This post was made as an offshoot to Marrietta Mike's thread about his evaluation of Hal Chittum's Islamorada 18 vs. HB Marquesa. The thread took the direction of new and exciting things builders like Chittum and Gordon are working on. Someone mentioned that HB was working on a bay boat (which IMHO is not very exciting, that market is already so saturated). When I found the HB Madiera video I posted it there, but the thread had already been derailed into too many different directions so I decided to start a new thread here. All 24' bay boats are in competition with each other. It doesn't matter who came first. Ankona is working on a 20' bay boat, but you can't really compare that to a 24. I did forget about ranger because the phantom isn't really that popular and they don't make any of the other skiffs any more, but you could certainly toss them in the mix. I don't think I would put Mako, CS, and Epic in the same category as the others. Epic especially has a horrible reputation around here (Louisiana) for cracked transoms and terrible build quality. The Chris Craft Catalina line seems more like a center console to me than a bay boat. The videos were not meant to be a comprehensive list, but to provide evidence to support my opinion that the new Madiera doesn't measure up in the $100K+ bay boat market and that there are better options out there. I think HB makes many incredible shallow water skiffs, but that bay boat is fugly.
