The American Boat & Yacht Council lists more than 80 standards that manufacturers use to build safer boats. These standards cover everything from cooking appliances and galvanic isolators to sewage systems and steering wheels. But back in 1954, before the ABYC was founded, not one of those standards existed — and people trying to go out and have fun on boats were getting hurt.
“You’re looking at a postwar culture — people wanting to recreate, the dawn of recreational boating,” says ABYC president John Adey. “The Coast Guard started looking at sinkings and explosions and asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They went to the industry and said, ‘You guys are gaining a lot of traction. Either you need to do something about it, or we are.’ ”
ABYC Some of the marine industry’s biggest players of that time came together to create the ABYC. The organization was incorporated as a nonprofit Feb. 1, 1954, in New York state. The first person elected president was Phelps Ingersoll, a marine hardware manufacturer from Middletown, Conn. Today, contributors to the cause include such people as Dave Marlow, who serves as a member of the ABYC Technical Board in addition to his role as senior director of product integrity at Brunswick Corp., the largest boatbuilder on the planet.
“ABYC provides leadership and input to the development of standards in North America and around the world,” Marlow says. “In doing so, they make it easier for boat manufacturers to navigate the variety of regulatory and regional requirements that impact exporting boats outside the U.S.”
Looking back as the ABYC celebrates its 70th anniversary, Adey says that not only is the goal of creating safety standards continuing to be achieved, but it’s also being greatly expanded upon, after decades of effort by countless volunteers and experts in the field. “Our industry was smart enough to say we’ll regulate ourselves,” Adey says. “It’s 70 years of service. It’s being here to serve, of being available. We want to ensure that whatever volleyball is going to come flying at your head from an accident or an industry trend or a boatbuilder president calling you, do we have the staff here to serve you? I think we do.”
ABYCShift in Focus
Adey joined ABYC in May 2002. Prior to that, he’d spent seven years as the owner a fishing tackle and supply store. “I ended up here as an assistant tech director, and now I work for everybody in our office,” he says with a chuckle. He became the organization’s president in December 2011, which, he says, was about two decades after the ABYC’s first big shift in focus.
“Prior to 1990, there was the need to write a standard for every aspect of boating that they knew was an issue,” he says. “From 1954 to 1990, the standards just weren’t there. That was the era when we defined ourselves through standards. We were going to get those standards up to the minute and relevant to where the industry was at that point in time.
“Then, in 1990, the big boating problems were solved — flotation, electrical, capacity, engines, navigational equipment,” he adds. “You really had everything necessary to build a boat from a standards perspective by 1990, and everybody was starting to use them.”
ABYCThat’s when the ABYC realized it should start a certification program. Today, the program has produced more than 4,500 certified technicians who are knowledgeable about everything from corrosion and diesels to composites and ABYC standards overall. Students who earn three or more technician certifications gain the credential of master technician, having proved their well-rounded expertise in boat service and repair.
For ABYC itself, creating that program in the 1990s helped to reshape the nonprofit into more of a professional organization. “It’s when we started describing membership as a benefit, not just a benevolent payment,” Adey says. “We are a standards writer, first and foremost. But we could do more for the industry than we were doing.”
All kinds of ideas began to emerge, including student memberships, laying the groundwork for today’s efforts that Sarah Devlin is leading at the ABYC on workforce development. Members can go to law symposiums and learn how to become an expert witness. The big-picture idea is not only to keep writing and updating the standards, but also to use them as the basis to improve the industry in all kinds of ways. “Upwards of 90% of the boats on the water are now built to our standards. Why would you not use us as a partner in your career?” Adey says. “That’s where we are right now.”
ABYCGlobal Reach
The ’90s is also the era when the International Organization for Standardization started to really flex its muscle as a powerhouse overseas. The ISO, founded in Switzerland in 1947, had followed a trajectory similar to the ABYC’s. After delegates from 25 countries gathered in London, the ISO was created with a postwar vision of standardizing the world’s reconstruction efforts. Its members started to think about standards for what we know today as the European Union.
But the ISO and ABYC didn’t always see eye to eye. Starting around 2006 or 2007, Adey says, ABYC began to focus on what he calls “our quote-unquote global domination strategy.” Marlow’s contributions were a key part of that concept, Adey says, as the Americans set a goal of creating “one world, one standard.”
