Boat Builder Industry Sites of the Week

Recreational Boat Building Industry

Web Sites of the Week

This page contains links to web sites we have recently encountered that have special significance to the boat building industry or are great examples of applying web techniques to web site design. If you have any you would like to suggest, please drop us an E-mail at polsong@virtualpet.com

Week of 6 April 1998

Volvo Penta has updated its site and included Adobe Acrobat files of its spec sheets. When you display them online, some of the line art drawings may not appear clearly, but when you print them out they are much clearer. If you are not familiar with Adobe Acrobat we suggest you check out the Volvo Penta site, follow the link to acquire a copy of the reader, then test it on the Volvo Penta spec pages. You will be pleasantly surprised to see web pages with position control of the information that look exactly like printed pages.

Volvo was among the first in the boating industry to establish a web site and was the first large divisional company in the industry to establish a site leading to its various divisions. The original Volvo corporate site included a great deal of information, but it was "stuffy" and appeared too "corporate." The divisional sites all followed the same format and it appeared the site was being totally controlled at the corporate level. Volvo Penta's new site is much more refreshing and very well done. Congratulations to Volvo Penta !

Week of 1 December 1997

It been quite a while since we've posted some "sites of the week". Besides being very busy, We have not seen a lot of new sites that we felt really made a significant contribution to boating. This week, we have seen 3 such sites. The first is an excellent boat brand "user group" site. RBBI is very happy to see this application of the internet (user groups) and encourages other brands to develop similar groups and sites. The 2nd is an excellent Marine Surveyor's site that provides a great deal of information that is not available elsewhere, and the 3rd is a very well done yacht manufacturer site. Also the NMMA has finally launched its site.

Week of 4 August 1997

Yamaha-Motor has announced a new web site for North America. It includes information about their outboards, stern drives, jet boats, PWC's. It also does a great job of including fishing tips, boating safety tips, info on how to cook fish, and is an all around easy to navigate site. We commend them for such a fine effort in what is a foreign language to their parent company.

Week of July 14, 1997

This week we are selecting an excellent informational site from Finland that specifically covers some high tech composite boat making practices and has an excellent publication. Additionally we picked the PLIMSoft site which has dazzling graphics.

Week of July 7, 1997

IMTEC has established an excellent web site to promote their huge trade show in Chicago Sept 25 - 29, 1997. The site has a great deal of information and will be a good example for others to build upon in the future.

Week of June 23, 1997

Mercury Marine just announced its long awaited web site and we are making it our site of the week. We have the press release and our reviews of the site on our Mercury Marine Web Site Report and Review Page

Week of June 16, 1997

We are calling one of our own folders the site of the week this week to call maximum attention the the need to comply with the new European CE mark Program (Recreational Craft Directive 94/25/EC). If you are marketing boats or components for boats sold in Europe and are not yet in compliance with the new directive which goes into effect 16 June 1998 (one year from today) you should read this material immediately.

Week of May 26

We had a great water ski site called to our attention last week. Its an online magazine called "Behind the Boat" that has some real substance to it. We commend them for their fine efforts. I especially liked the article about buying a boat with your buddy. Check it out!

Week of May 5, 1997

Come'on out there! - were not seeing many new great sites, especially in the U.S.

This week we are featuring a great Italian Magazine site, "Nautica".

Week of April 14, 1997

A big boating season kick off party is being planned for Lake Havasu May 15-18, 1997. This week's web site announces it and show some photos of previous events. Boating is supposed to be fun - here is an event that could help boaters have fun and introduce many to the activity of boating. To those who may attend - please boat safely ! We hope to be able to display more events like this one.

Week of March 24, 1997

This week we had a great site supporting old merc OB's called to our attention. It's really great looking informative site ran by some nice folks selling parts and service info for Kiekhaefer's old units. They have some great photos and info for those re-living the past. We think this is one of the greatest things the internet does best. Bring people together with common interests and help them solve problems involving older technologies that are still being utilized for historical, religious, sentimental, or presentation purposes by the "tinkerers of the world."

Week of March 17, 1997

 Since Japan is a major country in the industry we will feature a major Japanese boating site and discuss how to properly view it this week.

To view the sites properly (show true Japanese characters on a U.S. PC you can use the Shodouka Launchpad or download some software from the Twin Bridges site. See the Japanese Language segment of our Other Links section. For those interested in trying to learn the language we suggest the program, Power Japanese by Bayware Inc., and the Mangajin Magazine which is also listed in the Japanese language segment. I have used these products personally and found them to be the best way for me to learn the language.

