Since Reggie Fountain always liked to try to create a buzz every year heading into the Miami Boat Show, it seems appropriate to recognize his first stepped production boat, a 42-footer that he introduced in 1995. “In the early 1990s, we had to trash an existing 42 mold, come out with a prototype boat and keep fooling around with it,” he said recently. They tested the prototype for at least a year before letting Boating magazine test the first stepped-bottom 42 and while Fountain couldn’t remember the exact speed, he said the steps made the boats 12 to 15 percent faster than non-stepped models and the design element was implemented on the whole Fountain sportboat line.
