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Brunswick Names A New CEO & A Federal Deadline Hits October 17th · The CURRENT

• 0:00
  The president signed an order telling four federal agencies to start rolling back regulations that burden boaters that have until October 17th. Brunswick named its next CEO and she currently runs the company's electronic and power business.
• 0:11
  A Chinese software company is bringing one system that runs an entire boat to Ibex in Tampa. And Mercury's founder was inducted into a new Wisconsin hall of Fame. This is the Current.
• 0:25
  If you work on the water, sell to it, service it, or just can't stay away from it, you're in the right place. This is the Current, the business and news podcast for the marine industry with weekly news overviews every Friday and engaging interviews as they happen. I'm your host John Logan. Welcome aboard. Good evening. I'm John Logan. Tonight, one question. Who actually runs this industry now and what do they know how to build?
• 0:49
  3 stories this week say that that's changing. The Current is sponsored by Marine Diagnostic Tools. Our first story, there's a federal deadline coming that hasn't gotten much attention and it's a little over three weeks out. On September 17, the President signed Executive Order 14430, Restoring America's Saltwater Angling and Recreation. The order sets nine deadlines. The first one matters most to this industry. Within 30 days and that's October 13th, four offices have to take steps towards suspending, revising or rescinding regulations. The orders phase is quote regulations that overly burden boaters, anglers and outdoor businesses, end quote. The four are Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and the army civil work side which is the Corps of engineers. At 60 days, agencies look at multi year permits, three years minimum presumption of renewal. Their main deadlines run out to a year. They cover fisheries science, artificial reefs and single joint permit portal. It's a fishing order mostly most of it is about fisheries management, catch data and artificial reefs. Section five tells Commerce to use technology for marine mammal avoidance. Working in the industry. So if you hold federal permits or your customers do, watch the 30 day item. Nothing requires an agency to publish what it's rescinding. So the date may, you know, kind of pass without much pomp and circumstance. It's still the first point where those rules will start to move. On Monday, Brunswick announced the next CEO. Her name is Anine Dinari. She was the president of Navico Group. And Brunswick's chief technology officer, David Foulkes retired at the end of this year. He's been CEO since 2019 and he holds the executive chairman's seat as well. Denari takes over January 1st and joins the board. David Everett, the current lead independent director becomes a non executive chairman.
• 2:31
  That's the chairman splitting the job back off from the CEO job.
• 2:35
  Falk said. Quote Ein is the right person to leave Brunswick on the next day of its journey. Everett called her the ideal next CEO. The biggest company in the marine industry just picked the person who ran Navco Group and held the CTO title over 30 years in automotive, mobile, mobility, industrial and manufacturing.
• 2:54
  So she didn't come up through boats the way this industry usually has that she came up through technology systems. Navico Group covers a lot of ground inside Brunswick. Batteries, power systems, digital switching, electronic fishing, Simrad, Lowrance, Master Vault, Blue Sea, all this stuff.
• 3:11
  That's the kind of the nervous system of the modern boat and that's where her background is from.
• 3:16
  So ask yourself what this means for your shop. If the largest builder in the business thinks its future belongs to electronic systems people, the boats coming off the line will keep getting more electrical, more networked and that changes what it takes to fix them.
• 3:31
  Which is exactly what our sponsor Marine Diagnostic Tools is set out to do. Marine Diagnostic Tools has been around since 2018 with the single mission of helping marine mechanics, repair shops, marinas be more profitable and be able to work on modern engines as they're coming out without having the unnecessary regulations of being a dealer paying for excessive, excessively expensive software from the OEMs. With the Marine Diagnostic Pro kit you can service up to 85 engines, see and clear fault codes, get live engine data, pretty much do everything a dealer can do except programming and flashing ECUs. So if you are a independent marine mechanic, if you are a marina, if you have a dry dock, a wet dock, if you're a boat surveyor, if you touch multiple brands of boats or just want to have dealer level diagnostics, check out marindiagnostictools.com if you want to see where the industry is heading. It's flying into Tampa in two weeks. A Shanghai company called Tanzhou is entering the US market and it is starting at Ibex this year. The product is called the Intelligent Helm System one software platform that runs navigation, engine monitoring system, lighting, climate and entertainment through a single interface voice control and it works on device so it keeps running even when there's out of signal. They say that they have orders for more than 500 units. First installation went on an Allegro yacht you can see at the Yachting Vent Ventures Startup Pavilion in IBEX Tampa October 6th through 8th. A UF subsidiary is planned for 2027.
• 4:57
  The founder Changglong Zhang put it this way, One system that runs the whole vessel so it functions are easier to understand, access and control.
• 5:05
  That makes it easier for the owner and also means that there's a single point of failure that could take down navigation, monitoring, lighting and climate controls altogether. Michigan just took delivery of its first Vita electric boat. It's called the vita seal, a 24 foot all electric rib off of DC fast charters. It's going to be the Freshwater Research and Innovation center in Traverse City that's still under construction at Discovery Pier on West Grand Traverse Bay.
• 5:33
  It's still it'll be a shared platform, workforce training and research, plus a place for new marine technology in the Rio Great Lakes area. Discovery Pier CEO Matt McDonough said it'd be much more than a way to get out on the water. The boat came through one of its five projects Michigan funded this summer under its Maritime Innovation Grant program. A million and a half in state money across all five, matched by $2 million of private money. State money, private money and a boat that doubles as a classroom. That's a pretty significant workforce development. Galati Yacht Sales launched an online platform for making offers on boats. The platform is called Yacht Offer. Qualified buyers submit and adjust offers online instead of inside of a defined window and they can watch the competing action in real time. Basically think like an ebay for boats. Select boats get a buy now option. Galati is not a small shop. Founded in 1970, employee owned 14 locations. Four of them are service yards. COO Darren Pymail said that it's about giving buyers and sellers more choice in how they engage with the market.
• 6:35
  In plain terms, Galati just moved as part of the brokerage business closer to an online auction. A quick story for the parts counter. Malco is folding Presta Marine into its own name. It comes back as Malcolm Marine and RV in four categories. Wash, Clean, Restore and Protect.
• 6:51
  Made in the US and distributed out of three Ohio plants. President Seth Globerman called it the natural extension of the legacy. If you stalk Presta, your labels are going to be changing. So you know, go check that. And our last story. There's a guy behind the name that you said probably every day in this industry. Elmer Carl Kiefer. I hope I said that right, was one of the inaugural inductees into the Wisconsin Sailing and Maritime hall of Fame.
• 7:17
  This award is posthumous. The induction happened over the weekend, but he's the one who started Mercury. Mercury president John Belo said his legacy still shows in the company's people, its products and its commitment to innovation more than 85 years later.
• 7:33
  That's the current for the week of September 25th. If you're going to track one thing, just check, make just track October 17th. That's going to be the first point at which those federal rules are going to start rolling.
• 7:44
  I'm John Logan. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and I will see you on the water.