boat brands - prejudice or reality

[Chiara’s slave]

But that almost certainly is the case. To a huge majority of people a car is a means of transport, running kids to school etc. Only a small minority even read comparative car reviews - if it gets from A to B then fine.

And similarly with boats. Few compare polar diagrams of potential purchases, or compare key measurements etc. If it has a nice interior and a decent specification many will go for it. And that is perfectly fine.

But I suspect that buyers of Dragonfly, Arcona, XY etc think differently, and punish their wallets accordingly.

As long as you feel you’ve got what you paid for, that’s all fine. I guess Geem’s boat is the yacht equivalent of a LWB Defender, mine the Audi R8. And most AWBs are the Ford C max, the ‘classier’ ones a VW California. I suspect some more parallels there, in that most Defenders are on the school run, and not many R8s go on 1000 mile joy rides. Still, as you say, a C Max actually works for many, and probably would work for even more. Certainly the boat equivalent wouldn’t change much for us, except the fun factor and how far we’d go in a day. Is the Ford ‘worse’ in any particular way? Probably not.

 

[geem]

Baggywinkle gets his bag squeezed

New boats are cleaner? What? Cleaner, really? Maybe if you don't clean a boat its becomes and old one? You really are clutching at straws.
You bring wooden boats into the discussion. Why didn't you mention the Noah's Ark or how about Kon Tiki? You could have had a field day with that one.

You see me as a luddite, stuck in the past. That couldn't be further from the truth.
I regularly raced on full carbon race boats in the last few years. A love the high tech, and in the racing world it makes total sense.
I am a keen wingfoiler embracing the carbon foil tech and aramid and aluula sail technology that is far ahead of the sailing cruising world. Ditto my kite surfing with carbon boards and the shared technology from wing foiling. I love all this stuff.
I think those that can't grasp that I have an old boat that fits perfectly with my lifestyle and use don't appreciate that it isn't a museum piece that has sat unmodified since the 80s. Its not like that at all.
Thr hull was ahead of its time. Its composite construction with Airex core hull and deck. No rotting balsa deck like on your modern boat. (Mine is much like the current offerings today in the higher end production boat market) We carry modern Vectran cruising sails and all halyard are Marlow racing dyneema. We have a three bladed folding prop and a modern direct injection diesel engine.
The boat is all electric galley. No gas onboard. A large bank of lithium batteries, two fridges and freezers, ice machine, hydronic heating, loads of solar, diesel genset, huge storage compared to any modern boat of the same LOA. This is simply because all tankage is below the floor leaving all the space under bunks for storage. The cockpit can seat 10 people and 4 people can eat at the cockpit table out of the wind and in a Caribbean evening.

In race boats, the adoption of lightweight composite materials and chiefly carbon, has revolutionised the sport. This produces stiff and lightweight machines that can fly across oceans at breakneck speed and race around the cans taking prizes every race day.
All this tech doesn't make its way down to the average production cruiser. Why? Because of cost.
Its always been the case that fashion for speed sells boats. It was the same in the 70s with pinched transoms and wide beam. We now have IMOCAs with super wide hulls and chines and we have cruising boats copying the shape because speed sells.
The reality is that the IMOCA is an empty carbon shell where the skipper saws his toothbrush in half to save weight. The cruising boat copy is a polyester hull with a cast iron keel, poor righting moment so consequently they get a relatively short mast. Large wetted area and relatively small canvas area. Such boats are often slow in light wind with white sails.
The back of the boat has two double cabins with thick comfy mattresses and plywood bulkheads meaning that the keel now needs to move forward to compensate for the extra weight in the stern so they move the mast forward to maintain the CofE.
This means you need a large mainsail and you get a small jib. Nothing like an IMOCA at all that has a mast position well back running 3 furlers up front.
The marketing of modern cruising boats is excellent. They sell the dream and good luck to them. Its a business, but just like car brands, we all choose different cars for different reasons.
Some people drive a Morgan. Others will suggest they must be mad. Others drive Volvos because they have a history of building super safe cars. Some buy a hybrid because they want economy. We all make choices but every new car isn't better than the last one. They are always bigger! But not necessarily better. Who wants a wet belt engine?
For my usage, which is fundamentally cruising both sides of the pond and across, the boat is a perfect fit for us. In this usage, it isn't slow. We make fast ocean passages comparable or faster than modern production boats of the same length.
If I wanted to race around the cans or coastal cruise UK waters, I would have a different boat.

Many modern production boats use vacuum infusion in their composite hull construction. Very few use use PVC core material because balsa is cheaper. Built to a price. Balsa is like a sponge if you get it wet from a leaking through hull. It will rot from the inside out. PVC core doesnt rot. Guess what the core is on my boat? You mention rotting balsa. Do you think your boat is immune to rotting balsa?
Balsa core is routinely used as a core material by all the familiar boat manufacturers because its cheaper than PVC core material.
I posted a video of Parley Revivial with quality issue with the vacuum infusion construction in Lagoons. Modern built practises are not immune to build quality issues. Lagoon are owned by Beneteau.
Grid systems glued in that get knocked out off the hull when you ground. Look at the massive amount of work that Utubers Expedition Evans did to rectify that disaster. They improved the build by glassing in the grid. Something the builder should have done from day one but that would have cost more. Again, built to a budget.
The shape of modern boats has changed dramatically. Most old designs were dark and dingy below. The quality of the interior were poor. Droopy headlining were common. Then there are people like Concerto and myself that restore a boat to better than original. We did it because we wanted to. It wasn't a horror story. It was a pleasure. When boats like ours get compared to modern equivalents, the difference really don't exist. It simply comes down to personal choice.
I could go on and on about IKEA interiors glued in windows, spade rudders, bearing failure, drive legs, but I don't want to upset you

 

[flaming]

In amongst your good points Geem, you sadly have some misconceptions and some incorrect data. For example your contention that modern hulls are that shape because they have been influenced by racing shapes. I simply don't see that, when I go onto a modern cruising "charter" boat at a boat show I see that this hull shape makes a shed load of sense because it has a shed load of space, which people buying new boats generally like. The last charter holiday I did was with 10 of us on a 50 foot AWB. What an incredible holiday that was, and the boat was basically perfect for it, that shape allowed for 4 double cabins and tons of space. And the shape has very little in common with my boat, let alone an IMOCA. In fact the word "shed" is quite apt for some of them.

Ditto the mast moving forward, I'm not seeing that as in any way a negative for a cruising boat. The idea that a cruising boat, specifically a coastal cruising boat, wants a big genoa is nuts. Who do designers of family cruising boats with large genoas imagine is going to be winching the thing in? Also not convinced they even are moving forward particularly. Look to be aft of where traditional fractional rigs used to be, and not far off the middle of the boat. Looking at the specs of a few modern ones, and with non overlapping fractional jibs the main and jib area are very similar, which doesn't point to a mast shoved forward at all.

Oh, and btw, for example the current Dufour 44 (which is the only 44 foot current AWB I could think of) has a taller mast, by about 2m than your boat, So not sure where this dumpy mast idea of yours is coming from. It also sets more sail area. By quite a margin. According to sailboatdata Its non overlapping jib is marginally bigger than your genoa, and the main is 16sqm bigger. And weighs 4 tonnes less. So somewhat unlikely to be slower... You definitely wouldn't like the hull windows though....

And literally nobody is saying you have the wrong boat. It's clearly a great boat, and the mods you've done, especially the removal of gas, are fascinating.

Quite why people saying "hey, these modern ones are quite good too you know!" seems to get you so worked up is quite beyond me.