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. . . the questions: were the floors weaker in the later Potter years or is this an anomaly. The floor on my '72 looks much better-built and feels far more solid by comparison...
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Gillie - I discovered SeaCraft in the late 60's and followed them very carefully during the 70's, making the annual pilgrimage to the Miami boat show for about 10-15 years. I believe one of the first jumps in gas (and resin) prices occurred about 1975, and I clearly remember being shocked by a big increase in the price of a Seafari bare hull. It went to $5000 on the 76 model, from something like $3900 in just one year, an increase of nearly 30%! I still have the original price lists somewhere in my collection of brochures.
I had a neighbor that was a mate/skipper about that time who also worked part-time at Rybovich Marina. The marina/sales operation was actually run by the folks that owned Fisher Body who had also bought Rybovich and kept the name, but they also happened to be a SeaCraft dealer. I remember him commenting that they had noticed a drop in the quality of the new boats received from the SeaCraft plant and that they had to spend more time on them correcting minor problems. Who knows, maybe the increasing price of resin increased financial pressures that caused them to start cutting corners and reducing the amount of resin/glass used in the boats. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened in the boat business! Maybe Fr. Frank will chime in if he had any similar observations, as I believe he was involved in rigging some SC's, maybe in that same time period. Bottom line is that your observations are consistent with mine, in that, although Potter did not go bankrupt till about 79 or 80, the operation was beginning to hit some headwinds several years earlier! Wouldn't surprise me that cost cutting pressures would have increased as they got closer to bankruptcy!
The boat-building business is very cyclic and a lot of builders have gone out of business during an economic crunch. A good friend I went to school with is the founder and president of MarineMax, one of the nation's biggest boat dealers. He could sell freezers to eskimos! Used to see him at the Miami shows, and he told me one time that anytime there was an economic downturn, the sales of "small" boats (~35' and under) just disappeared, but that the bigger stuff was relatively unaffected!
As much as I admire you're wanting to join Nick in the Save-the-Seafari's club, I think I'd let someone else take a crack at that one! Sound's like there could be a lot of hidden costs lurking in it! Denny