Last month (September 2025) I sold one of my beloved brands – Epic. Not because I had to but because I wanted to. It all started back in April of 2017 (you can read my original post on Twangled here). I flew down to Florida, rented a Uhaul truck, and drove a few hours southeast. My destination was to meet with Bobby from the company Trinity, the famous jet ski shop making Gen 2 X2 hulls known as the “Epic” (among others). This was a strategic acquisition for me, bridging my capacity of watercraft manufacturing capabilities across standups (Backie Chan, Havoc, Brawler), our new side-by-side runabout (Splashster), and this nice little sport generation 2 X-2 watercraft. The lineup was perfect, but the timing was not.
We had plans to bring to market a line of turnkey personal watercraft. From regular playful cruisers to flip skis. The freestyle ones were a glass/carbon hull that could flip with a 760. I had a Backie Chan built with a limited 760 and it was perfect. At the same time, I had also built the world’s first ‘build your own’ custom jet ski builder tool on FreestyleFactory. We were buying turnkey aftermarket Yamaha shortblocks when out of nowhere, I think that company was acquired (or went out of business), it was done. Either way, we could no longer buy a reasonably priced new shortblock, which destroyed the concept of a reasonably priced turnkey pwc. At this time, we pivot back to just making hulls.
After considerable delays catching up on freestyle hull orders, backlogged projects & a crazy tour schedule, we were finally moving forward with Gen 2 production by late 2019. No longer trying to build turnkey skis, just looking to make some great unique hulls while all the OEMs continued to build bigger & bigger jet skis (mini boats!). Before I knew it the world was shutting down from a thing called covid in early 2020 and boat manufacturing facilities, as it turns out, are not essential. We made enough parts for 2 hulls – but never assembled them. The Epic hulls never even got listed on our site for ordering. Very disappointing times.
Since then all the molds have been sitting (inside) in clean & temperature-controlled storage. I haven’t felt like selling anything, but also not planning to start manufacturing myself. As the resurgence for this classic ski grows, and I am not doing anything with it ~ I felt guilty and yes made some comments that I might be open to selling.
Long story short, after many conversations with Chris Steenbock, I am excited to share that C57Racing has acquired the intellectual property and rights to manufacture the former Trinity Epic. As a customer of C57racing, I am excited to have a shop with so much knowledge & experience taking over this project. I wasn’t planning to let it go, but when I saw the home it could go to, we found a way to make it happen. Congrats to Chris & his awesome wife Joselyn on this expansion. Please join me in supporting the C57Racing team on this project. The industry needs more shops to expand!!!
Celebration dinner!
Congrats to all parties!!