Snark (sailboat)

The Snark is a lightweight, two-person, lateen-rigged sailboat manufactured and marketed by Meyers Boat Company of Adrian, Michigan. The Snark was initially marketed by Snark Products, Inc. of Fort Lee, New Jersey and has been marketed with numerous slight variations, most prominently as the Sea Snark, Super Snark and Super Sea Snark.

The sailboat was marketed heavily in numerous co-branding campaigns. ''The New York Times'' reported that the Sea Snark outsold all other sailboats in 1970 and that over 48,000 Sea Snarks were sold in an 18-month period in 1971 via a mail order campaign with Kool Cigarettes. By 1973, over 200,000 Sea Snarks had been sold and ''The New York Times'' reported that by 1976 that Snark had built more sailboats than any other manufacturer. The manufacturer currently estimates that nearly a half million Sea Snarks have been manufactured since 1958.

Noted for its 11' expanded polystyrene hull and marketed as "unsinkable", a 1971 ''Popular Science'' reviewer doubted there was a sailboat "more foolproof". Originally, the purchase of a Sea Snark included a 16-page booklet on "how to sail", and a 1975 ''Popular Science'' article described the Sea Snark as the least expensive and lightest sailboat on the market.

Design

Early Sea Snarks featured an unclad one-piece injection-molded EPS hull and weighed a total of approximately 30 lbs. Later versions called the Super Snark or Super Sea Snark featured a vacuum formed layer of ABS (later ASA) bonded over the EPS hull for a total weight of 50 lbs. Snark Products had patented the cladding process (which they marketed as "stronger than fiberglass") which eliminated the possibility of voids within the injection molded hull. Under Snark Products Inc., the technology was marketed as ''Corelite'' and is now trademarked as ''Armorclad.''

Sea Snarks (currently Super Snarks or Super Sea Snark) have a monohull length of eleven feet; beam of thirty-eight inches; draft of .17 foot; and weight capacity of 310 lb. Features include a lateen-rigged nylon sail of 45 square feet; aluminum mast, spar, and boom; wood rudder and an integral center sleeve molded into the hull to support a removable wood dagger board. With an overall depth of 12 inches, the sailboat can be stored upright in a depth of 12 inches, and the boat is described as "car-toppable". The boat arrives as a knock down kit in a cardboard box. Assembly requires approximately one hour.

In 1974 a slightly larger version of the Super/Sea Snark was created called the Sunflower. It featured yellow ABS cladding as well as a covered foredeck (or "splash deck"). The 1974 Sunflower has a hull two inches wider and sides two inches higher than that of the concurrently marketed Super/Sea Snark. The Sunflower mast is 15 inches taller but the boom length remains the same as that of the Super/Sea Snark, resulting in a Sunflower sail area 23% greater than that of the Super/Sea Snark. However the Sunflower sails slower in all conditions than the Super/Sea Snark, and is also less stable in strong winds due to its larger sail. Sunflowers were North American Yacht Racing Union (NAYRU) class certified and a Sunflower was displayed along with other American recreational equipment in a 1974 U.S. Information Agency exhibit touring Russia. Sales of this boat have been significantly less than the Super/Sea Snark.

History

Snark Products Inc. was co-founded by Jim McMullen in Fort Lee, New Jersey. For the sailboat's primary construction, Snark outsourced the EPS injection molding to a company in Connecticut; later expanding to its first production facility in Port Clinton, Ohio on Lake Erie in order to bring the work in-house. McMullen would later conceive successful marketing tie-ins for the sailboat, including the award-winning Kool cigarettes campaign.

Snark Products marketed the boats to Montgomery Ward and Sears (as the Whirlwind,) the latter becoming the company's largest client, as well as to hundreds of dealers across North America and internationally to licensed dealers in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Snark Products Inc. provided licensees with manufacturing molds and marketing materials.

In 1972, McMullen sold Snark Products to Doyle Dane Bernbach (now DDB Worldwide), the world's third-largest advertising agency, keeping a two-year management tenure. DDB subsequently sold the company to San Francisco-based Kransco. Boat manufacture moved between several locations, including Virginia Beach. In 1984, Lockley purchased Snark from Kransco, merging the two companies, to be subsequently purchased by Entwistle of Hudson, Massachusetts. Entwistle manufactured the boats in New Castle, Pennsylvania. In 1996, Snark was purchased by the Meyers Boat Company and production moved to Adrian, Michigan.

The Super/Sea Snark did not have an official class association until 2014 when the Super Sea Snark Sailing Association was started in the hopes of bringing Super/Sea Snark sailors together. This organization also established the official class rules. In 1993 the United States Sailing Association established the Portsmouth Rating (also known as the Portsmouth Yardstick (PY) or Portsmouth handicap scheme) for those racing the Snark against non-Snark sailboats.

Marketing

The "unclad" Sea Snark retailed for $119. The Super/Sea Snark with its yellow ABS cladding was marketed at Sears in the late sixties and early seventies for $199. A 1971 ad in ''Boating'' magazine called the Sunflower "the Volkswagen of Sailboats"

In 1971, Kool cigarettes initiated an advertising campaign where consumers could mail order a Snark with the Kool logo on the sail for $88 (later $99) along with one KOOL carton flap; delivery was included. These were early (non-ABS) versions and retailed at the time for $120. As one of KOOL's highest-scoring ads, the company received over 18,000 orders for Sea Snarks in 1971 and the campaign was repeated in 1972. The Snark/Kool campaign won a national POPI award (given by the Point of Purchase Institute) as the most creative and inventive ad of 1971. The KOOL Snark promotion was repeated in 1972, adding the option of credit card payment, and again in 1975 for $139.

The Snark was used as a promotional tie-in with numerous companies including Coca-Cola, Vicks and Budweiser. In 1968, the '' San Francisco Chronicle'' ran ads for ''Mail-a-way'', offering Snark sailboats as a giveway in a promotion of their Kodak film processing service.

References

External links

Manufacturer's website with specifications of current Snarks

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