Page 76 - 52nd Annual White Marlin Open

always had an outboard boat. I would buy another manufac-
s r e r u t o b t u d r a o n a d n e h t I w o d l u o t s u c e z i m “ ,ti ” e z i g n i k i V .ti
People would always be in line to buy my personal boat because
boats got to be greater, so we slowed down the production they knew what I did to it.
rate. Also, we didn’t want to overbuild the market. We found
In 2016 we bought the Ocean Boats factory to free up space

to build motor yachts, a promise I made to my uncle when he
92 footers. sold us the business. The motor yachts were well designed,

Speaking of larger boats, last year you splashed a new years, we pulled the plug.
82’ boat and this year a 74 footer. How long does it take
to build these larger boats? So now we have this 125,000 square foot building and a work-
force and I thought this was the perfect time to do theValhalla.
The 74’ is about 8 months and the 82’ is about 10 months. Most My sons were just getting out of college and I had John Leek,
of the boats we build now are commissioned and we customize Ryan Higgins and Dave Gemmel onboard.
them to the new owners’ specs. That accounts for about 90%
of our production. The other 10% we make are for boat shows. We all had this major desire to go ahead and build these out-
board boats and do it differently than anybody else had ever
In 2019, you started Valhalla, a center console division of done it, and we did. Last year we built 142 of them from 28 feet
Viking. How did that come about? to 55 feet and now we’re viewed as the number one center
console manufacturer at the highest level of quality. No one’s
Well it was something that I always wanted to do because I’ve

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