Beyond The Team

In a place where a handshake is still sufficient to the sealing of a dream.

Gamers, these guys. Every last one of them. Heads up, tails down, centered, ready to go right now. The moms and dads who make Cobalt boats learned a long time ago the life lessons first heard on a baseball diamond: back up your buddy, hang tough against the inside pitch, hustle on and off the field no matter the score.

And while "team" is a term open to some overuse, they do work well together, these rugged individuals who share Pack St. Clair's ongoing contention that the best place to build boats happens to be in a small land-locked Kansas town. For four decades Cobalt has operated on principles of individual skill, individual responsibility, and the peculiarly individual rewards to be found in purposeful chase of a long, long, ultimately uncatchable fly ball.

Cobalt boats bring families and friends together in waterborne explorations of life's best moments. When first we went down to the water, the impulse was always, always to jump. Little kids look neither right nor left with a lake straightahead. Headlong and willy-nilly, the moment suspended in a squeal, a nine-year-old throws herself laughing against the waves.

Who can say when it fades, the childlike abandon? Too bad, this adult reluctance to run and jump, to swing for the fence everytime. Sad a bit, this grownup insistence on knowing the score, on computing beforehand the ocean's exact temperature, its unknowable depth.

The perfect runabout, the absolutely flawless performance cruiser will never be built. But every business evening, the Neodesha plant quieting down, a dozen individually crafted boats out the door, almost time for the first little batter up, and just one thing to be said.

These kids, that Cobalt bunch, they came to play.