If you look at the numbers, the recent Discover Boating Miami International Boat Show was an unabashed success. Rolling into the Miami Beach Convention Center and five in-water venues across the city for the second year in a row, the event welcomed more than 100,000 visitors from 25 countries worldwide, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association.
Builders who participated said many of those visitors came with checkbooks in hand. “It was a fantastic Miami show for us here at Scout, and this was the second-best year on record at MIBS we ever had,” says Scout Boats director of sales and marketing Alan Lang. “Traffic was good, people were in great buying moods, and we as a company continue to be very optimistic about the near and distant future of our product offerings and retail sales.”
Lee Gordon felt similarly. “Miami is a bellwether U.S. saltwater show, and I am extremely encouraged by the success all our brands and products experienced at this year’s event,” says the Brunswick Corp. vice president of corporate communications, public relations and public affairs. “The 2023 show season is off to a solid start with good attendance and engaged consumers at shows across the U.S., Canada and Europe, and I am very proud of our teams for another outstanding performance in South Florida.”
All good news to hear. So why did so many others tell me the show was “boring” or a “snore-fest?” It took me awhile to digest and figure out these sentiments, but I think I’ve come up with a decent hypothesis: The marine industry has hit a technology plateau.
That statement isn’t meant as a slight to the advanced and innovative work that engine makers, electronics manufacturers, components companies and boatbuilders are doing, but the overarching feeling about many of the products that I and seven other judges had during the Miami Innovations Awards was: We’ve seen this before. And since we’re judging on innovation, not iterative changes, the lack of real leaps made our work difficult.
These types of plateaus happen in every industry I’ve worked in, especially the technology industry. When the iPhone came out in 2007, it felt like we were holding literal magic in our hands before we opened the store doors for the product launch. Smartphones then improved by leaps and bounds every year until about four years ago, when the ubiquitous devices started to receive minor upgrades every year. I’m told my new iPhone is faster, takes better pictures and has baked-in safety features that can detect a car crash or a hard fall, and even connect with satellites if I find myself in an emergency outside the cell grid. This piece of technological wizardry looks and feels the same as the 3-year-old model I just traded in. A plateau, so to say.
The good news is that plateaus like this are short-lived. While some people may be underwhelmed with the slower pace of new-product releases (this does not apply to boats — more than 35 new models were launched in Miami), there is some tech on the horizon that I find quite exciting to help make boating safer, easier and more sustainable.
For example, Raymarine and Avikus signed an exclusive agreement at the show that will pave the way for the first commercially viable autonomous system for recreational boats this fall. I’ve not had a chance to test the system yet, but from everything I’ve seen online and heard from fellow journalists, the system is “so good it’s a little scary.”
Yamaha Marine debuted its prototype autonomous technology to a select handful of marine journalists. It’s a system the company calls DockPoint. It allows for complete self-docking, developed at the company’s new Marine Innovation Center in Kennesaw, Ga.
Of course, there was a lot of activity in the electrification space. Chris-Craft revealed its electric prototype, the Launch 25 GTe; Ilmor introduced its first electric outboard; and Mercury Marine now has a shipping version of its Avator 7.5e, an electric outboard with the equivalent power of a 3.5-hp gas outboard.
Perhaps the biggest news in electrification, however, is the rapidly expanding market that revolves around lithium battery banks charged with high-output alternators to eliminate the need for conventional gas or diesel generators. This technology, only four or five years ago, felt not quite ready, but this year it was on several production models. While Navico Group’s Fathom e-Power system seemed to be the most popular version among builders at the show, there were plenty of other options from electronics manufacturers.
While the electrification of propulsion systems steams ahead, the march has been fairly slow to achieve full market adoption, as battery technology is not at a place that allows all-day, full-throttle use. For that reason, the NMMA held a press conference to address the need to continue reducing emissions from internal combustion engines. Fuels such as biobutanol, petroleum-diesel hydrocarbon and Ecogen 93 were discussed. And many engine manufacturers are talking about hydrotreated vegetable oil, and hydrogen and ammonia fuels, that significantly enhance efficiency while vastly lowering emissions.
In retrospect, it feels as if everyone — including me — who said the show seemed boring might have had blinders on. Maybe we’re spoiled by crazy leapfrog products like Mercury’s V-12, 600-hp Verado outboard or recent radar systems with artificial intelligence that can pick birds out of the sky far over the horizon. Those things are easy to get excited about, but so are the technologies we’ll see enter our marketplace in the next 12 to 18 months. I can’t wait.
This article was originally published in the April 2023 issue.
