic boats in production, the Outrage and Offshore, to go with the classic Fisher-era foot and foot hulls.

The poor selling Van Lancker designs of foot and foot Walk-Arounds were gone, the molds turned into new Outrage and Outrage production. Having large facilities in both Massachusetts and Florida and lower demand, Meridian closed all the Boston area operations of Boston Whaler and moved the entire company to Edgewater. Relocating a business that had operating in the same place for almost 40 years to a new state 1, miles away is a drastic move and one that probably left a lot of old-time Whaler people behind.

What he created instead has come to be the most popular small skiff in America. We will go into the manufacturing process in another article but basically the boat is created by making two fiberglass shells, bringing those two shells together while still in the mold and then while under pressure filling the void between the two shells with foam.

This results in a very sturdy but lightweight boat that is unsinkable. In a world dominated by wooden hulls this was a big deal! The popular 15 foot model was also introduced around the same time. The company has had 5 owners with the first being Dick Fisher.