Corner of Baiting Place Rd and Florida St in Farmingdale, NY.
In one pic you can see a sign w/ a phone number, but its not a for sale sign.

There were only two Swedish-built 28's imported into the US. The first was a blue/burgundy boat with fore-and-aft race seating brought in in 1993, later equipped with a canopy and raced in 1996 (7?) as the yellow "Rain-X" boat in A (then later AX) class. As far as I know, Bill _______ still owns in in the Sarasota area. This was B-28 Hull #1. My boat (Hull #5) was imported in December 1994 as a silver boat with red trim and a half-enclosed full pleasure interior. Both boats were brought in by Volvo Penta as demonstrators for the then-new DPX drive. As far as I know, both hulls were built by a Scandanavian yard named "Batbygaarna", specializing in racing sailboat hulls. Mine is vacuum-bagged and fully foam-cored, including the bottom. US-made boats are solid bottoms.

Unless your boat has a "Batbygaarna" certficate laminated into the front bulkhead of the engine compatment, it's not Swedish. The last time I spoke with the builder/former owner of your boat, he told me that he had bought a bare hull from Armada (now defunct) and finish/painted/rigged it himself. It won its class at the LOTO shootout at least once.

Hey C Spray,

Did you ever met the Volvo Penta test pilots? I think one of the guys was Ante Malmgren. He's still doing all the testing for Pentas drives. A great guy.

Did the B28 of yours look like this?

I never met the test drivers. My boat looked exactly like the one on your picture. Apparently, there were at least two of them painted that way, but only one made it to the US.

Now mine looks like this:

Looks very nice!! What power, drive and speed?



Here's a B28 race. Actually built in US. It's rigged with 510/800hp on SSM #5 to fit the Swedish class.

540 ci / 600 hp, DPX-A drive, 92 mph best.

I was under the impression from Ocke himself that the Speedmaster boat was Swedish hull #8. It's getting hard to tell these days unless you can see the laminated build certificate (Scandanavian boats), or hull ID plate (US boats).

Chuck took my wife and I on a ride in his BatBoat one time. It runs quite well!!!

Thanks again Chuck!!!

The white/red Speedmaster-boat used to be a DPX-boat. It's rigged with speedmaster this year.

Do you think Ocke are talking about this one? :
(All expoxy/carbon)

yes my boat did come from sweeten i had checked it out already thanks

Interesting. What hull number is it?

Please understand that I don't mean you any disrespect. It's just that I've been involved with these boats since late 1996, directly with Ocke Mannerfelt himself, Armada, and Volvo Penta (at the time). During the Aramada days from 1998-2000, there was a lot of creative claims abut hull quantities going around, even rumors of hull numbers being changed. You can see how the heritage of a particular hull could have been clouded over the years. Besides the laminated-in hull and build certificates (there is one of each) on the engine compartment bulkhead, other ways to identify a scandanavian boat is the circular rear seat and the integral fuel tank under the cockpit floor. All American boats were built with the fuel tank between the rear seat and the engine, resulting in a engine compartment that is about a foot shorter. Most have a 3-across rear seat. After Chris Reindl took over the project, things got much better.

Either way, the hull molds were consistent enough between the various manufacturers that the boats should all run pretty much the same. It's just that some hulls will be constructed differently, and therefore vary in weight. Despite the claims made in Armada's promotional materials, no hulls were cored in the bottoms, and very few (if any) were vaccuum-bagged.

Photos of your boat will help sort out its heritage.