Boats

In the boating world, it appears that bigger can also mean better, and one of the  largest and long established boat manufacturers, Sea Ray certainly add weight to that theory.

Regarded in general as being the one of largest pleasure boat manufacturers  in the World, Sea Ray produce more than forty models in their eight factories dotted  around the US coastline. Their boats range in size from eighteen to sixty eight feet,  in four product ranges covering sports boats and cruisers, yachts deigned for sailing  only and sporting yachts.

About to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their founding, Sea Ray have always  been innovators and market leaders in the boat building industry, and were in fact  the  first company to introduce glass fiber as a principal material in the  manufacture of sailing boats. 

The company’s history almost exactly mirrors the advances in boat manufacturing, and as evidence to their impact in the marketplace, the company became a part of the huge  conglomerate, Brunswick Corporation.

Sea Ray has dominated worldwide as pleasure boat manufacturers from their cutting edge technological breakthroughs and their high  standards of building methods, and ongoing new ideas in performance, inner and  exterior design, to name a few of the boat building processes Sea Ray continuously  excels in.

Sea Ray Boats were absorbed into Brunswick Corporation more then twenty years ago,  helping Brunswick to become the largest boat building conglomerate in the World, with their nearest competitor being a mere dot on the horizon. 

Being part of a huge  publicly owned company of this size allows Sea Ray access to all the latest  technology and expertise. By pooling production and marketing expertise, every  company within the Brunswick group, and Sea Ray are no exception, are among the  market leaders in their niche.

Owning a Sea Ray boat is a symbol of excellence and prestige, and thousands of  sailors throughout the World are happy to be placed in this category.

Even before they became part of Brunswick, Sea Ray Boats had succeeded in  establishing a dealership network, covering initially the United States, the Europe  and eventually the entire World.

Every dealer is trained at the Sea Ray plant on how  to handle every aspect of sales and service facilities including how to handle a  parts back up system. Sales inquiries for new boats are handled exclusively by Sea  Ray appointed dealers, who may also handle sales for Baja Performance Boats, a wholly  owned subsidiary of Sea Ray.

At your local dealer, you will be able to check out all the latest information on the  newest Sea Ray Boats for sale. Once you find the model that most suits you, you can  place your order and take care of all the finance and shipping details all under the  same roof. Most of the major parts of the Sea Ray and Baja ranges come with a long  term parts and labor warranty, so you are guaranteed problem free sailing for years  to come.

When you consider the history of Chris-Craft Industries, you are almost looking at the history of traditional sailing in the United States from the early twentieth century till the middle. Christ Craft Industries, based in Sarasota, Florida earned their name for its founder, the patriotically named Christopher Columbus Smith who founded the company in the late nineteenth century.

To say that young Christopher Smith was dedicated to building top quality wooden, especially mahogany hulled sailing boats from an early age is not an exaggeration. History shows that Chris actually built his first boat in 1877, when he was just 13 years old.

He established his first boat building company in 1881, in partnership with his brother Henry, and their success was almost immediate. In the early part of the 20th century, they formed a partnership with the Ryan family. In 1924 the company was renamed Chris-Craft, with Christopher at the helm, who at the age of sixty had almost fifty years of boat building history under his belt. Their client list of these days included many captains of industry and commerce.

Realizing the dangers of committing themselves to only the very top end of the market, the company began to design and produce a range of boats that would appeal to the rapidly growing “middle class” of North America, who were taking more and more of an interest in the pleasures of sailing.

In 1927, Chris-Craft announced the introduction of the Cadet, which could almost be described as the boating equivalent of the Model T Ford.

Produced at Chris-Craft’s new plant in Algonac, Michigan, where many of the production concepts and facilities were drawn from the car industry, production and sales ran into the thousands.

The success of the Cadet was based on three factors:

1. Its pleasant design and solid finish.
2. Its competitive price.
3. The fact that Chris-Craft allowed the boat to be purchased through installments.

What Christopher Smith didn’t take into account was the great depression of the early thirties, which put a temporary but fairly dramatic halt to the rise of spending power of the middle classes.

Chris-Craft were doubly hit as they were still carrying finance on many of the boats they had sold, and times for the company were rocky indeed. Sad though it may be to say World War Two saw a revival of fortunes for Chris-Craft as the returned to full production making small patrol boats and launches for the U.S. Navy.

After the war things continued to boom for Chris Craft with the launch of a new range of pleasure boats. At one time the company offered a range of more than 150 models of sailing boats and powerboats. There range encompassed simple craft made in wood to their top end ranges which remained an attraction to those who wanted the best and were prepared to pay for it.

Alert to changes in the industry, Chris-Craft began to also produce boats in glass fiber and later in aluminum. Today  you will find Chris Craft boats for sale throughout North America and all over the World, Their place in the history of the development of the sailing industry is undisputed, and Christopher Columbus Smith has played his role as much as his namesake.

Baja boats were founded in the very early seventies in a renovated skating rink in Bucyrus, Ohio. The company prides themselves in recalling that even their first model was meant to something a little special, and so they have continued now for almost forty years, producing boats that are indeed special.

Numbering four employees when they started, all of whom have gone on to be partners in the company, Baja boats gradually gained a reputation for quality performance boats that could compete with the best.

