Catching Up With John Cosker—Planting Seeds And Building Community – Speed on the Water
Participants in the Mystic Powerboats Owners Rendezvous and Demo Day this week got acquainted—if they weren’t already—on Thursday evening and yesterday during the demo portion following cocktail party at the annual Southwest Florida event. But their bonding experience will get even better today as the fleet of center consoles and catamarans takes off at 10 a.m. from the Westin Cape Coral Resort for a lunch run to Punta Gorda. The fleet will including a mix of M4200 and M3800 center consoles, the latest M5200 center console—owned by Steve and Julie Philips, a delightful couple from Chicago—and two C4000 catamarans.
Heading out for a lunch run today with Mystic clients in a fleet of their own boats, John Cosker is delighted with how the event has gone so far.
For John Cosker, the owner of the DeLand, Fla., company, and his crew, the lunch run trek is the best part of the weekend. Cosker debuted his first center console, a 42-footer, at the 2015 Miami International Boat Show and since then has added 38- and 52-foot models. He unveiled the second generation of his C4000 catamaran this summer and it couldn’t have been better timed as Mercury Racing released its 500R outboard engine, The 500-hp beasts are a perfect match for the brawny cat.
You’d think Cosker might be a tad nervous with so many clients in town to host and future sales to prospect with national sales manager Greg Weber and general manager Ryan Zivitski. On the contrary, Cosker is his typically cool self as I learned when he took a break yesterday afternoon for an interview alongside his latest 52-foot creation.
Here’s what he had to say.
This weekend is a big deal for Mystic, as well as its current and future clients. How has it gone so far?
It’s been great, we did a lot of demos today and we actually did a couple yesterday. Ryan and Greg and I have been out all day in the boats between the 38 with the quad 400s we have here, we have the first Generation 2 catamaran with 500s on it and we’ve done two sea trials on the 52. These are great events—they are great sales events, they are great camaraderie events. You know, finally I am starting to see friendships form through Mystic now. I never even thought of that, that was a side I never expected.
Mystic has expanded interior options for its 52-foot center console.
Boats vary in popularity over time. We’ve talked about that from time to time during the past few years.
The 42 is still the most popular by far, but the 38 and the 42 do go back and forth on sales in certain periods. There are spurts where we will three 38s in two months, and there are times when we’ll sell none in three months but sell two 42s. It’s good having the balance of different models. The 38 and the 42 have a lot of options—engines, electronics and more—so you have a pretty big price range with the center consoles. That’s less so with the cats. But what we are finding right now is that all of our boats going out are pretty much fully loaded, really high-end boats.
You must have customers who own a Mystic catamaran and a Mystic center console.
Actually, the owner of the 450R outboard-powered cat that is here right now has a 42 at Lake Havasu in Arizona. And we had a couple here this weekend who have a 42 and are looking at a 52 and a cat now. Mom wants the big boat and dad wants something to go faster in.
John Cosker: “What we are finding right now is that all of our boats going out our pretty fully loaded, really high-end boats.”
How different is the latest Mystic 5200 center console here now than the demo model you introduced a year-and-a-half ago during the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout?
You know, hull-wise and power-wise it is exactly the same as the demo boat. The cabin is similar to the one in the demo boat. Not that we are doing away with the original cockpit, but we have totally revamped it. Like the owner of this 52—he had a 42 and he was able to walk away from the cockpit on each side of the helm bolsters and he liked that. So we put in two helm seats instead of three for this 52. It still has a second row of bolsters, but instead of a third row this boat has rear-facing lounges with electric backs on them. And then it has the new full wraparound lounge in the back that convert into a sunpad.
Any more changes planned for the M5200 in the near future?
I actually just drew a full-cabin version of the 52—I even have drawings here this weekend. The cabin would be about five feet longer and run the width of the boat. What we’ve found with the 52 is that it is competing with full-cabin boats and I actually lost a sale to one at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show this year. So as I soon I got back to the office I started designing one with a full cabin (laughs).
Enjoy more images from the second day of the 2023 Mystic Owner Rendezvous and Demo Day.
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