Why we only sell boats we can service for the life of the hull
In 2017 we made one rule, and every brand on the lot has been measured against it since.
My parents started this business in 2003 with ten Triumph boats on a piece of roadside property. I took it over day to day in 2016, and the year after, I made one decision that has shaped everything since: we would only sell boats we could service and support for the life of the hull.
What that rule actually means
It means a brand does not go on our lot because it sells. It goes on the lot because our technicians can work on it, we can get its parts, and we will still be able to do both in fifteen years when the boat is on its second owner.
It is easy to sell a boat. The part a customer lives with is everything after the sale: the first service, the warranty claim, the part that fails on a Friday in July. A dealer that sends that work out to someone else has handed off the part that matters.
Why we could make the promise
I am a Yamaha Master Technician, the top of Yamaha's certification ladder for an outboard technician. That is the reason the shop could commit to servicing what it sells instead of sending the work out, and it is still what decides which brands we take on.
Today the service building has five certified technicians, one of them a Yamaha Master Tech, and it holds Yamaha's Marine Service Pro Elite status. Every boat we sell runs on Yamaha power, so the engine on a boat you buy here is the engine our technicians are trained on.
How each brand passed the test
- Cobia and Pathfinder came aboard in 2016. I sit on Maverick Boat Group's dealer council, so what our customers ask for, and what we see on the bench, goes back to the people who build them.
- Pursuit came in 2022, and the same year the service department qualified for Yamaha's Service PRO program. A bigger boat needs a service floor to match it.
- Cobalt joined in 2023, for the weekends that are not about fishing.
What it means when you buy
When you buy a boat here, the building behind the sales desk is where it comes back for its winterization, its 100-hour service and anything that goes wrong. The technician working on it is trained on the engine it runs. The warranty claim is filed by the people who did the work.
It also means we say no. If a boat is not one we can stand behind for as long as you own it, it is not on our lot, however well it would sell.
The boat is the start of it. What you are really buying is who looks after it.