There’ll always be the memories…
On Friday, February 27th, 2026, having wrapped up my fulltime career in the marine (specifically the outboard) industry, I again went foraging in various dusty, musty photograph albums for some snapshots of the wild ride I have had, along with the people, colleagues and lifelong friends I have been fortunate to encounter along the way. I’ve only come across two good “buddy-type” photos so far, but what gems they are. Not great quality, it must be conceded, as they are of course photos of photos – but each captures the moment wonderfully.
The first is of yours truly (quite young) with the immensely talented Mike Hayman – technical guru at Heron Suzuki (later Suzuki GB plc), and also a scooter-racing legend of some skill and renown! Mike Hayman was (I use the past tense because, like yours truly, he is now taking things a little easier) one of the most precise, accurate, thoroughly analytical technical specialists I have ever had the good fortune to know – particularly on ignition and fuel systems, on which he was a veritable maestro.
I think this is us at the factory technical training for the then new DT100 V4 outboard (2-stroke, of course) in 1990, for which SMC had elected to use Heron Suzuki GB’s HQ in Crawley.
The second photo, from my tenure at Yamaha Australia, shows yours truly with an entirely different type of legend – a sales and marketing colossus and a brand builder of unparalleled excellence. Anyone from New Zealand will of course recognise the other dude as the venerable, redoubtable and dauntingly formidable Greg Fenwick. Greg is the man who, over 25 years ago, achieved for Yamaha, with nowhere near the comprehensive product range it has now, a New Zealand market share so large (with by far the best dealer network) that it took the collective competition over 15 years to even get near it – and then only after Fenwick had retired!
Just in closing… I wonder would Messrs Hayman and Fenwick regard me as even slightly a legend as well, or would they have had me pegged as a hindrance, an interloper and an irritant who had to be humoured, indulged and accommodated? I don’t think I’ll ask either of them to answer that…!
Halcyon days from a golden era – if only we’d realised!
Some more pics from my earlier years in the outboard business (again, photos taken from photos, so quality is marginal). Let’s start clockwise from top left. Brisbane boat show 1998 (the then new DF70, a white DF15 and, in the background, the venerable but then still popular DT40 2-stroke). The word “Rimini” on the banner refers to the boat in the background – an early and innovative (albeit short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at BMT (boat, motor and trailer) packaging. There was nothing wrong with the boats, though – quite the inverse, in fact. We were rebranding the superb Allison Vision range, which were brilliantly, traditionally styled and exceptionally well-built GRP boats in the classic deep-vee, high-freeboard tradition.
The second photo is of me (on a wet day) installing one of the very first DF70s to come to Australia – this was at the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club in Newport, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
No. 3 photo is of me conducting training at SMC in Kosai, Japan on the then new fuel-injected DT200 2-stroke. The students are from Brazil and Kuwait.
And no. 4 was taken during a stint at Honda from the late ’90s to the very early 2000s. I and a colleague (the highly experienced and exceptionally professional Steve Harvey from Honda – a top guy) had just finished doing PDIs on 25 x Honda BF30s fitted to identical Quintrex Hornets for the world trout fishing championships on Lake Jindabyne in either 1999 or 2000.
The problem with “memory lane” stuff like this is that one never realised at the time just how good one had it in that simpler, gentler, less frenzied and frenetic era – back when the marine business had an abundance of variety, excitement (new-technology launches almost every six months) and, above all, fun.
So much promise in the air…
An evocative yet poignant post, this one. And apologies for the images, which are, unfortunately, photos of old-style paper photos.
It seems like it was just a heartbeat ago, but it was in fact August 10th, 2000 (the reliable old spool-drive Nikons of the era could always be depended on for a set-in-stone time/date stamp). This would have been one of the first Red Bay RIBs with a hard nose – the all-new (at the time) 9.1 metre.
This was a most attractive, well-proportioned boat with great lines and a nice high prow which, even today, over a quarter of a century later, would more than hold its own against any latter-day pretenders. This was also the era when Yamaha was performing extremely strongly in the diesel sterndrive market – particularly in Europe – and I cannot think of any builder, anywhere, who fitted more of those units than Red Bay Boats.
This boat had twin 4-cylinder ME370s of 165 hp each – a tad prosaic, perhaps, and not the overall tour de force that its larger sibling, the 6-cylinder ME422 through ME432, was, but still a strong, durable and ultra-reliable marine diesel. The ME370s were never coupled to the twin-prop (TRP) drive, but the single-prop leg was sturdy, durable and reliable.
Also, there is a poignant juxtaposition of both happiness and pathos in these images. There are two McLaughlin offspring embarking on a lifetime of waterborne activity- both of them of very tender years here. One is Bronagh (standing just aft of the canopy, with face unseen due to pulling on a jacket) – no mean sailor is Bronagh, And at the stern is a very, very young Conor, who would eventually go on to pilot more RIBs than his father, me and every other “RIBBER” of the mid-late 1990s combined.
There is sadness, however – in the bottom left photo. Just a fleeting glimpse of a young Gary Fyfe ambling in through the gate. A young guy who had so much flair, promise, proactivity and professionalism (even in those early years). Gary grew to be very smart and very wise, but unfortunately and cruelly, he never got to grow old. And we all miss him to this day.
Danny Casey is highly experienced, undoubtedly idiosyncratic, and immensely knowledgeable about things mechanical, new or old. His knowledge and passion are as a result of spending his whole life in or around anything power-driven – especially marine engines. His passion for boating is second to none, with his life a montage of fabulous memories from decades spent in or around water and boats, both here and in Europe. Danny has spent myriad years in the recreational marine industry in a varied career in which he has bamboozled colleagues and competitors alike with his well-honed insight.
His mellifluous Irish accent, however, has at times been known to become somewhat less intelligible in occasional attempts at deliberate vagueness or when trying to prevent others from proffering a counter-argument or even getting a word in. Frank and to-the-point, but with a heart of gold, it can be hard to convince Danny to put pen to paper to share his knowledge. Marine Business News is grateful for his contributions. Connect with Danny through LinkedIn.
