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Old 01-30-2015, 09:17 PM   #19
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
The Flemming is my favorite production boat.

Interestingly, Tony Fleming was once the manager of the yard at American Marine (Grand Banks). When he left to start his own company, he took American Marine's only copy of the "how to build a fiberglass boat the right way" book that Howard Abbey, the man who designed and built the molds for the fiberglass versions of the GB36 and 42, had written for American Marine, with him.

According to interviews with Howard that I've read, this so messed up American Marine's ability to keep their Grand Banks hull construction process consistent and problem-free they twice brought Howard back to solve their hull layup problems.

Fortunately, our old '73 GB was from the first batch of fiberglass GBs made, so the hull layup was personally supervised by Howard (he left American Marine halfway through 1974).

Anyway, Flemings are a beautiful interpretation of deFever's original pilothouse design. We were seriously contemplating moving up to a Fleming 55 until we decided to do something different. But for a production boat, I believe Fleming is at the absolute top of the list, certainly from an aesthetic standpoint. And from what we've heard from the few owners we've talked to, they are tops from the quality operational, and reliability aspects, too.
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