Going full throttle

They endure the heat of summer, the cold of winter and even torrential rain and lightning to test Mercury Marine engines near Placida. Only fog keeps their boats from the coastal waters.

By KRIS HUNDLEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 7, 2000

Every weekday for the past five years, Cory Cotherman has raced flashy yellow boats up and down the water between Venice and Fort Myers. And gotten paid for it.

Cotherman, 29, is one of a dozen test drivers at the saltwater testing plant in Placida for Mercury Marine, the world's largest marine engine manufacturer. A young hot shot with a sunburned nose, Cotherman has been on the job longer than any of his colleagues. After thousands of hours of getting soaked by spray, scorched by sun and pounded by waves, he still loves the job.

"When I'm not here, I'm out on the water in my Boston Whaler," he said. "I spend more time on water than on land."

While boating is Cotherman's life, propelling pleasure craft ever faster, farther and more fuel efficiently is a multibillion-dollar business. Last year, boaters spent $2.6-billion on new outboard motors and a whopping $23-billion on boats and engines of all kinds. Mercury Marine, a division of giant Brunswick Corp., racked up $1.6-billion in 1999 sales.

As the marine business grows, so do the stakes.

Japanese competitors are gaining market share. The federal government has set tough emissions standards for marine engines. And suddenly wealthy boomers want boats that are as easy to drive and care for as the family car.

Mercury of Fond du Lac, Wis., has been testing boat engines in west Central Florida waters for 53 years. The Placida complex is in what was once a remote location just south of the Boca Grande toll bridge.

But development is catching up quickly to Mercury's site, with housing developments and public boat ramps cropping up along the waterway. That means more recreational boaters and sight-seeing vessels on the Intercoastal. And more chance for competitors to try to scope out the new technology being tested by Mercury.

Wary of strangers, the Mercury compound is tucked behind gates and ringed with hidden security cameras.

"We're working on stuff here that won't be released to the public for two to four years," plant manager Bill Nesslar said. "It's a very competitive field and we're working on programs that are super-sensitive."

Nesslar, 43, has been working at the Mercury testing plant since he graduated from high school 25 years ago. His first job involved dumping gasoline into 3-horsepower engines as they ran continuously at the facility's dock.

Now he supervises thousands of hours of testing of prototype engines in both the gulf and Intercoastal waters outside his office.

Also under his direction: salt-water corrosion testing of engine materials. Dozens of outboard motor housings dangle from the facility's docks in a test of paints and alloys. Across the yard, a row of Mercury's electric trolling motors, clamped to the dock and hooked to rows of batteries, buzz quietly in the saltwater flats for hours.

Nesslar said Mercury counts on the Placida operation to test durability and reliability of its prototypes in real-world conditions.

"We have courses that are run the same, day in and day out," Nesslar said. "So when there's a bearing failure, for example, the engineer knows what that bearing has seen. Our product is data."

Though the purpose of Nesslar's job has remained the same, the pace and pressures have increased.

The industry is under the gun from federal regulators to dramatically improve emissions and fuel economy by 2006.

Big Japanese conglomerates, such as Yamaha and Honda, are gaining market share from Mercury and its main domestic competitor, Outboard Motor Corp., makers of Evinrude and Johnson engines.

Consumers, meanwhile, have shown they're willing to spend disposable income during economic boom times on pleasure craft, generating record sales last year. But with more dual-income couples buying boats and more women taking the helm, demand has grown for engines that are reliable and virtually trouble-free.

"Our buyer is changing," Nesslar said. "In two-income families, both spouses are involved in the decision to buy a boat. And they want something user-friendly and maintenance-free, just like a car."

In response to customer and regulatory pressures, marine engine manufacturers are adopting new technology, much of it from the auto industry, at an unprecedented speed. Mercury's latest innovation, and its bestseller, is a fuel-injected engine that burns fuel 40 percent more efficiently than earlier models. (Mercury's competitors have introduced similar, fuel-injected models.)

"What today is impossible, tomorrow we're seeing," said Nesslar, who has two vintage, 1940 Mercury engines in his office. "And the goal is to make the time frame from concept to production engine as short as possible."

