News

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Biologists conducting an annual state manatee survey recently counted more than 2,500 manatees, the fourth-highest manatee count since 1991, according to preliminary statistics cited in a story today in the Tampa Tribune. Biologists working for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Florida Marine Research Institute counted 2,568 manatees between the gulf coast and east coast ...

Boat building conglomerate Genmar Holdings Inc. may not be bragging too loudly about it, but the company is putting forth a substantial effort to get women more involved in boating. Late last summer, Genmar reported that it had launched its Women Making Waves program, which helps dealers target women through educational seminars that teach boating basics. Since then, however, the ...

Today jet drives, steerable nozzles, and electric motors represent the new technologies in the propulsion field. But with all the competition to develop the next big thing, and all the innovations that are the result, how are those involved with propulsion really doing? Is business good? And what will come next to help better, more efficiently, move boats from point ...

From a dealer or marina owner standpoint, it couldn’t hurt to have a little more help. But in an era when service departments are lacking qualified, trained technicians, dealers are oftentimes forced to look for help in places other than the manpower department. That’s where the software sector comes in. With new technologies becoming more available and less costly with ...

gap in the boating industry’s understanding of its own consumers may make it hard to accurately gauge the potential impact of the petition Mercury Marine submitted to the International Trade Commission (ITC) in January. Mercury’s petition alleges that Japanese engine builders have been selling outboards in the U.S. for an amount significantly less than what is being charged in Japan, ...

While the New York National Boat Show has yet to obtain a new, better date range, both organizers and exhibitors have more reasons to be optimistic about the show’s future this year than last. For one, while the show was slammed with a 26-percent decline in attendance in 2003, it rebounded significantly this year, despite worse dates and fewer show ...

MADISON, Wis. – A shareholder alleging that the Johnson family is trying to take Johnson Outdoors Inc. private at a price unfair to minority shareholders, has filed a lawsuit against the company, a story in yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Johnson Outdoors said last week that director Samuel C. Johnson and his daughter, Helen Johnson-Leipold, who is chairman and chief ...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – UsedBoats.com has completed its internal research and analysis of approximately 500 surveys and has concluded that 2004 should bring more boaters onto the water than any year before, a company release said yesterday. The company also cited several underlying outside factors that it believes will contribute to making that prognostication a reality. UsedBoats.com said those included: ...

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. – West Marine will begin carrying two new marine products from Material Sciences Corporation – a liquid level sensing system for holding tanks and reservoirs, and an electronic bilge pump controller for bilge pump activation – an MSC release said today. The level-sensing system is called SensaTank, while the bilge-pump controller is known as SensaSwitch. Both ...

RONKONKOMA, N.Y. – A proprietary internal-combustion engine formerly called Dyna Cam, has been renamed the Axial Vector Engine by Aero Marine Engine, Inc., a developmental-stage company which acquired the rights to the machine, an Aero Marine statement said yesterday. “Management of Aero Marine feels that the name change was warranted because Axial Vector better describes the revolutionary engine,” the release ...