A Brief Summary... (continued)
Earlier, he had taken one of the original American Marc boats built in California and test ran it in the ocean off Miami. Within 10 minutes, the glass shook out of the cabin window, the deck and hull began separating and then the bulkheads broke loose. Within a few more minutes, the cockpit sole broke loose from the sides and the transom began to wobble and the bottom was flexing. It was definitely a "smooth" lake-boat and not constructed to be used by fishermen in choppy waters. Back at the shop, he surveyed the damage and made his decision. He sold the boats at a greatly reduced price and swore to himself his new boats would hold together.
The original American Marc molds were of a various assortment of styles and designs without any 'family' resemblance. Moesly saved only four molds from the fleet of a dozen designs. Since the 16' Catamaran was one of the more interesting, plus a 14, 17 and 18 foot design, he began production of building them stronger and more suitable for the choppy Miami waters. To bring name recognition to SeaCraft, Moesly began racing a modified version of the catamaran and did very well in the racing circuit with a stack of trophies and setting 4 world records for outboards. The experience in building in fiberglass (a relatively new material at the time), testing it's strength and weakness in the Gulf Stream and choppy bay waters and then applying this knowledge to his designs was one of his biggest challenges.
The molds that were useless, were placed in a vacant lot and burned. Carl remembers it was amazing how fast and hot the resin burned.
In the meantime, Moesly went back to the drawing board. Utilizing his aeronautical experience and knowledge of windflow-waterflow on various surfaces, he designed the Variable Dead Rise hull, associated with SeaCraft. He was granted a "Functional" patent which protected his hull design for 17 years. During the patent process, the "Patent Pending" notice kept other manufacturers from 'flipping' a hull to make a mold.
His first design using the VDR hull was a 23-footer, all out of plywood, built only to be a test boat for his new bottom design. Named Si-Vad, it was thoroughly tested in the Miami to Nassau race (1961). It performed better than Moesly expected, but he had a few ideas to make it even better. He shortened the design to 21 feet, added a few more adjustments to the longitudinal steps, compounded the curves for fiberglass and increased its load carrying ability. A wood/fiberglass plug was built and a mold produced. He created a family/fisherman model for general public use. This same model was used for racing and over the years was modified as needed above the waterline. Molded interiors with gel coat finish and teak trim soon followed as well as grid system for stringers and bottom support.
The debut of the 21' into the racing world made headline news with it's conceptually different bottom design, drawing a lot of attention from the media and many other boat builders too. It was a feat, racing for 180 miles against the world's best, crossing over the Gulf stream in sometimes 6-10 foot seas and winning the outboard division many times over.
Moesly teamed with Carl Kiekhaefer of Mercury Motors. Moesly raced Mercury's on the back of 
his SeaCrafts and Kiekhaefer used SeaCraft boats to test-run his engines at Lake X and at his salt-water test station on Florida's west coast, while his team raced SeaCraft boats in many of the offshore ocean races. One such race, the SeaCraft boats came in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th in the outboard division. A reporter asked Carl, "How are you going to beat that?" Carl just shrugged his shoulders. The next ocean race, SeaCrafts took 1st thru 7th positions.
Carl and the Director of the Test Basin, "guesstimated" in the 1990's, one of the ex-raceboats built in 1967 and then used for test work, had between 2.5 to 3 million miles on it. That's a lot of miles on one boat!
Moesly kept designing, building, racing and selling his boats. Wearing many hats, kept him busy on the drawing board, out in the production plant or on the road convincing dealers to sell his boats. His wife, Jeanne, also worked many areas, handling personnel, payroll, inventory, promotions, and racing herself.
Often enough, Carl would walk into the production plant with a drill in his hand. His production manager would run and get the chalk marker following Carl around as he drilled small holes in the hull of some of the boats on the assembly line to insure their quality and thickness. The core samples would be weighed, the resin burned out and the fiberglass material carefully weighed to get the fiber-to-resin ratio, which is very important. The holes would be marked and then repaired. This was Moesly's way of insuring quality control.
Throughout the development of SeaCraft, from its infancy to a fully operational boat company, there was no corporation debt. By 1968, it was obvious, a further expansion was needed to keep up with the demand. Rather than go into debt, Moesly decided to bring in a partner with financial backing to expand the business. The majority interest was sold and Moesly stayed on for another two years designing, developing and overseeing the production of the SeaCraft boats.
If you ask Moesly today, he will tell you one of his biggest mistakes was selling SeaCraft. After all, it was on the springboard ready to take off, and he had so many new ideas of how to make the design even better.