What’s Over the Horizon for 2016?

The year arrives with predictions of slow-to-modest growth for the boating industry, continuing a five-year trend. Industry experts base their upbeat forecasts on a range of factors, but one key indicator is the price of fuel, which should remain low now that the United States is now out-pumping Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer.

Boat sales are another positive sign. Expectations are for sales of new boats to increase by a healthy 7 percent. When dealership stock is down to 20 units or less, and their credit lines are secure, manufacturers will boost production to resupply their retailers to meet future demand.

This is expected to be the scenario for 2016, for four reasons:

• Employment is growing
• Wages are continuing to slowly rise
• Consumers are spending more
• Housing is still improving

Hardin Marine Arrowhead: Playing a Part

The new year also brings a greatly expanded role in boat sales for Hardin Marine Arrowhead. We are now the Southern California dealer for Four Winns, Stingray and South Bay Pontoons, three brands that are each introducing new lines of affordable, “Entry Level” boats.

In 1975, a new ski boat, engine and trailer averaged $6,800, or 34 percent of an average salary of $20,000. Based on today’s average California salary of $69,000, we can match that ratio by supplying boats priced at $25,000.

This means a whole new generation can discover boating.

 

Top photo, Sea Ray runabouts take shape at the builder’s Tellico plant in Vonore Tennessee; Above, friends enjoy an afternoon on their South Bay Pontoon.

Building the perfect boat

In February 2016, Hardin Marine Arrowhead brings its first Four Winns and Stingrays to the L.A. Boat Show, 25 years after company founder Barry Lieberman displayed a custom-built 25-footer designed by Art Carlson.

Before Hardin Marine Arrowhead was launched in 1995, founder Barry Lieberman and Vic Hardin ran Hardin Marine, an Anaheim-based company that designed and built many of the nation’s most popular high-performance boat engines.

By the 1980s, with SeaRay dealerships in Newport Beach, Mira Loma, Camarillo, the San Fernando Valley, West L.A. and Lancaster, Lieberman attempted to connect his engines and his retail outlets with his own line of boats. He began by buying the Caribbean and Tahiti companies and built adaptations of those brands.

The next step would be to build his own custom Hardin boats from the ground up. He went after the best designer in America, who just happened to be in neighboring Garden Grove.

Enter Art Carlson

Throughout the 1980s, Art Carlson had been associated with Glastron Boats in Texas. Glastron was the biggest boat manufacturer in America from the 1950s through the 1970s. As fiberglass was replacing wood, Glastron seized the leadership position in the market, introducing elements that other manufacturers would copy. Carlson’s innovations took Glastron to another level of prominence, epitomized by their "star turn" as the boat James Bond drove in a famous chase scene in Live and Let Die.” (Read more.)

"Art made some really trick custom boats for Glastron," says Doug Robinson, who now owns Hardin Marine Arrowhead. A close friend of Lieberman’s, he bought the company in 2013, after Lieberman’s death at 66 following a long bout with cancer. "His designs were really futuristic. The most famous may have been ‘The Scimitar,’ inspired by a sketch his 17-year-old son had made based on his Corvette. It had a T-top roof and different tail designs that looked like a car."

Robinson still has photos of the building process of the prototype boat that Carlson and Lieberman built at Hardin Marine, as well as the letters from Art explaining how to execute his design.

"It’s just really interesting," Robinson says. "They had to design the center line to get it to the 25-foot length, then figure out where the cleats were going to go, where the fuel intake was going to be, and the rest. It had air scoops for the engine compartment coming up out of the back; a beautiful smoked windshield that swept around and custom deck hatches to inch upward in a gull-wing fashion. The engine compartment opened sideways instead of to the front or back."

"It was a futuristic boat," Robinson says. "And in those days it was really unique. Now it’s common to see a 25-foot boat, but in those days 25 feet was a pretty big boat!"

The boat was completed in time for the 1991 Los Angeles Boat Show, where it was displayed.

"Somebody bought it and away it went," Robinson recalls. "We don’t know what happened to it, but my understanding is it was the only one they made. In 1991, just building one was a major accomplishment. And, after reading this history, it makes me wonder if maybe we shouldn’t go back into building boats."

