Moses Watersports owners Mark Newton and Chris Finch recently opened a new boat dealership, P23 Watersports, on Highway 58, offering different brands of new and used boats in a location closer to Chattanooga than their original outpost near Harrison Bay.
“There are a lot of boats out there, and we wanted to give our customers more options,” said Newton, a resident of Lookout Mountain. “Moses is growing by leaps and bounds, and we felt there was definitely room in the marketplace to expand our presence.”
Among the company’s featured brands is Tige, which Newton describes as “one of the best inboard boats available.” Inboard boats, in which the engine is enclosed in the hull of the boat, are built specifically for towing watersports, such as skiing, windsurfing and wakeboarding, he explained. With outboard boats, engines are mounted outside the hull of the boat and pose a safety danger for such sports.
“Tige also has one of the biggest hearts as a corporation,” he said, adding that he was impressed by the company’s charitable giving and the athletes it sponsors, including Bethany Hamilton, now a pro surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack at the age of 13 and whose life inspired the 2011 movie “Soul Surfer.”
Newton and Finch introduced Tige last year at Moses, and moved it to P23 to give the brand – the top-seller at the new dealership – more space, Newton said.