That's where guys such as Cotherman and his fellow test drivers, all young men with a lust for speed, come in. Every day they're assigned a boat, a prototype engine and a testing plan designed by an engineer at Mercury's Wisconsin headquarters. Then they spend at least eight hours on the water.

The boats, which run in pairs, are assigned to one of four courses: two running north and south on the Intercoastal, two more on the gulf, north and south of Little Gasparilla Pass. Each leg is 37 miles.

The drivers might be ordered to run the engine with the throttle wide open for eight hours. Or they might be told to idle for an hour, then throttle up to speed, then return to idle. Some engines are run hard for two days, then sit on the rack in the warehouse for five, much as a weekend boater uses his engine.

The drivers' job is to follow the specs, do the test, then file a daily report via computer listing environmental details such as temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, plus statistics on the engine's gas and oil consumption.

On one recent morning, Cotherman's test engine died in the middle of the Intercoastal. After being towed to shore by a fellow driver, he had to file an incident report via computer, telling the engineer in Wisconsin exactly what the engine sounded like when it failed, as well as its temperature and fluid levels before the shut-down.

"I've had motors fall off, boats sink and engines catch on fire out there," said Cotherman, who has been quickly rescued by another driver. "It would be rare for a consumer to drive a boat like we do."

Cotherman grew up on nearby Palm Island and envied the guys zipping up and down the waters in Mercury's snappy yellow test boats. But after five years on the job, he's learned there are disadvantages. Like when he was assigned to spend six months testing a five-horsepower outboard engine in a 10-foot aluminum fishing boat.

"Holding onto a tiller for that long really builds up one arm," he said. "And maximum speed is about 3 miles an hour, so it seems like the butterflies are going faster than you."

The test boats, which range up to 36 feet, are stripped-down production fiberglass, with a driver's seat and nothing else. The one exception is the 20-foot Sea Doo, a jet-propelled watercraft manufactured by Mercury that has a comfortable bench seat in the back.

The drivers, outfitted in life jackets and helmets, endure the heat in the summer and cold in the winter. They take to their appointed courses in torrential rains and lightning storms. Only fog keeps their test boats stacked on the warehouse's racks.

Drivers carry no radios or GPS units because they only run during daylight hours and then only in sight of land. The boats are equipped with an anchor, tow ropes, first aid kit, fire extinguisher, safety flares and a bilge pump. No friends, fishing poles or radios are allowed.

"The only thing we hear is the sound of the engine," Cotherman said. "We've got nowhere to go and all day to get there."

Art Tuckerman, lead driver and a former florist, said Mercury's test drivers have towed in stranded boaters, rescued people from a plane that crashed off the Venice pier and hauled dead manatees they've found in the waters back to the dock. He and the other drivers said they've never hit a manatee, though they often see them in the Intercoastal.

"If you hit one, you'd know it because the engine would kick up," Tuckerman said.

Drivers are told to strictly obey no-wake zones and are warned that people can easily identify a Mercury test boat if it's breaking the rules. Cotherman said the restrictions are no big deal.

"I get paid the same amount whether I go fast or slow," he said.

The company refused to say how much it pays drivers, most of whom are in their 20s. Nesslar, who will only say that pay is "well above minimum wage," said compensation depends on the skills the drivers bring to the job.

Last year, Brunswick spent $53.3-million on research and development, trying to keep its edge in the marine engine industry. The results of that effort find their way to the docks in Placida, where guys like Cotherman rev up the engines and test theories about how to make boats go faster, run farther and use less fuel.

"We had fuel injection engines back in 1995 when nobody else had anything like it," said Cotherman, referring to what is now Mercury's bestselling engine. "It's fun because we get to see the prototypes, one of a kind engines that won't see production for years, if ever."

Recreational boating by the numbers

$23-billion: 1999 total sales

$10.11-billion: 1999 new boat and motor sales

16.8-million: Number of recreational boats in United States

77.8-million: Number of boaters

80.5: Average horsepower of new engine

$17,141: Average cost of outboard boat, motor and trailer

$291,375: Average cost of inboard cruisers

48: Average age of boat owner

$48,000: Average household income of boat owners

27: Percent of women boat owners

Source: National Marine Manufacturers Association Inc.

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