Sea Ray put up for sale by Brunswick

I don't know about Volvo so cannot comment on that.

But, Searay has been building expresses and bridge boats in that size for well over 25 years. They always performed as good if not better than their competitors. The 59' is a just a big mismanagement of propulsion. I don't think you can directly correlate that to Brunswick. They sure have sold a lot of the 59's, because I've run 6 different ones myself and none of them directly for Searay or one of it's dealers.

I'll address both Pascal and Pacblue

Pascal- The Mercury Verado's have actually gotten very good ever since 2011. I manage a couple of sets and they've been pretty darn reliable with little to no issues. Also they integrate everything perfectly together, steering, controls etc. Yamaha still has it's issues of weak castings, blocked rotted out mid section exhaust port, the 350 yamaha's are a reliability disaster. At this point in the game I'd actually lean towards a Verado over a Yamaha on some HP segments and most all HP segments.

Pacblue- Searay's cruise speed target has always been 25 knots. The 2000s boats all cruised 25 knots regardless of size. The 58' sedan bridge the L replaced actually cruised at 28.5 knots all day long. So for the new L to cruise 21-22 knots, is a performance disaster and the fuel burn is as well. They just wanted a joystick boat and could only choose 3-600 HP cummins whereas 2 900HP Volvo's would have been 4-5 knots faster and given it the performance and fuel burn it should have.

Takes real skill to lose $17 million on sales of $387 million and that's what they reported. By comparison, Marine Products Corporation had sales of $267 million and profits of $21 million. Even at their reduced size, Sea Ray still has more than enough business base to be profitable if operated intelligently.

From what I've heard, they're really restricted in building bigger boats since they sold the other factory in Merritt Island. They cannot get it back since Ocean Alexander is building boats there. I really don't know why they're selling it.

I was having a discussion along the same lines with the Sales Manager of another larger size range boat builder. Let's say 45-105'. He was telling me well it's great to be selling 75-105' yachts, the build time is such, that you need to still focus on the say 45-75' range and sell lots of those so the light bills get paid every month since the build time is so much longer on the large ones. Sea Ray IMO really had a lot of bread and butter in the under 45' range and they let a lot of this market share get eaten up for various reasons.

Yes, but the numbers I quoted were operating, before the impairment. Basically, they're indicating they're going to sell it for $35-40 million less than it's current book value too. That's a big write-down and doesn't speak well of how they think the sale is going to go.

My major point in the comparison I made was that don't talk about market shifts and all that. You still had companies in the same market with less sales making very nice profits.

No, Marine Products vs Sea Ray is a fair comparison. Marine Products was Chaparral. They added Robalo as a small part of their business. However, they saw the shift to outboards and really built the Robalo line. Sea Ray didn't respond to outboards as that was left to Bayliner. Marine Products has always been a very well run company. Cobalt also has remained successful, as another Sea Ray competitor, now acquired.

I do believe Sea Ray can be turned into a profitable company if someone is willing to invest heavily in it.

I'm simply stating an opinion that it's ridiculous for any small boat builder with $387 million sales to lose $17 million. It's simply lousy management. Now, I'm not saying which managers. But that's a poorly run operation to do that. Marine Products is well run as are some other companies around. Sea Ray's "yacht line" is minimal. They have cruisers but that isn't the majority of their business either. Let's not ignore the essence of Sea Ray which is small to medium size family boats leading up into small cruisers.

None of what you say makes the performance of Sea Ray any less deplorable. You have one of the most well known and liked lines and you do that with it. Incompetence.

Several things led Searay into this direction. They failed to focus on their small boat lines. When was the last time you saw a sub 28' Searay out on the water. Searay and (MarineMax) used to be the kings of retaining customers as they traded up from small boat to the next size and the next size and the next size, every 3 years. 10 years ago, you'd run across Searay owners everywhere.......that this was their 5th new Searay and they now have a 54' etc. etc.

Their reliance on sticking with stern drives heavily is also a big issue. Nobody wants them, nobody sure as hell wants to service them in the tight places they are usually installed. Searay could've easily stuck Verado's on the back of most of their boats, but I believe Brunswick put a strong push on them to keep the stern drive lines going at Mercury which softened Searay's sales in that size.

I agree losing money on $387 million in sales is disasterous. Also there are some quality issues with the L line from what I have heard. I have run a few 59's, a few hundred NM each and have had no issues. But I hear lots of other owners with different experiences.

Nothing comes up on the link except wells fargo ads on the sides of the page.

Brunswick does a great job at ruining great boat builders......Searay, Cabo etc. etc.