How much does one of those boats pictured cost a guy these days?

Lots of boats in my area. Very few upholstery shops and only a handful are good. There's usually a 3 month wait on getting boat seat recovered here. Trying to push my kids into the upholstery skill. Pretty good money in it around here.

I agree. A SeaRay is just a SeaRay, its like a big Bayliner. Nothing special for someone to spend that kind of money on these days.

Steal boat
Go to Burma
Take Christian missionaries up river
????
Profit

(Yeah, I just watched John Rambo again last night)

There are only so many people with deep pockets that want a yacht. No product diversity. What the company should do it switch production to the sea worthy equivalent of Tiny Houses and build small economical live-aboards for the hippy market on the left coast. As an alternative to owning to renting expensive real estate. That in turn will create a whole new economy with shit pumper service and grocery & parcel delivery service, mobile laundry service, shore or solar power provider etc. etc. If they get in on the service provider end of it as well, then they will have a sustainable business model.

There is a lot more growth and turnover in the high income/can afford a yacht bracket than you think.

If you can swing it financially, definitely look into the training opportunities. The grant money available, plus what Brunswick might through in as part of a severance could make getting through a 2-year tech program or something else worthwhile.  Something that would dovetail in with your upholstery experience, maybe marine engines, would make your overall skill set very marketable as a "marine handyman".

In the long run you need to figure out how the guys that own those yachts get wealthy.  If you figure it out let the rest of us know.  

Send me 30 feet of that anodized aluminum handrail tubing (five 6 foot sections will be fine).  I have a project in mind.

Time to pitch a reality show.
Pimp my yacht.
Maybe get Foose to design some ugly trailer rims

Seriously OP sucks to hear that. Good luck

Since you have so much time on your hands now, you should pass the time by watching some Yacht Rock Videos on Youtube:

Maryville and Greenback are nice areas, you can get some decent country land convenient to everything for relatively cheap. No state income tax here among other niceties (sp?). 20 minutes to Knoxville. Sweetwater is also a nice and beautiful in some areas, just more secluded.

Fly over and do my Model A interior............

(Just lost our contract today, I may be in the same boat............er, I mean lack of boat.........soon. ) 

You can buy used 550 down in the $250k range, but on the high end you can price a 650 up to $2mil.

They have been in trouble for some time. They reached out to private equity firms many months ago looking for a life line. Apparently no one is interested. I can only guess they did not like the offers.
Much competition in the same space and margins are to low.
Someone may step up if a true fire sale gets going...?

My area boat builders seem busy. Mostly high end 30' to 40' CC triple engine rigs, $300K and up.

Time for a 25% tariff on imported sport yachts!

IMO, that seems to be where the market is going to instead of the 30-40 is cruisers. The market for the larger yachts 65+ or so, also seems to be doing fine along with the CC market you mentioned.

In the past, everyone wanted to take diner cruises on their Sea Ray, now everyone wants to go to the sand bar in their 42 foot Yellowfin. It also, a sign when you have Hydrasports Custom making 40,50,  & 60 foot CCs with A/C and all of the other nice ammenities with a waitig lsit.

PM Sent

@outofbattery

very little in the marine industry is imported to the USA.

and being a boat, you don't have to ever register it in the USA and pay sales taxes especially if it's a yacht.

go and look at the large yachts, they mostly will have ports that are tax havens and if they aren't commercial use, they don't have to worry about jones act regualtions.

I think embraer has their own interior shop at the Melbourne facility. If that is the OP's AO.

Dude in the bottom right of the picture is like "Im taking my stapler and burning this whole place down."

Wylie ain't the only one.......have you see the lead time on a Freeman? 24-30+ months last I heard.

but the the left told me the rich got richer with Trump's tax cuts.

Yep...there are a few CC builders with lead times right now.

THis is either a US problem or union issue.  The Super yacht conferences just held in Monaco and France were packed, lots of builds and new orders being placed, a real positive outlook.

520 and the bow of the 420 that didn’t make it.



460

These 3 boats are the last (include L550 FLY on page one)

Been looking at a ski and fish. Probably gonna grab one used and gut it, get it AWLgripped in an out, re-rig it, etc.

Wanna do the upholstery?

@90SH556

What happens to the hulls of the partial boats?

Looks like the 420 bow is a decent size.

It’s dead Jim... They are being harvested for anything of value. The hulls, I think will be drilled and cut but I’m not 100% sure at the moment. Probably a half dozen yachts in assembly will be scrapped. Plenty more earlier in the process still in lamination.

The 420 was going to be the 400 replacement. Same hull for the most part, just updated... We had 10 on order and none will make it out. Two are already in assembly, with one already mated with a deck. It appeared it was going to be a huge success and the same could be said about the 520.

That sucks, I would have thought that boats would be selling in this economy.

I've been driving and living on yachts for years on the weekends in the Houston Texas region.