For those who can follow along in Japanese, their is a Japanese Boating Newsgroup : fj.rec.marine

If your provider doesn't carry it, it can be read at: http://www.ricoh.co.jp/rdc/ic/demo/netcow/view0/ng/fj.rec.marine if your computer can display Japanese text .

Week of March 10, 1997

This week we would like to point out that the web is often being used as a tool to scream to the world by those who feel they have been wronged by a company. You've that a satisfied customer might tell another person, but an unsatisfied customer will tell 10 or more. Now you can up that to 10 million if they are willing to read it. Below is an example of a boater who feels he's been wronged by his Mercury Marine Dealer in Australia. The site has been up for about a year.

Week of February 24, 1997

These could be the "link of the year." The news of Toyota's entry into the market is a major item.

Week of February 10, 1997

Industry Week just launched a major site that will have considerable impact upon many manufacturing execs. Also we found a great "Nautical Know How" site with an emphasis on boating safety. You can actually take boating safety training online. Next time your "rained out" or its to cold to boat - stop by and brush up on your boating safety knowledge.

Week of February 3, 1997

We recently encountered two very fine Great Lakes sites, one by the U.S. and one by our Canadian friends. Both sites are very extensive and environmentally concerned.

Week of January 27, 1997

Last week, we didn't see anybody we thought deserved special recognition, but this week we've encountered four well done boating sites and three of them are from outside of the U.S.

  • Caribbean Nautical Page
    This site feels comfortable and is obviously written by a Macintosh fanatic. I love the opening fonts.

  • "Open the Sea" Russian Boating Magazine
    How things have changed. Keep up with the rapid boating developments in Russia.

  • Nautica On-Line - Italian Boating Site
    This is a truly great site. Pick the English language version and see the great Italian marketing information in the boat show area including, "An Outline of the Italian Boat Building Industry" and "The Import Market in Italy". Also see the 1800 boat trial reports (in Italian but graphic results are interpretable in English).

  • Arizona Boating
    A fine entry from the U.S. The site has nice "seamless" access to lake level data, fishing conditions, and info at other sites.

    Week of January 13, 1997

    This week we are "paying homage" to some great Japanese sites. Some of these sites are slow to load, content is great. Most make you pick an American flag or something to get English version of site.

    Week of January 6, 1997

    No links of the week this week

    Week of December 30, 1996

    Locally, the Tulsa Office of Army Corps of Engineers has established a superb site not only visually but content wise as well. Only months ago we were forced to make calls to obtain lake level data for Keystone and now all kinds of current lake data is available in easy to read format.

    The Great Lakes Vessel Passage Web Page is another example of a very well done page both visually and content wise.

    Week of December 23, 1996

    This week we are picking one of our own pages, The Bright Field freighter New Orleans crash page. This huge freighter slammed into a Riverwalk mall in New Orleans Saturday December 14th. Our site carries continued coverage and updates of the disaster in the form of news reviews, video, photos, maps, and graphics.

    Week of December 16, 1996

    The Canadian government provides a web site with an incredible amount of Canadian boat industry statistics. The site also includes some U.S. and Japanese boating data.

    Week of December 9, 1996

    Last week we encountered several very well done non-USA boat manufacturing and boating web sites. We are using them as this week's sites of the week.

  • AboarD is a United Kingdom web site with boating information that also hosts web sites for many yacht manufacturers.

  • Abeking & Rasmussen is a nice German yacht manufacturer's page (hosted by AboarD).

  • Lagoon Catamaran is a French Catamaran manufacturer with a superb web site. This is one of few boating sites featuring multi language displays (click your national flag to receive text in your language).

    Week of December 2, 1996

    The "Beige Book" - Federal Reserve Board Report of Current Economic Conditions by District is at http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/FOMC/BB/Current/

    "European Country Data" provides an incredible amount of data, charts and graphs about the current marketing situation in various European countries. It is available at http://www.europages.com/g/data.html

    The National Library of Canada http://www.nlc-bnc.ca offers extensive searching of online journals

    Nice example of a large animated gif in a Boat Builder web site http://www.iwol.com/iww/customers/crownline/home.html

    Week of November 25, 1996

    Its TURKEY TIME !!!
    Try some of the recipies and Thanksgiving tips from these 2 great sites.

    Butterball Turkeys and Honeysuckle White Turkeys

    Week of November 18, 1996

    An excellent foreign PWC site called CSL European PW Site at http://www.csl-pub.com

    An exceptional Canadian industry data site at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_ecnmy/sio/homepage.html

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