Sad News for Checkmate boats

[John S]

I have a 28 Skater and 1939 Chris Craft barrelback parked on my dock and am seriously considering a Tritoon - crazy how things have changed - my girlfriend thinks I’m too young for a tritoon ( sell the Skater ) but I’m not so sure - lol

Head down to forest lake and talk to the guys at Premier. I saw one of their tons last time I was there with twin kickers in the back. Thing was fancy as hell. You could bring back every bird from the wharf for the after party in that thing.

[XstreamVking]

Sad to hear about Checkmate. Add them to a very long list of great builders no longer in business.

[marks86]

I’m glad to say i got to grow up around checkmates. And I owned a pulsare with a 225. End of an era for a great boat company.

[SUNKIST]

Always liked my checkmates. Solid dependable and you cant go wrong buying one. Too bad

[Merc 2.5]

Ya sucks bout checkmate , I'm n a slow process of restoring a predictor now. Best of luck to those affected

[Greg G]

I'd chop my toe off before I owned a Toon. The landlord at Checkmate must have been a real gem to put a legend out of business for a rent roll increase.

[mjw930]

Don’t even think for a minute the landlord is the reason for this liquidation. They were doomed the day Global Marine, aka Hustler bought them. I was by their Ohio facility 2 years ago and it was a ghost town. The only money they had coming in was interior refits, Hustler had no interest in laying up small boats when their workforce was fully booked building half million dollar ego trips for stock brokers.

[Baja170]

WOW Very hard to read and sorry to hear. We are guilty, we have a 26' JC Tritoon and a 24' Bennington Tritoon. Damn.....

At least it is in two different states where they are.... Anybody near Asheville, NC want to build some boats?

[Baja170]

I grew up on a lake in NC here the Checkmates dominated the lake. Beautiful and bad ass in lake water. My friends and I have really enjoyed Checkmate Boats for many years and I am sad to see this news.

[altamate]

Where are they located? That phone number is in NY

# is likely for Global Marine, parent company that bought Checkmate a few years ago.

[bearclaw]

Dammit. So sad. Not unexpected, but disheartening nonetheless.

Growing up, my folks' lake house was on Indian Lake, about 65 miles away from Bucyrus. In the late '60's - mid '70's particularly, Checks were all over the place.
Myself and a bunch of my friends had the first generation of Checkmate Playmates, the two-seater GW Invader competitor that came out in 1970.
It was amazing how those things would run with a Merc 20.
We all grew up constantly dreaming about the next-bigger model we wanted: an MX-13,14,15.
The factory raced during that period, and they were successful. A friend of mine had a comp MX-13 with a Johnson 3-cyl.
I believe that class was 'FE', and that boat ran like a scalded dog. I drove it a couple times, and it handled great.

We had a neighbor on our island, Wayne Kimmel, who was a marine rep and a weekend racer for the Checkmate factory in FJ class
(biggest Merc at the time, less than 100 cu. in., on a 15' vee).
Wayne, Forest Olmstead and one of the Downard boys did very well in that class.
They also ran in 'FG' class, which was a 14' with a 66 cu. in. limit? Basically the 80 hp. Merc. class.
As 13-14-yr-olds, we idolized those guys as much as any sports hero

After the Playmate, when I was 17 I had a '70 MX-18 with a Merc 1350. Big 18-footer, but it didn't weigh much.
Did a good honest 63 on a Keller speedo, after you wound out those tall 1.78 gears for about a mile (only the CIA and the military had GPS back then, I imagine ).
God, I loved that boat. It was a football-field full of apricot metalflake. And it's worth mentioning: did the chicks dig those boats? You bet they did
Sold that after a couple years and bought a new V-Mate I (an MX-15, basically) with a short Merc 1500. Could it outrun a Viper with the same power? Nope.
But I ran on a constantly-choppy lake, and if you looked at those boats side by side, I always felt that it was obvious the Checkmates were a better-built boat.
They had the Belco balsa core figured out, they were all hand-laid, and they had a crew that had been with them for many years and knew how to build a good boat.
A few years later, I traded the V-Mate in on a Baja SS-16. Baja had pretty much ditched their chopper guns and figured out how to build a good boat by then.
I moved to the West coast in the late '80's and boat the Viper I had wanted since I was a kid. I kinda lost touch with Checkmate in the '80's and '90's (you never really saw them out here). All I knew was that they were building bigger and glitzier things than I was interested in.

Maybe they lost touch with the market. Peoples' tastes are so fickle and hard to predict But they always built a good product, and that always seemed to be important to them.
They were definitely "Midwestern" in that way

Tritoons and wakeboats. One is good for getting drunk on and not falling off. And the other makes it hard to launch when they parade back and forth in front of the ramp
My best bud from the Good Olde Days (and best man at my wedding) is a tritoon/pontoon distributor these days. So I can't bag on them too much.
Hey, anything that people can take out and enjoy with their friends and family, well, a salud! Good for them.
The day I get one, I'll park it next to my minivan. And NO, I won't ever own a minivan.

It's a shame about Checkmate, especially for anyone whose living relies, whole or in part, on their existence. But All Things Must Pass, I guess.

[powerabout]

maybe they kept making the same thing and they needed to change?

[22R]

Always loved Checkmates.... Prayers to the affected families.

22R

[JBS]

Sad to hear.
Had lots of good memories in the 21,23and 25.

[89LASER]

That phone number is for Hustler Powerboats in Calverton NY on Long Island.

http://www.hustlerspeedboats.net/speedwear/index.php

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hu...!4d-72.7966145