Sea Ray closing down manufacturing lines is a huge blow to the industry.  The dealership network will also lose many good paying technical jobs because of this as well.

Don't forget, when we lost Carver no one was prepared for the results.  Soon we discovered that the parts were hard to find and the experienced dealership mechanics had moved away.  I remember one situation where they reopened a portion of the Carver assembly line so they could turn out a few bimini orders for customers that had no one else to do the work.

If you can swing a move up to NC, the custom boat builders up there are going gangbusters. I follow many of them on Facebook and they are always posting now hiring posts.

You can not judge an industry on one brand.

Look at Amazon and Sears. They both are large retailers.

Now look at Viking yachts and Sea Ray.

Op. If you want to stay in the marine industry you might have to move but people are hiring.

Sea Vee is about to move to a new location. They will be hiring.
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/2018/06/12/seavee-boats-set-to-replace-five-sites-add-100-jobs/

Sorry to hear about your job OP. I worked at a SeaRay dealer back in the late 80's as a fluffer basically detailing the boats for the customers after the dealer installed options were installed. I liked it the boats were fantastic. I never got to work on the big boats like the convertibles as they were at a different dealership but we did get to go check them out once.

 Maine has some growing yards as well

@90SH556 Gulfstream is hiring upholstery techs in Appleton Wi

Sorry to hear OP. But skills transfer so keep your chin up!

Ive always thought of SeaRay yachts more as McYachts for flashy new money folks.

Not too surprising to me they're having trouble, I'm afraid.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

SeaRay left Michigan and went to your state. Now you know how my friends felt

SeaRay YACHT?

WTF

The poor persons yacht? I honestly didn't know they existed.  Who the fuck buys a SeaRay yacht?  Sorry to hear, but seriously, wtf, I wouldn't have taken a yacht building job for SeaRay.  I don't even want to know what goes on.

Sorry about your misfortune OP.

I don't think this is a canary, so to speak. Sea Ray style boats are not what's popular right now. The big money is going to 30 plus foot center consoles like yellowfin, Freeman, Contender, etc. yes, those boats are fishing oriented, but that's what is popular. Reliable, efficient outboard technology has hurt cabin cruisers as well, I suspect. Conversely, People who can afford and want actual yachts do t want Sea Ray. Same thing happened to Chris Craft years ago. Sea Ray didn't adapt.

Are these two plants, and all these jobs, in one town?

That's a horrible hit of it is!  

Sad to hear of this as SeaRay was a fixture for a long time in the area.

Whaler, Everglades, and Edgewater are 30 miles down US1.

Good luck.

Acetone Alley?

Get top notch Yamaha outboard certified.... you will be able to work where ever.

Sorry man.

Unfortunately I saw that coming. Everyone wants a big center console, sport fish or down east style boat these days. Those 30-60ft cruisers don’t seem popular anymore.

Those boards are affixed at various stations on the line. Just general production information for that particular line and management... I really can’t say anymore about it, only because I never really looked at them or participated in a meeting involving them.

Some are taking it very hard. A number of my coworkers have been with the company for a long time, some decades. Everyone seemed happy working here. Mostly a stress free work environment and everyone is willing to help each other out. Pay and benefits were solid, in a area with relatively low cost of living. It seemed most had minimum stress at home and work... Many would come in saying,”Living the Sea Ray Dream” every morning. Now most are saying, the dream is no more, it’s been crushed.

That’s the thing... The line is not empty, it was full on production like normal. We came in Monday and had a surprise town hall meeting scheduled where they broke the news. We knew a few minutes before the public did. A couple hours later, most of us had a letter in hand in compliance with the WARN act. It was truly a surprise, considering we had plenty of orders to keep us busy for well into the next year. Not only that, they brought in another wave of new hires not to long ago.

For this line, I feel they did and not by a little.

This is also my impression... At this price point, customers don’t want to be told no to much. We did do a few special orders, so I think they did experiment with the idea a bit. You can even see evidence of that with a member in team who bought the Horizion FD87 (Skyline) as Horizon went out of their way to make him happy.

In a meeting we had earlier. They estimate 800-900 at any giving time are in the market world wide.

I feel Marine Max is a large part of the problem. They sell a little over 50% of the boats for Sea Ray and the majority of that is from our larger boats. Most of our line ends up going to Marine Max with very few to other dealers. I don’t think it was a good idea to let one business sell a majority of our products. More so when that dealer has a vested interest with competitors.

Fun Fact: Marine Max was very interested in buying the company... Something obviously happened and no deal came through.

That’s an old picture from an earlier town hall meeting... I wish we had chairs when they told us.

Go be poor somewhere else?

How much is something like that cost? $700,000?

I agree to some extent as  no one really wants a Sea Ray style cruiser. People are buying outboards and center consoles, custom sportfishers and mega yachts.

The custom Carolina sportfish market is going wide open right now. Most of the builders have waiting lists for builds.