ABYCIn 2016, ABYC hired Craig Scholten to help further the cause. Scholten, who is ABYC’s technical vice president, previously was production engineering manager and compliance specialist for Four Winns, Glastron, Scarab and Wellcraft. Prior to that, Scholten worked as director of product compliance for Genmar Holdings, which built boats under those brand names, as well as Aquasport, Carver, Champion, Crestliner, Hatteras, Larson, Lowe and Trojan. “He was a huge supporter of ABYC and is a very forward-thinking guy,” Adey says. “He was trying to make sure his product could go all over the world.”
Today, Adey says, ABYC is “pretty darn close” to achieving the original vision of one world, one standard. The way Marlow explains it, “ABYC provides leadership and input to the development of standards in North America and around the world. In doing so, they make it easier for boat manufacturers to navigate the variety of regulatory and regional requirements that impact exporting boats outside the U.S.”
Adey says there are some things that the ABYC has realized “just aren’t going to work” on a worldwide basis. “But you can build a boat right now that can meet ABYC and ISO,” he says.
As an ABYC employee, Scholten is also chairman of the ISO TC/188 Small Craft Committee. He was appointed to that position in March 2020, which means that for the past four years, an American has been leading the ISO’s ongoing development of documents used in the design, construction and testing of boats up to 78 feet.
“To have an ABYC employee as the chair of TC/188, that’s mind-blowing to me,” Adey says, adding that the appointment signifies the respect that recreational marine players around the world now have for the ABYC’s expertise. “The narrative has changed from us trying to shove our standards down Europeans’ throats to ABYC being a resource partner that they draw from. I’m really thrilled with that.”
Looking Ahead
Adey says that he is sometimes surprised at all the areas where ABYC is making inroads and a difference. In the past few decades, problems that ABYC standards have helped to minimize include carbon monoxide deaths on boats, as well as electrical shock drownings at marinas. “We were able to mitigate that, realizing it wasn’t just a drowning. It was electrical,” he says.
Today, ABYC is looking into areas as broad as aquatic invasive species, which according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can spread uncontrollably, harming vital ecosystems and native wildlife and plants, adversely affecting health, recreation, the economy and infrastructure. “We had engineers and environmentalists together recently in a room, and the boat guys realized they could design boats in ways that are better for not transporting those aquatic invasive species,” Adey said in January. “Who would’ve thought about ABYC talking about quagga mussels? It’s really neat.”
Workforce development efforts, too, are expanding in ways that the ABYC founders likely never imagined. “We can take the standards and turn them into something that will be taught in high schools and colleges all across the country,” Adey says. “That can create a quality talent pool for the workforce. How cool is that?” All of it is possible, he adds, because the industry experts involved do not see themselves as competitors when it comes to ideas that can help to propel the entire industry forward.
At the same time, the mission continues to have its challenges. For one thing, boats are not built at the same scale as, say, on-road vehicles, which means implementing new standards can be a big challenge for individual manufacturers. “Maybe a group of experts get together, they see a problem, they sit around a table, and they come up with a solution in the form of a piece of technology,” Adey says. “It may not be something in any other industry right now, and then we have something we want to make, and we write the standard before the piece of technology exists. And then manufacturers look at it and say, ‘Sorry, there won’t be enough volume to make this.’ ”
For those reasons, the ABYC now also looks for opportunities to create standards for components that can be used not only in the marine industry, but also in the RV industry. According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, 2023 saw about 258,000 new powerboat units sold. For the same year, the Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association reported more than 313,000 RV shipments. “If we can make a product that spans the marine and RV side, our economies of scale are huge, so we can look at things differently,” Adey says.
Yet another issue that’s hot on Adey’s radar is the graying of the boating industry, especially the leadership. Individuals who have long led the charge are approaching retirement age, and there’s not much of a bench ready to take the field. “I’m 53 years old, and my colleagues who are that age, there’s not many of us,” Adey says. “It concerns me.”
Adey adds that he has no intention of leaving his post anytime soon. “I don’t plan on leaving this industry unless something happens,” he says, “and I hope I’ve created a culture at ABYC where everybody else feels the same way.”
This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue.
