Brunswick Boat Group hosts annual training course

Sea Ray, Bayliner and Heyday recently came together in St. Augustine, Florida for a week-long, hands-on gelcoat repair training course. 

“Our instructional program is designed to train techs from our dealer partners so that they can be more efficient with their warranty service while ensuring that they deliver a high-quality repair,” said Tammie Chapman, Senior Manager, Warranty, Brunswick Boat Group. “We were thrilled with this year’s attendance and, based on the demand we are seeing, expect future courses to draw even larger crowds.”

“There has always been a big need for fiberglass and gelcoat repair,” said Bryan Summers, Parts and Service Manager, Erwin Marine. “As gelcoats are becoming more and more complicated, it’s getting harder and harder to find people that have the talent to be able to do this kind of repair.”

Launched in 2016 by the Sea Ray customer service and warranty team in partnership with Spectrum Color, the program’s objective is to prepare service professionals to perform gelcoat repairs at the flat-rate time specified by each brand’s warranty. Thanks to significant growth, the initiative has expanded to include the Bayliner and Heyday brands. This year’s training hosted 40 gelcoat technicians in Beginner and Advanced classes from dealerships across the U.S. and Canada. 

“There are many different ways to repair gelcoat, but here they are showing us the right way to do it,” said BJ Fullwood, Gel Tech at MarineMax Cumming. “I’m taking these skills back with me to MarineMax, which makes me more of an asset to the company.”

“What Brunswick has done with this program is taken a classroom setting and flat panel application and applied it to a vertical and more real-world application,” said Kenneth Hitt, Digital Collision Customer Lead, 3M. “There is not another gelcoat repair training in the industry, whether automotive or marine, that correlates to what this class is teaching.”