Carlson retired a few years later and died in 2014. In Robinson’s office are the mementos of those Hardin days, including the silver-plated signature plaque that would have been attached to the next boat that Carlson designed.

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Photos (from top): The finished boat on display; Art Carlson in 1970; a color rendering of the design; a still from Live and Let Die; and three productions shots – creating the frame out of balsa wood, the finished balsa wood form, and then "fiberglassing" the balsa in to make the mold.

Hardin Marine: Best of ‘Boat’ Worlds

In a recent interview with Mountain News reporter Mike Harris, Hardin Marine Arrowhead owner Doug Robinson laid out some of the changes coming to the company.

Now in its 19th year serving Lake Arrowhead, Robinson said, we offer the mountain boating community the best of both worlds – winter storage in San Bernardino where our indoor facility keeps boats safe and dry. During the season, our Lake Assist boat is like a mobile ‘office on the water’ cruising the lake.

“Hardin Marine is able to make minor repairs right on the water or at a customer’s dock, and fix the larger problems in our shop. When our Lake Arrowhead customers’ boats need to go to the shop, they get priority and move to the front of the service line. It results in an average three-day turnaround that usually means the boat is back on the lake before the customer returns for the weekend.

“Last year we reduced winter storage rates, reduced technician hourly rates, and reduced polishing and detailing prices,” he continued.  “This year we started an in-house upholstery program and began offering free bottom cleaning.”

More Customer Benefits

Beginning this fall Hardin Marine Arrowhead will provide its winter storage customers with a free drive gear lube change. And, when Spring comes and the boats need to be back on the lake, there will be almost twice as many trucks driving to transport them.

“Hardin Marine Arrowhead just purchased three new Silverado trucks to assist in next spring’s boat launching,” Robinson announced. “We will have seven trucks going up and down the hill which means we can return about 28 boats to the lake each day.”

Because boat manufacturers continue to drive up the cost of new boats, Hardin Marine Arrowhead is not only working to bring down operating costs, so people can enjoy spending more time on the water, it is making it easier to gain access to boats.

Rentals and Sales Up

“For Lake Arrowhead boaters, we can handle consignment sales if they want to move to a different size or style boat, and we are now selling high-quality previously owned boats with low operating costs,” Robinson said. “We also have a program for people around Southern California who want to have a short-term rental boat to take to the river or some of the other local lakes including Big Bear. “Our slogan is ‘We’re more than just storage,'” Robinson said. “Looks like we need to change it to ‘so much more than service,'” he laughed.

HMA Saves Customers Unnecessary Fee

In September 2014, the Arrowhead Lake Association (ALA) met to discuss mandating that every boat coming out of Lake Arrowhead undergo decontamination for the Quagga Mussel before it could return.

Estimates of the cost to be assessed boat owners ran around $150 per boat.

However, as Doug Robinson of Hardin Marine Arrowhead told those attending the meeting, this was unnecessary.

“To begin with,” Robinson said, speaking on behalf of HMA, Mile High Marine and Inland Marine, “we already drain all water from each boat and completely clean its hull. In addition, once the temperature reaches 80°F, as it does in San Bernardino where all three companies have warehouses, the mussel dies within three to five days.”

Robinson’s remarks convinced the ALA board to waive a decontamination requirement for boat owners storing with one of these three companies.

“We did promise,” Robinson added, “that if a boat leaves the area of our control, and goes to the river or some other lake, we will report that name to ALA so that when the boat comes back they will make them get the decontamination.

“In the meantime, we saved a thousand people $150 each.”

More information:
Watch the California Department of Fish and Game’s Public Service Announcement here.
Read the University of California Riverside‘s scientific report on the Quagga and Zebra mussels here.

Customer Stories: Susan Richlin’s Lucky Break

Susan Richlin‘s name was chosen at random to win Hardin Marine Arrowhead’s 2nd Annual “Who’s Going to Hawaii?” giveaway.

But that isn’t why she is feeling lucky to be an HMA customer.

A couple years ago her extended family purchased a home on Lake Arrowhead. It had been 15 years since a fire had destroyed their previous lakefront property, a second home where Richlin and her three sisters did much of their growing up.

