glassdave

iTrader: (1)

amen brother. . . . very well said

you forgot talent . . . if they cant design it im sure they dont have the talent to improve on it. .

Gary Anderson

Shane
I thought the Chris Cat was a widened splash of the Shadow. American Offshore, Awesome, and 2 or three others then splashed the Chris Cat.
Gary

T2x

When George and I left Shadow...he took the design...modified it for inboards (widened sponsons, changed dihedral) and went to Chris Craft. The Chris Cat plug was , in fact, a modified Shadow Cat...... but, since Linder designed it originally...... we'll cut him some slack......

The Shadows were faster with outboards... The Chris Cats were faster with BIG BLOCKS....Small blocks were a whole 'nuther story.

T2x......

BK

The splashing did a ton of damage to the marine industry as a whole, and to smaller high perf boat makers specifically since their profit margins are narrow to begin with ---- almost to the point that all that was left in the small boat market were splashes of splashes by design pirates and the actual hi-perf hull "designers" using their talents elsewhere.

A company could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years perfecting their hull, only to have the design greased up and molded (popped) by design thieves merely weeks after its debut.

Since the design thieves had no time, energy or financial resources invested - only the use of an original hull to use as their plug - the crafts from these popped molds could be built immediately for a faction of what the original designers needed to recoup from their plug building, research and testing. And on top of that, pirates only splash boats that are already massively popular proven designs - and since these hulls are so popular, the pirate company needs very little marketing. In other words, not only do they avoid years of R&D expenses, but the marketing and years of testing expenses as well, which most builders will tell you is 90% of the total costs of orginal hull boat building.

This design thievery caused a massive stagnation in this section of the small boat building industry, especially during the last decade, as the top designers and the companies who hired them had no way of protecting their innovations, so they just quit.

The good news is that the 1998 Vessel Hull Design Protection Act will change all that, as long as original hull design companies actively register all of their new designs HERE:

http://www.copyright.gov/vessels/

From the hearings in 1999:
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COBLE on H.R. 2696, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act:

"First, we will turn our attention to the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. This bill in large part represents a legislative response to the case of Bonito Boats v. Thundercraft Boats, decided in 1989. In Bonito Boats, the Supreme Court ruled that so-called ''plug mold'' statutes enacted by the States to proscribe the copying of hull designs were unconstitutional. More specifically, the Court held that the States are preempted on this issue pursuant to the supremacy clause. In fact, the Court concluded its opinion by noting that, ''It is for Congress to determine if the present system of design and utility patents is ineffectual in promoting the useful art in the context of industrial design.'' I, for one, believe the system of design and utility patent is inadequate, and I furthermore believe that the we need this bill to protect those designers within the marine manufacturing industry from having their creative talents misappropriated from those who invest no time, energy, or financial resources into the original design of vessel hulls."

BK

We had no less than 5 companies make direct splashes of our 18' Jaguar Racers- a design that took us 10 years to perfect.

Lightning Boats is one of those and to this day openly admits he has "popped" this hull and is very proud of this fact.
(See current thread at Scream and Fly)

Another company (now defunct) was a small outfit in Alabama named Warrior Boats, who not only splashed our hull in total, but photocopied our very own company brochure to hand out to potential customers at the races! That's gutsy!

And even one Texas-based company came to our shop and asked to take pictures of a couple of boats on the floor, pretending to be a potential customer. A few months later he begins advertising his "own" boat building business (apparently his hulls were to be splashes of our products) but this guy is so overtly bold that, in his Propeller Magazine ads he used the photos he took of OUR boats while he was visiting OUR shop!

The lack of scruples some people have is totally unbelievable to me.

T2x

After all these years the lack of believability is long gone.... Now that colleges teach us to justify any behaviour...and ignore "obsolete" concepts like honesty, integrity, effort, and respect.

There was a time when the buyer was a long term high performance buff...who could spot a "pop" at 100 yards and treat it with at least some caution. Lately it seems that having a modicum of success in dot.com ventures, or a chunk of excess cash from a trust fund, has filled the marketplace with purchasers whose frame of reference is the past 15 minutes....and who all consider themselves experts.

Part of the reason we left Shadow and started the one-off based Conquest Marine was the ability to make each boat unique...while creating enough reverse angles that no one could splash us.

T2x......

BK

Cat,

The original hull manufacturer and designer was Mirage Boats, Inc. That was our company. Our company and designs were sold to Mike Mullins of Florida who now runs Mirage Boats.

For a peek at what our Mirage 18.3 River Racer looks like, that my husbands company designed, click here:

http://forums.screamandfly.com/forum...threadid=43627

BK

OOops. My bad. That link wasn't to a Mirage 18.3 River Racer.... but sure looked EXACTLY like one.... fooled me!

Here's a real Mirage:

http://forums.screamandfly.com/forum...ghlight=mirage

BK

Here's a question;


If they make the cowling taller or make a small change on the dashboard, can it still be called a Splash?

T2x

To me.....if someone takes an essential hull and remolds/"refines" it in some way.............. it's a splash.

T2x

P.S. That includes cutting it into 4 pieces and "speading" the quarters outward....something which is currently happening in offshore cats.