If you’re anything like us, then a crazy adventure sounds like a good time.
If this adventures involves boating, even better.
On December 9th, Avalon Tahoe Manufacturing, maker of Avalon and Tahoe pontoon boats departed Marina Del Rey, Calif., on a never before attempted four-day extreme adventure. The team is made up the company’s President Jim Wolf, Director of Engineering and Operations Duane Dinninger, Doug Haskell from North Shore Marine and Travis Conners from Indian River Sports Center. The two company executives and two boat dealers will be attempting the four-leg journey without a support boat of any kind. That means that if any little thing goes wrong they could be stuck out in the middle of the ocean for hours before help arrived.
Why would anyone attempt such madness? To prove the Avalon and Tahoe product-lines are the best in the industry.
The plan is to head from Marina Del Rey to Avalon Harbor, over to Newport Harbor, down to 
San Diego Harbor, back up the coast to Santa Barbara and back to Marina Del Rey in four days. On a pontoon boat designed for a lake, not an ocean.
Mr. Wolf and crew have a history of pontoon adventures including a four day marathon excursion from Baltimore, Md., to Key West in 2005. In 2007, another trip was taken from Ft. Lauderdale through the Bermuda Triangle to the Bahamas. In 2009, the crew went from Key West to the Dry Tortugas. Other trips have included a 200-mile journey down the Mississippi as well as an overnight trip from Chicago to Mackinaw Island traveling across the entire length of Lake Michigan.
This Pacific adventure will have its challenges for vessel and crew alike. Not only can the ocean be a relentless and unforgiving place for boats of any size, it can be is especially dangerous for a small open air and exposed pontoon boats.
Though not the biggest, Avalon and Tahoe manufacturing is nonetheless a front-runner in the pontoon boat industry. A leader in style and performance, Avalon and Tahoe has set the bar high for its competitors. In this adventure, the team will be using a production model 27-foot Avalon Ambassador, equipped with twin 300hp Mercury Verado outboard engines. There is no special equipment onboard because the team wants consumers to know every purchase of ANY Avalon or Tahoe pontoon boat is made of exactly the same high quality components as the one used in this extreme adventure.
We’ll keep in touch with the team to see how things are going. Stay ‘tooned to hear about how things went down in an upcoming issue of PDB magazine.
As always, safety first when boating. Don’t do anything on the water you feel uncomfortable with.
