New Classic Cobalt/Donzi site

[Mercrewser]

Came across this today. This guy would probably appreciate some info. http://www.geocities.com/classic_cobalt/

[Lenny]

http://www.boatingworldonline.com/News.htm?CD=1044&ID=4029

[Rob]

The son of the guy that started Cobalt used to work for me. Their manufacturing facility is just south of Kansas City. At the time he worked for me (at least 8 years ago) he said they still had a couple of the 16's stored away. They didn't make any of the models very long. The lawsuit from Donzi was pretty quick in coming.

I remember a couple of models displayed at the Kansas City Boat show in the early 70's. When Jim still hosted the Donzi site, there were several threads where owners of these boats posted pictures. I remember seeing 16 and 18 knock offs, as well as a 16 Corsican model. Cobalt didn't even try to disguise what they were doing-the boats were exact replicas of Donzi's. The boats even had a pair of flag decals in front of the Cobalt name.

Apparently they were pretty well built. Not suprising, since Cobalt still is known for building a quality boat.

[Rob]

Ok Lenny, we just missed each other. Chris St. Clair was the son's name. And Pack is not tell the whole truth in the article. They either sold some or gave them away, because I've seen the pictures and in person.

[Tony]

A member of our Registry named Craig is the resident expert. He has lots of info and literature regarding Cobalt knock-offs. Several threads also discuss these boats, and I am in the camp that says they were well built. A friend of mine has a '71 "Corsican" Cobalt, orange in color, all original, and very well built.

It's a Ford/Volvo combo, with the engine probably needing some major work or replacement. Hull is in great shape, though, and the guy might be interested in selling. It's been stored inside for the last 15 years or so. E-mail me if anyone is interested.

[Craig]

Yea - that looks like the old web site I did a couple (maybe more) years ago. Don't remember much about how I "did" the site. My daughter actually did it with me supplying the pictures and info.
At first it was free, then, after we had some stuff set up, they started charging a fee (as I recall) to have the site, so I quit. It's still there, but can no longer be altered/edited. Oh well. Don't really have time right now anyway. It was fun.
I don't think Pack is making anything up. What I think he is saying (and I got a story something like this from the dealer I bought my boat (an XV-200) from 21 years ago) is that they were all ready to sell them (late '68 - early '70), but they didn't get that far.
Like my boat, and like Wade Silzer's boat in the article, a small number of these boats were distributed to dealers as demos and eventually sold after the dealers had them a good while. That sort of makes sense. It would be hard to tell for sure. Supposedly only 35-40 of the 16' Ski Sporter copies and even less of the 18' Corsican copies were ever made.
To date (after 21 years of looking) I think I've located about a dozen of these boats. 3 of the 18' Corsican copies and the rest, 16' Ski Sporter copies. One, a 16', has made it away from home as far as Stocklholm Sweden, but now wears a Donzi decal and has been sold twice now as such (both in the past 2 years) for in the neighborhood of $16,000 as I recall!
One of the 16's was a V-drive. All others are 302 or 351 Holman Moody Ford Volvo power.
There's a boatload (excuse the pun) of info., photos and articles on this site if you dig a little.
Just do a search for the word "Cobalt" if interested and you'll find it all. My boat's in the registry with pics under Craig Zimmermann.
Boating world did a little piece on my boat too (May 2005) following the one above (March 2005) after I sent a picture and a letter (see attachment at this link - http://www.donzi.net/forums/showthread.php?t=40953). They had a couple typos that bugged me. They got the wording twisted around a little about the color combinations I found in my research so the statement really doesn't make sense. Last line (second paragraph) should say "...and the deck 'STRIPE', was, in those cases, white." The way they worded it, it's backwards. Also, it looks like I wrote that mine has a "sports green" stripe, but my letter actually said "mine sports a green stripe", an expression, like "sporting a new haircut."
I hate to be misquoted!
But hey, I got my mug (a 20 yr. old picture) and my boat in a popular magazine so who's complaining?