Aquasport CS no more in Sarasota?

[seabob4]

My Teak Isle sales engineer called me yesterday to see how we're doing.  Good friend of mine, we talked for a while and I asked him how the Wellcraft/AS plant was doing, as they still had Customer Service and PD&E there.  He was there last Thursday and told me that as of this Friday, the plant would be entirely shut down and Wellcraft/AS no longer there.

AS Customer Service has been a great resource.  Where they will end up and who will staff it are a mystery to me, but I l know Butch has done a great service to many people.

I will give him a call tomorrow and see what is going on, and how are the old AS archives going to be handled, and by whom.  Will keep all posted.

The business really sucks right now...

[RickK]

A while back we called them and found that we had more resources on this site than they did - seemed Genmar "dumpstered" everything from the old days after they bought AS.  We sent them a CD of all the stuff we had at the time and they were very appreciative and if anyone ever called them on older AS they referred them to this site.

[seabob4]

Didn't get a chance today to call them today, hung and rigged Etecs all day.  Pair of 150s and a 225.  Next week (Yea!  I get to work another week!), Suzukis.

See if I get a chance tomorrow.

[Bill]

I called AS/Wellcraft in 1999, shortly after buying my '88 22'XF, hoping to get an owner's manual or any other literature.  The switchboard put me through to some fairly senior guy in the factory who was nice enough to hunt through some files and come up with a single sheet advertisement for my boat that he photocopied and sent me.  We got to talking and he said that there was next to no printed matter on any AS boats when they took over.  In fact, he said that they thought they were buying a functioning operation, but about all they got were a couple of nearly-completed boats and a half-dozen or so hulls of various sizes/models and only a few molds. Not much else.  Within the context of the conversation, he implied that people at Wellcraft thought they'd gotten a really bad deal. I don't know if the story is true.

Bill
"Shark Shadow"

[seabob4]

Bill,
I can't say what documentation Genmar got, but the molds they got were, as follows:

175 Osprey, deck and hull
200 Osprey, deck and hull
215 DC, deck and hull
225 Osprey/Explorer hull
225 Osprey deck
225 Explorer deck
245 Osprey/Explorer hull
245 Osprey deck
245 Explorer deck

The 165 Striper and 215 Explorer were Wellcraft boats with AS graphics.  The 275 Explorer is a Wellcraft design.

[RickK]

I wondered why the 215 Exp was so "round" on the cap above the cabin.  All the other Exp were more flat up there.  Makes sense now.

[seabob4]

We built a Wellcraft 210 Coastal/Aquasport 215 Explorer once.  Wellcraft graphics on the starboard side, Aquasport graphics on port.  Looked pretty neat.