Re:What's the story on new Potters?

Christopher A. Chung (cchung@UH.EDU)
Tue, 09 Mar 1999 11:06:20 -0600 (CST)


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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I purchased a potter new from the factory in 1997. The boat had poor
construction and workmanship. In several areas, fiberglass panels from the
hull were not attached to the liner. This causes the liner to crack on the
inside and the hull to deform on the trailer.

This boat should have never left the factory.

To International Marines credit, they replaced the complete hull with a new
on in 1998. I did not have the use of my boat for most of the summer of
1998 due to a lot of delays.

I had a number of problems with IM concerning some of the modifications that
I had done to the boat before the warranty claim. First Bruce Chase said
that they would pay to have my hardware installed on the new boat and that
they would pay for the recommissioning. They later retracted this promise.
I had to pull out every hatch, inspection port, lazarette, hardware fitting
on the boat. This took two weeks of work for four hours a day plus two
entire weekends.

The new boat also did not have the structural reinforcing beams that the old
boat had and there was a problem fitting the boat on the trailer. When I
brought this up to Bruce Chase, his response was "You are just looking for
excuses."

As it turns out, I finally found out the problem why the boat won't fit on
the trailer properly. Its because the tounge for the tilting trailer was
not constructed properly. As a result, the winch post is at a 15 degree
angle which makes the boat twist on the trailer.

Would I buy another Potter? Absolutely.

Would I buy another boat directly from International Marine? Absolutely Not.

It is not even worth the aggrevation to try to have my existing problems
straightened out.

Christopher A. Chung, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Houston
Dept. of Industrial Engineering
Houston, TX 77204-4812
tel. (713) 743-4195
fax. (713) 743-4190
cchung@uh.edu