We flew commercial to Oskosh, Wisconsin because in addition to boats he loved airplanes, — to the Experimental Aircraft Associations Annual Fly-in. He had an idea decades before anyone heard of the fiberglass boatbuilders in Taiwan. He began to import the Taiwan built boats to America where the extremely low price and great workmanship appealed to loads of boat owners. He set the price lower than competition and business boomed.
There were much more lux yachts but not for the New Jersey working class people who rented “a place at the shore” for a week or two each summer and wanted to get their own yacht. Don Miller’s “yachts” appealed to them. It changed their world to get them on the water and off to exotic places. ‘Dreams’ take unusual turns. Marine Trader Yachts are at the dock much more than they are at sea but it’s the thought that gets you to heaven on this earth so here you are surrounded by exotic teak wood. Teak is one of the best woods for boats because of it’s water resistance but it needs a tropical climate. It cannot grow in America. It is native to South and southeast Asia and cultivated in many countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Teak has been used as a boatbuilding material for over 2000 years. Teak is highly resistant to rot, fungi and mildew. Teak has the unusual properties of being both an excellent structural timber for framing, planking, etc., while at the same time being easily worked, unlike some other similar woods such as purpleheart, and rosewood and finished to a high degree. For this reason, teak is prized for the trim work on boat interiors. Don figured Taiwan was a nominally free culture with loads of people who could build boats so off he went into history as one of the largest builders and importers of Taiwan-built boats, yachts really, into America, right to little Tom’s River NJ. I’ve visited many of the Taiwan boat yards where an entire family would move into the incomplete boat and live on it doing all of the fitting and finishing of the teak interiors. Sad to say his obituary was back in 2012 but I just came across it. HERE.
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