Sunsation, the Michigan Sportboat Builder That Went Center Console

From a riverside garage to the last builder in town

Wayne Schaldenbrand started Sunsation in 1982, working out of a small garage in Algonac, Michigan, a St. Clair River town that was once home base for Chris-Craft. His brothers Joe and John came aboard, and the very first product was a 16-foot Sunburn. For the next three decades the family made its name on quick V-bottom sportboats. The flagship F4, a 43-foot luxury V-bottom rated for 2,700 hp, was shopped head to head against Cigarette, Donzi and Formula.

Plenty of performance builders have come and gone along that stretch of Michigan shoreline. Sunsation now describes itself as the sole boatbuilder still operating in Algonac, and it has no corporate parent, so the people who designed the hulls are the people running the shop.

Why a sportboat shop bet everything on outboards

By the middle of the 2010s, fast-boat customers were trading offshore V-bottoms for big outboard-powered center consoles, and Sunsation moved with its market instead of fighting it. The CCX family took over the catalog, and in 2016 the company stopped building sportboats entirely.

The model that made the switch stick is the 32 CCX, which we review in depth on its own page. Sunsation introduced it at the Fort Lauderdale show in 2015 with a stepped bottom drawn by offshore racer and boat-school founder Tres Martin, and it went on to outsell everything else the company offers. Production picked up speed over time. The hundredth hull left Algonac in 2020, and the two-hundredth, which brought Mercury Racing 500R power to the model, was displayed in Detroit in 2024.

The company also learned where to draw a line. A 2016 trial with three Verados on the 32 convinced Wayne Schaldenbrand that the hull ran best on a pair of engines, so twin outboards remain the rule. The family has since stretched the same formula to the 34 CCX and the 40 CCX.

Reputation, dealers and the resale picture

Sunsation's customers tend to be people stepping out of sportboats or catamarans who now want seats for family and friends, along with newcomers who want a genuinely fast first boat. The builder sells through dealers, and some have said 32s were spoken for before they ever hit the floor. That demand keeps resale values firm, and on the brokerage market the gap between two similar boats usually comes down to engine hours and paperwork.

Most speed figures you will hear for these boats come from Sunsation, its dealers or owners rather than independent instrumented testing. Judge a particular boat on a sea trial, not on a brochure number, and use the list below during a survey.

• Ask for complete Mercury Racing maintenance logs and a fresh compression check
• Look over the steps and strakes for patched damage or home modifications
• Study custom paint for cracks radiating out from fittings
• Examine hardtop legs and their bases for stress cracking
• Find out which propellers are aboard and how the boat was rigged for speed