This spring, as renovations neared completion on their new fixer-upper, they bought a new SeaRay from a dealer in San Bernardino. A huge reunion weekend was scheduled for her parents and all four sisters’ families – which now included a third generation of 12 kids in their 20s – to be together at the lake for the first time since the fire.

“We’d been waiting a year for this,” she said from her home in Encino, where she is a successful interior designer. “But when the brand new boat was delivered, it didn’t work.”

After giving Richlin the runaround for more than a week, the dealer retrieved the boat and found that something in the engine had not been properly installed. It was then returned to Lake Arrowhead.

“And,” she said with frustration returning to her voice, “we get it out on the lake and it’s still not running right! So we flag over a boat with Hardin on the side and asked for help and the guy said ‘Call our owner, Doug Robinson, because you should not be having this problem with a new boat.’

“Over the phone Doug just said, ‘Look, I’m going to take care of you.’ He didn’t know who I was. We’d never met or spoken before. But he just came to the dock and figured out that the propeller was the wrong size for the altitude in Lake Arrowhead.”

Robinson gave her his cell phone number and invited her to call him personally if there were additional problems. At that point, she was still a storage customer with the boat dealer. When told that, yes, Hardin could provide storage and service for her boat, she cut her ties with the other company and told Robinson, “Whatever you do, I’m with you.”

Only a few weeks later, there was another problem when one of her sons turned off the battery and a second son was unable to figure it out. From Europe Susan gave her son Doug’s number and a quick call saved another weekend.

“Doug and the Hardin Marine folks were there for me,” she said. “I really need a company like this I can count on. We don’t have a trailer and I’m not going to be pulling that boat out of the water and taking it somewhere to store, or fixing it.

“Most importantly,” she said, “he was who he said he was. He was just an honest guy and I was just so happy to join up with Hardin.”

Photo: Steven and Susan Richlin, back on Lake Arrowhead with all systems ‘Go.’

Upholstery: Hardin has you covered

Angie Contreras heads Hardin Marine Arrowhead’s in-house upholstery and canvas department. She has been sewing since she was a child, when she helped her mother make dresses. After beginning her career in the New York fashion industry designing belts and high-end accessories, she returned to California to create custom boat and auto interiors. For 15 years she has been building a local following and national reputation in her field.

She joined the company in February 2014, and at the 2014 Customer Appreciation Party, she received some warm appreciation from Charlene Nelson, who wanted to thank her for the job she did fixing the cover on the boat she and her husband Don own.

“We brought our boat into Hardin to have a new cover put on it,” Charlene said between grateful hugs. “The boat is 31 years old and this is the best cover we have ever had in that boat’s life. And Angie did it. The boat is bright yellow and we picked a beautiful gray color for the new cover. The cover goes on and comes off easily. But, during the recent storms it held fast in those high winds that blew. It is just fabulous.”

Photo: Angie Contreras and Charlene Nelson meet at the 2014 Customer Appreciation party

Gino Cerboni, a Familiar Presence with Lake Arrowhead Boaters Joins Customer Service Department

A 20-year-veteran of the marine business and a familari face for Lake Arrowhead boaters, Gino Cerboni has joined Hardin Marine Arrowhead’s Customer Service Department.

The San Bernardino native was on board for July 4th weekend, adding his decades of experience to Hardin Marine Arrowhead’s growing team of technicians and service personnel.

“I love the environment up here,” Cerboni said. “Lake Arrowhead boaters are great to work with. They’re fun and very energetic.”

Cerboni started in the industry in 1994 and has been in Customer Service ever since. For the first decade he worked at Olympic Boat Center in Riverside, a Bayliner and Maxum dealer where he acquired extensive experience with Mercury and MerCruiser engines. He then worked for Empire Marine, which was a Larson and Glastron dealer, and gained valuable experience with Volvo and Johnson engines. he worked for two years as an independent marine surveyor, and then came to Lake Arrowhead to work with another company.

“Gino knows the Lake Arrowhead boating community,” said Hardin Marine Arrowhead owner Doug Robinson. “He knows the Hardin customers and their boats already, so it’s a real plus.”

Photo: Gino Cerboni outside Hardin Marine Arrowhead’s San Bernardino facility.