On Mar 12, 5:31�pm, "JimH" wrote:
"Harry Krause" wrote in message

...





JimH wrote:
"JimH" wrote in message
. ..
"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
groups.com...
On Mar 12, 1:00?pm, "JimH" wrote:

(Brunswick bought Sea Ray in 1986).

Yep, and they did not influence designs until 1989 or 1990 if I recall.
The quality also went into the dumper at that same time.

BTW: *David Pascoe seems to agree. *A local surveyor with a great
reputation (he surveyed 3 of my boats and is a buyers surveyor) also
agrees that they are over rated and over priced..

Some food for thought:

http://www.docksidereports.com/boatr..._sundancer.htm

http://www.yachtsurvey.com/boatrevie...dancer_290.htm

While Pascoe is not God, he does show some serious production flaws in
fairly high priced boats. *But I guess the gold chain wearing crowd with
small private parts think they are being admired when they cruise the
water in their Sea Ray as image is everything to some. * ;-)

Most of the big Sea Rays I see are dock queens.

Regardless of size, Sea Ray boats are not at the Mercedes Benz class
standards as Chuck was previously referring to.


I think you overrate Mercedes.


Anyone thinking that SR quality did not take a nose dive shortly after
Brunswick purchased them knows nothing about boats.- Hide quoted text -


Among mass-pro boats turned out in high numbers for a broad market,
Sea Ray is a top tier product. There are some boats that compete, but
among mass-pro boats turned out in high numbers for a broad market
there are none that are clearly better over such a wide spectrum; from
runabouts to 60-footers. There are better "niche" boats in some
categories, yes. There are also some mass-pro boats that compete
pretty well in the general quality category that people will choose
for subjective reasons.

About half the "Sea Ray has gone to hell" stuff that circulated for a
while was spawned by the competition. Joe Boater drops by the BRAND X
dealership, says he's looking for a boat, and that he has just come
from the Sea Ray store. A poor salesperson (the norm, unfotunately)
might respond with "Oh, you mean you've been looking at an overpriced
Bayliner! See this magazine article? Sea Ray doesn't even exist
anymore, they were bought out by Bayliner last year! Everybody knows
that Bayliner is going to ruin the product and that they just bought
the company for the name. Bayliner is getting such a bad reputation
that pretty soon nobody will buy a Bayliner either new or used, so the
plan is to turn out Bayliner boats with the Sea Ray name on them and
see how many people can be fooled into buying one."

There's little doubt that Brunswick changed a few things about Sea
Ray, but only because Brunswick is the parent company of more
competitively priced Bayliner did so many people just assume that all
the changes were bad. If Connie Ray hadn't sold out to Brunswick, the
entire brand would have disappeared. "Extinct" is not a better
boat. :-)

Heck, even our own Harry Krause, not the world's biggest fan of
Bayliner, has owned a Brunswick product, (he once had a Sea Pro).
Owners of Boston Whaler, Hatteras, and other premium Brunswick
trademarks probably don't feel like they have a POS vessel simply
because Brunswick also builds some boats designed to sell for less.

When David Pascoe takes some of the known baloney off his site,
(backyard bondo repairs represented as OEM layup, total misinformation
about diesel theory, etc), he will be taken more seriously by the
boating community at large.