Intrepid Powerboats is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The company is known for being an innovator in the center console segment and is responsible for bringing many firsts to the market in an effort to push the boundaries of boat design and performance. Intrepid boats are renowned for ruggedness, fit and finish, and refined, single-step hulls. Ken Clinton has been with the company for 32 years, the last 14 as president. He’s been instrumental in shaping the product line and corporate culture. Here, he shares his take on the evolution of the center console design, and where it could be headed in the future.
SOUNDINGS: You’re originally from the Northeast, where your first job in the marine industry was building submarines in Connecticut. How did you transition to recreational boat building?
KEN CLINTON: I was born in Danielson, a small town near Groton, Connecticut. My father worked at General Dynamics and I got my first job there as a machinist building submarines. I got married young and my wife and I went to Florida on a vacation. There was snow on the ground at home as we left. When we arrived in St. Petersburg, it was sunny and warm and we saw green grass. I thought, ‘why do I have to wait until I retire to enjoy weather like this?’ So, I quit my job, moved to St. Petersburg and started hunting for work.
My first opportunity was with Triumph Yachts installing inboard gas engines and running gear. Within a month I was called into the boss’s office, where he told me he liked the way I organized installation procedures, built jigs to improve efficiencies and showed attention to detail. He promoted me to supervisor. Then the luxury tax came along in the late 1980s and devastated the industry. Genmar shut down Triumph and sent managers like me to their Wellcraft subsidiary. Other boat builders in the area were closing manufacturing facilities, including one large and well-equipped plant in St. Pete. At the time Intrepid was owned by Yoshiro Kitami, a Japanese businessman who also owned Super Hawaii high-performance boats. He took over the facility, merging the two brands under one roof. I was hired by Intrepid to work at that plant.
SO: You worked your way up through the ranks. What was that experience like and how did it impact the way you run the company today?
KC: I started on the line in assembly and in a couple months was asked to be the lead person at my station. A year later I became a line supervisor, a couple years after that plant manager. Then I was promoted to VP of manufacturing; a couple more years and I became COO. I have been president of the company for the past 14 years, so I guess you could say I’ve been from the bottom to the top of the corporate ladder. I consider myself one of my people; there is nothing they do that I haven’t done at some point. It gives me a different perspective and great respect for everyone in the company. And, as an accomplished hands-on builder, I can sit with customers in design sessions and know exactly what we can and can’t do to meet their demands in a new boat.
SO: Intrepid is a semi-custom builder known for pushing the boundaries of center console design and construction. How has your direct relationship to the work impacted the boats you build?
KC: Every boat is built to order—we typically produce 110 boats a year—and slots on the line are sold out a year to 18 months in advance. A lot of boat builders say they are semi-custom and that just means you can pick the color you want it painted. I sit with every customer in a design session where we discuss exactly what they want, whether it’s a family cruiser, a dive boat or a hard-core tournament fish boat, and we put together a detailed build sheet. Every single boat is different and often in significant ways. Customers ask me if we can move the head to the other side of the boat, or make the cabin larger. We were asked to build a side dive door before anyone had ever done that before. We did it. It’s certainly not the most efficient way to build boats, but that’s why customers come to us. Most have been boaters for many years, and they know what they want and know we can build it for them.
SO: Intrepid has had a long love affair with the center console. What do you see as the driver for building bigger and faster models?
KC: Back in the day, Intrepid was building outboard boats before outboards were cool. Big motors were 200 horsepower. As we pushed the size envelope for boats we had to figure out how to get a 37- or 40-footer to perform with the power available. That meant we had to have a super-efficient hull. We worked that out with our proprietary single step-bottom, but most of our design inspiration comes from listening to our customers. The feedback they give us is solid gold. I remember a customer telling me he wanted a center console to fish but his wife would not go on a boat if there was no place for her to go to the bathroom. We designed and built the first in-console head, something that today is the norm.
Intrepid was the first to build a large center console, a 47-footer, and it started with a request from a customer. He said he loved our 47 cabin sport yacht, but he wanted us to build him a center console on that hull. I couldn’t imagine why someone would want a center console that big, but as we talked I decided we would build it as a one-off. Using the sport yacht hull as a starting point we literally stick-built the thing alongside the factory. At one point I took some pictures of it and posted them on social media. This was back in 2010, when social media was young, but a few days later my sales manager came to me and asked, ‘Hey, are you building some kind of weird custom boat?’ I said yes and asked why. He said they were getting all kinds of phone calls inquiring about purchasing one. That’s how the 475 Panacea was born. There simply were no big center consoles at the time and yet building the first one created problems.
SO: What were some of the problems you had to overcome?
KC: The biggest was powering a center console that big. At that time the largest outboards were 350 horsepower, but no one made a 35-inch shaft. I went to Mercury and Yamaha, but they flat out refused. So, we teamed with Latham and built our own shaft extensions. That totally upset those guys, but it’s that kind of innovation that resulted in being able to order production engines with 35-inch shafts today. Not long after, I went back and asked them to build higher-horsepower outboards and again they balked, told me there was no market. So we partnered with emerging outboard builder Seven Marine and in 2011 debuted the 475 Panacea at the Miami Boat Show with the largest, most powerful outboards in the world. During the press conference I saw the execs from Yamaha on one side of the room and Mercury on the other. When it was over I walked back and said, ‘I told you I needed bigger outboards and that I would find them somewhere, and here they are.’ When I showed them how many Seven Marine outboards I was buying at $80,000 a piece, it proved there was a market. By pushing the envelope, we made it possible for the rest of the industry to build bigger center consoles and I believe it was the inspiration for all the large outboards on the market today.
SO: Where do you see the future of the center console boat going?
KC: The growth of outboard power has really changed the game. The outboard companies have come around and they understand the benefits of freeing up all the space once dedicated to engines inside the hull. The realization that higher horsepower outboards are the future has been internalized and as a result it has opened the doors for larger and larger outboard-powered boats. Intrepid is in the process of designing a new production facility in Clearwater, Florida, that will have the capability to build boats up to at least 65 feet utilizing outboard power. It’s easy to do when you already have an efficient hull design and couple it with the technology of the latest engines.
I remember not very long ago when the core of the center console market was 30 feet. Today it’s 40 feet and growing. With the latest joystick technology, even owners new to boating can operate these larger boats because it has taken so much of the intimidation factor out of running one. I don’t see this trend slowing down anytime soon.
SO: So, is the inboard boat dead?
KC: I think it is, up to a certain size. When you’re talking about 75 feet and over it makes more sense to use inboard diesels. That’s just my opinion and I am sure there are many who differ. Granted, my outlook is biased because Intrepid has been pushing the envelope for outboard power for the past 32 years, so to me it just makes sense. Outboards are easier to service, easy to replace, free up all kinds of space inside the boat, and you’re not taking a tractor motor and sticking it down into a wet hole. Couple those benefits with the fact that companies like Mercury Marine have really decided to go all in and are building some of the best outboards in the world.
SO: We understand you’re introducing a new flagship. Can you tell us about it?
KC: The 51 Panacea, which I am super excited about, is a center console with a large cabin that includes a full galley, berth, wraparound settee, and separate head and shower compartment. It’s 51-feet long with a 14-foot 10-inch beam. We just sea-trialed it and hit 71 mph with quad 600-horsepower Mercury outboards. This tells you how efficient the hull is because this is a 38,000-pound boat running at that speed. But it gets better. We trimmed two engines out of the water and with just two legs still got on plane and ran over 40 mph. That was with 900 gallons of fuel and six people on board. We have 9 sold already.
This article was originally published in the May 2023 issue.
