August 27, 2005

Super Air Nautique 220 Update

Now that I've digested my Kool-Aid and slept on the issue for a few nights, I'd like to share some new thoughts on this boat. Hopefully you've had a chance to read my previous gushing entry on this topic. I want to be clear; I am a fan of just about anything Correct Craft produces. I am not, however, a fan of their marketing style or approach. I still believe that this will be a very successful boat for Correct Craft, because they all sort of are; but it was not quite what I was expecting and here is why:

Correct Craft offers two boats that are still kind of trying to find a niche, though they sold well last year to family-oriented boaters. The 211 and 226, both phenomenally designed boats; were pushed pretty hard by a dealer I spoke with a few years ago. And both, at their inception, were said to be the new wakeboarding flagship from Nautique. It was reported that high-profile professional riders such as Shaun Murray and Shawn Watson were delivered spanky new 211's and 226's to play with. However with the release of the Super Air Nautique 220, this same effort isn't apparent, as the 210 brochure seems to still infer that the Super Air Nautique 210 (now, oddly enough, badged as the Air 210) is still the Mommy of the fleet. The important, wakeboarding boat of record, and the boat that many serious riders appreciate as the one that creates the best vert wake available, short of a 70foot sportfishing yacht.

So I am perplexed. Why would Correct Craft build yet another boat with no clear market? Why push it so hard as the new Super Air Nautique? That term 'Super Air Nautique' was/is approaching the same reputation level and word-of-mouth power of MasterCrafts's ProStar 205, Malibu's Sunsetter and Correct Craft's famed Ski Nautique 2001. Why would they choose to use the hull of the 226 and 211, with Hydrogate (hydrogate is a hydraulic wake adjustment plate meant to make a large wakeboarding wake more palletable for leisure skiers and barefooters) as the basis of this boat? The 210, the 226 and the 211 each have a wakeboarding-specific option set, and a family oriented option set. The 220 does not - it is being offered in an Air Nautique model only. So from that standpoint it is a wakeboarding boat since it has no family level analog. That is odd to me.

It is atypical of Correct Craft in general and potentially a purposeful and shady marketing push to try to convince buyers that it really is a wakeboarding dream boat, when it isn't; and the Air 210 aka Super Sport aka Super Air Nautique 210 still is. Straight from Correct Craft's press release for the 210 is the following statement, "With 850 pounds of ballast for peaky wakes with lips that kick and an optional 375 horsepower PCM® engine that jumps you up on plane, this boat is the single-best wakeboard boat on the planet."

Really? Still? Even though you have one called the 220? A higher number equals a more awesome boat right?

Not necessarily. The interior is going to take some getting used to but may be a step in the right direction for watersport/wakeboarding boats, but appears to contain a lot of proprietary, one-off hinges, latches, panels, and hydraulic lift arms - for which Correct Craft is known to charge an arm and a leg, and are known to break. Often. And I could swear that it has less room inside than my 210, but I have not seen it in person so I can not make this assertion yet (and after this blog I'm not sure they'll let me near a dealership).

I've always thought that the 210 had plenty of seating space but if they felt like changing the interior mold, could use more open space in the middle for gearing up and moving about the boat. The 220 appears to have gone in the opposite direction I had hoped, adding more seating and less open space. Again, this is only from boat show photos I have seen, but most of them were high-res thanks to Jeff from PlanetNautique, and thus a good enough representation for me to form an opinion - right or wrong.

So the marketing team behind the Super Air Nautique 220 has some work to complete. They need to release photos of the wake weighted and unweighted. They need to prove that the wake is different, steeper, and more vertical than any Correct Craft boat's has hull previously created. They need to NEVER speak about the boat as a crossover boat - 'good for slalom AND wakeboarding' (because such a boat does not exist; the very concept a total contradiction of the purposes of each boat respectively). I still would be happy to water test the boat for a few years, should Correct Craft read my blog. But this soft launch of the boat is not quite what people were expecting.

Correct Craft's Web site still makes no mention of the boat. I bet they spent a lot of money on that Flash though! Cool mouseover sound effects! Very 1997!

Posted by erik