Economy and Fuel Issues

Browse Articles

Genmar Pushing Daisies

Genmar Holdings, Inc. the boat building conglomerate, threw in the towel yesterday (6-01-2009) and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

As far as ten years back I warned Irwin Jacobs in several published articles about the perils of creating that kind of company with all its eggs in the one basket of the highly cyclical boating biz. All it takes is a major economic downturn, and you are finished. Great business executive, that Mr. Jacobs, as brilliant as all the bankers and real estate moguls, doesn’t understand diversification as a survival strategy. Entire Article

The Art of Going Slow
Some Tios for Avoiding Trouble

Many boat owners are talking about this. If you reduce your gallons per hour from 36 to 10 you reduce cost from $151 an hour to around $42, almost 400% savings. From what I read on the forums a lot of people are going to try cruising at displacement speed since a lot of diesel boats will do around 8-9 knots at 10 gph. Gas will probably be a bit more. Entire Article

The Future of Fule Prices
Boating runs on oil, so a crystal ball is needed.

This writer has been following the oil market ever since the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo. My livelihood depends on the price of oil and, if I ever came to the conclusion that there was an acute world shortage of oil I would have gotten out of this business. Should fuel prices persist at $3.00+ that would pretty much doom powerboating. But so far over the years my research has proved correct: there isn't, and I didn't. Entire Article