The Old H.M.S. Marine

Magico1@aol.com
Tue, 3 Nov 1998 21:11:16 EST


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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H.M.S. Marine was started in the mid 1960's by Herb Stewart. He was buildind a
little boat called the Tahoe 10. The first Potter came out in 1965 # 151. Five
years later he came out with the H.M.S. 18 (same as the P.19). Herb continued
to improve on his boats, He came up with a one piece deck, and a cabin liner.
By 1974 the molds were getting old and there was a lot of man hours involved
in this design. He started to design the Mark 2 Potter. I purchased my first
Potter from H.M.S. hull # 564. She is almost 25 years old now, and she has
logged a lot of miles in some truly nasty conditions. I have had no problems,
and she is as seaworthy as the day I bought her.
The early P.19's were built like tanks, this also made them rather
expensive to build when the Arab oil embargo raised the price of resin. They
stopped production in 1975. Two years later Herb Stewart retired and sold the
company to Joe Edwards. This is where the quality problems started. He was
forced to cut corners to keep his boats selling. He did away with the
chainplates and the seperate centerboard housing and galvinized keels. Some
years were better yhan others. Joe decided to bring back the big Potter around
1981. By then Herb Stewart had passed away and it was hit and miss. By 1992
H.M.S. was getting a bad reputation.
Larry Heart bought the company and changed the name to International
Marine, then he hired a real sailor to manage things. I have been down to the
factory several times in recent years and have noticed a major improvement.
The boats look better and are more user friendly. Darrow and Scott came up
north a couple of times and they spent a lot of time poking around my old
H.M.S.18 Sunshine. They were looking for ideas for building better Potters.
Now the new Potters have the same galvanized keels as the older boats did.
These people have really listened to myself, and others. I now have no problem
in recomending new Potters. There has never been a Bad Potter, some have been
a little better than others. If anything ever happened to either of my
Potters, I would not hesitate to buy a new one.
Jerry Barrilleaux P.18 # 48 & P.14 # 564