Slowly and steadily through the seventies, Baja increased and improved their ranges, dealing in models ranging in size from fourteen to twenty foot. Particularly popular during the company’s early days was the CT 150.  Based on a classic design, some of these boats are still around to this day, a testament to Baja’s eye for quality. 

As the seventies drew to their close, the management team at Baja began to realize that their particular “niche” was in the rapidly expanding sport boat market. They really made boating enthusiasts sit up and take notice with the launch of their Carrera 240 in 1978, and even more so the following year when their Carrera SS Bowrider took the Powerboat Magazine’s “”Boat of the Year” award in the face of some very strong competition form the leading power boat builders, some of whom had been in business since the fifties or earlier.

Baja Boats continued to consolidate their position as one of the leading power boat makers on the market throughout the seventies.  The company also widened their category range during this period by offering offshore boats.

Demand for these boats was high, as the bore a lot of the characteristics of the powerboats that the company had been making for a decade or more. Whilst never abandoning this particular side of their business, Baja began to move more and more into the creation of larger and more powerful offshore boats. Particularly succesful during the eighties for Baja boats were the 240 Sport and the 420 models.

During the thirty seven years that Baja have been designing and producing quality boats, they have never lost their desire to innovate and change for the better, both as a company and as far as the finely made boats that they produce.   The reason for this is that the owners and founders who are still actively involved in the company have never lost their for the sea and sailing, and this is what spurs them on constantly to better things and better products,

The ongoing discussion for those people who are deeply involved in sailing, either as a hobby or as a profession is which type of material is the best. These days there are a number of very viable alternatives, each with their pluses and minus points.

At one time glass fiber seemed like the natural successor to wood, and that nothing would ever knock it of its perch as the most feasible material to build small to medium sized boats. In the last year or two, glass fiber blended with composite resins has strengthened the opinion of many boating experts that this is indeed the ideal blend.

One of the major problems with glass fiber was that if it hit an object such as a sharp rock. If this happened the glass fiber would tend to shatter, and be expensive and complicated to repair. The new glass fiber composites ate a lot tougher, but with toughness come expense and this material can only be used in boats where the price tag will justify it.

To compare, boats manufactured in aluminum whilst being slightly more expensive are considerably tougher. A very major advantage is that if they hit a foreign body, they don’t break. They bend! This makes repairing them a lot simpler to put back to shape, with a panel beater usually able of knocking everything back to the shape it was beforehand in a matter of hours.

In the unlikely event of the hull of the boat being punctured, then a simple patch weld and some burnishing will see things back to normal in no time. This is one of the principal reasons that aluminum boats for sale are still very much in demand.

Another reason is that the look better as aluminum is not only easier to repair it is also very simple to work with and can be molded into a never ending variety of exotic shapes.
 
If you are in the market for a new boat and you are considering aluminum, take a moment or two to compare prices, not only of new boats but of new ones as well. You will probably find that glass fiber boats are less expensive to buy new than aluminum. Invest a little more time to check out through the internet how the prices between these two choices of boat construction methods compare.

You might be pleasantly surprised to discover that the boats made from aluminum hold their prices much better than glass fiber, and this pattern develops as the boats get older. That means that if you are in the market for a sailing boat either new or used, aluminum boats for sale are the best long term investment.

If you, like many others, know little about boating, you will more them likely never have come across a pontoon boat and how it earned its interesting title.

A pontoon describes an inflatable object cylindrical in shape, with the ability to remain stable and float in water. Their use widely began in World War Two when they were used to as a basis for large floating bridges that remained static and were used to carry vehicles of all shapes, sizes, weights and types over a river for example. The ability to be placed to span large expanses of water in a short space of time was a major factor in the success of the allied invasion of Europe in 1944-45. Pontoons as a base to construct lightweight boats was soon adopted and has remained a source of inexpensive travel over water ever since.

What makes a Pontoon boat so popular is their extreme light weight, and they offer a lot of choices for the amateur sailor.

There are a number of companies manufacturing new pontoon boats for sale in the United States, as well as a large number of dealers offering used Pontoon Boats for sale.  The appeal of the pontoon boat is that it can suit a family who want to store it in their garage for it to be taken out once or twice a year for a family outing. The costs are low, and especially if bought second or even third hand, that the owner need not feel pressurized to use it more than that.

As in other cases, pontoon boats can come in various sizes, with the base of the pontoon made from a variety of materials. The price for a pontoon boat is largely dependant on the quality of used materials used in its production, with some of the top of the range pontoons becoming relatively expensive, especially if the have a deck of some sort built on top of the pontoons and even a small cabin.
  
However a typical example of this simple craft will cost just a few hundred dollars when new, and with used pontoon boats for sale for much less than that.

It wasn’t so long ago that someone who was looking to acquire a used pontoon boat that they found the process so complicated and time consuming that they would simply give up and buy a new boat instead. This led to a major surplus of used pontoon boats for sale on the market, and the prices began to reach rock bottom.

However the upsurge of use of the internet saw a major reversal on how these boats were sold online. It is now possible to search the internet and find a used pontoon boat and buy it direct from a consumer at a fraction of the price of a new one. A few clicks of the mouse can see the transaction completed, and the used pontoon boat on its own way to your home by carrier.

Boats and everything related to boating will be featured in these entries. If it deals with boats, reviews on boats and just plain information on boats, it will be featured here.