When dealers in California insisted that their customers would not pay 15 to 20 percent more for a luxury cruiser, St. Undeterred, the rookie boat builder invested the family’s savings into developing a high-end runabout, an undeveloped market at the time, then hauled his new high-performance Cobalt to the West Coast. “Every time someone would stop by to look, I’d tap on the side of the boat, and she’d hold the loose headliner in place.” “My wife spent the whole boat show inside the cabin,” he recalls. 9,411).Īt his first boat show in Chicago, he failed to sign a single dealer, and the headliner on one of his cruisers even fell off during the drive from Kansas. Clair knew nothing about building them in 1968 when he converted his slide-making fiberglass company into a boat factory in Chanute, Kan. He always loved boats and, growing up in southeast Kansas, boated with his dad on area lakes. Clair, 70, a former football star at Kansas University. Starting the boat-building business in landlocked Kansas was anything but smooth sailing, however, for founder Pack St. With a company culture that stresses ingenuity, pride in workmanship and small-town family values, Cobalt crafts high-end runabouts and cruisers that are considered among the best in the industry. “Every one of these babies is hand-built, made from scratch,” says Craig, who has assembled Cobalt boats for 25 years and also raises cattle on 240 acres of rolling Kansas prairie.Ĭraig is among Cobalt’s many farmers-turned-factory workers who build 2,000 boats annually in Neodesha, 1,500 miles from the nearest ocean and a two-hour drive to the closest sizeable lake. 2,842).Ĭraig installs a GPS on the Cobalt 323, then inspects every gauge and component before making sure that every cedar-lined closet is flawless-consistent with the company’s mantra to “compromise nothing” and reflecting the Midwestern work ethic he developed while growing up in rural Kansas. Wearing cowboy boots and blue jeans, fifth-generation farmer Mike Craig, 45, puts the finishing touches on a sleek 32-foot luxury sports cruiser built by Cobalt Boats in Neodesha, Kan.

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