At this time even though my picture is still on Swell Watercraft’s website I have nothing to do with Swell anymore. Jim Marsh and I are still friends. Here is the story.

A little over a year ago I wanted to build another boat. This is an obsession with me. There are obsessions that are far worse than this one. At least there are not many animals hurt in this movie.

I met Jim Marsh who was in the publishing business and was ready to try something different. We agreed to form an equal partnership where I would redesign the original Scupper kayak and assist the building of the first prototypes, and Jim would sell. Adam Bierschenk built the prototype off of my small model and it paddled really well and I think had a better layout than the popular Scupper Pro which people want but Ocean Kayak does not make anymore. I tell people that this redesigned kayak is so good I can paddle as fast and do as much with it at age 66 as I could with the original Scupper at age 33. I hope I am getting wiser.

Basically getting into production was harder and took longer than we had anticipated so we decided to split up and both share the IP or Intellectual Property and each make a different kayak based on the Swell Scupper. Jim has changed the deck design of his new Swell Scupper to be produced in February. I don’t consider it my design anymore. The world needs more Scupper type boats in one form or another.

I have redesigned the Swell kayak to be even better. Stay tuned for all of the details. I have also reorganized my team and we are making the first model out of composite fiberglass material as soon as we sell the first 10 of them and are on sale now. PS the first buyers get a great deal. We are planning to have this ready before the end of the year. Shortly after the composite mold is made we will do the same program with the roto molded model.

I wish there were more gory details in our split up, maybe a scandal would get more attention. Hopefully having two types of this great design will make it more popular. There were many people who thought the Scupper kayaks were the best overall sit on top kayak ever. If you want my opinion on why Ocean Kayak dropped this model look for the blog on “leaders and followers” coming soon. I think people will start demanding kayaks that are made by real people for real adventures instead of being created on a spreadsheet by MBA’s who don’t paddle.

So for now my picture is still on Swell Watercraft’s website.

Maybe I should be flattered.