pvb
Well-Known Member
Neither of those companies is a beacon of business success. Morgan was bailed out by us, the taxpayers, to the tune of £6 million, shortly before they sold out to the Italians.
What they don't tell you about production boats
- Thread starter geem
- Start date
Neither of those companies is a beacon of business success. Morgan was bailed out by us, the taxpayers, to the tune of £6 million, shortly before they sold out to the Italians.
pvb
Well-Known Member
Another observation is that Bavarias are built in a clean, climate controlled environment - vital for long-term quality of fibreglass. The IPs seem to be built in a shed open to the vagaries of the Florida climate.
geem
Well-Known Member
wully1
Well-Known Member
It’s very interesting talking to people who repair lots of boats for a living , especially grounded boats. I was surprised at their opinions on the construction and overall quality of boats I thought were in the upper bands of the market.
If I was going to be buying another boat there are a few makes I like the look and reputation of but are off the wish list.
If I was going to be buying another boat there are a few makes I like the look and reputation of but are off the wish list.
doug748
Well-Known Member
Please don't tell us it was in one of those spacecraft factories, with the robots and everything. I can't bear it.
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ip485
Well-Known Member
Daydream - no, of course I meant with Bavaria style production comes consistency, definitely not Morgan or Caterham style.
Tranoma - some good points, but as a point of order the ARC is hardly a point of reference. Release a barrel and it will end up in St Lucia. Blue water sailing is very different from an ARC crosssing.
Jumleduck - you are right, Bavaria are hardly a glowing light of success of volume manufacturing. The problem with volume as BobC said, is everyone is your customer because you need everyone of them. Any slow down in the economy and you have a problem because you have lost the flexibility some smaller businesses have.
It is an enjoyable debate and I hope we can continue to avoid the little snipes that are boat type econcentric.
One more thought. If you go cruising and take only into account the real liveaboards and the types of yachts they sail, you will get a feel for what works, and what doesnt. I will have a bet, you will not see many Bavaria's and there is nothing bad about that before you tackle me, it isnt their market, you will see lots of older designs for the simple reason that people are cost challenged, and they represent great value and do a good job, and you will see (relatively speaking) loads of Oysters, HRs, IPs etc . You have to have done it, to beleive it. It isnt comparable with the med. charter market - ah yes there are loads of Bavarias in the med - of course there are, it is their market and for people who wish to do a flotilla holiday for a few weeks they do a great job.
Tranoma - some good points, but as a point of order the ARC is hardly a point of reference. Release a barrel and it will end up in St Lucia. Blue water sailing is very different from an ARC crosssing.
Jumleduck - you are right, Bavaria are hardly a glowing light of success of volume manufacturing. The problem with volume as BobC said, is everyone is your customer because you need everyone of them. Any slow down in the economy and you have a problem because you have lost the flexibility some smaller businesses have.
It is an enjoyable debate and I hope we can continue to avoid the little snipes that are boat type econcentric.
One more thought. If you go cruising and take only into account the real liveaboards and the types of yachts they sail, you will get a feel for what works, and what doesnt. I will have a bet, you will not see many Bavaria's and there is nothing bad about that before you tackle me, it isnt their market, you will see lots of older designs for the simple reason that people are cost challenged, and they represent great value and do a good job, and you will see (relatively speaking) loads of Oysters, HRs, IPs etc . You have to have done it, to beleive it. It isnt comparable with the med. charter market - ah yes there are loads of Bavarias in the med - of course there are, it is their market and for people who wish to do a flotilla holiday for a few weeks they do a great job.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Inevitable Citroen DS fact: When it came out, the DS windscreen was the larged piece of curved glass ever mass produced. They couldn't make them to within +/- 5mm, so they were held in with a complicated system of adjustable clamps and sealed along the bottom with handfuls of putty. They never improved that - my car, which may well be the last one built, has the putty too.Consistent ----You have never bought a hood or a side window for a Morgan have you???
ip485
Well-Known Member
Nothing fits on my Caterham 
, but they say it is part of the charm. Never mind the adjustable clamps, it doesnt even have a screen.
, but they say it is part of the charm. Never mind the adjustable clamps, it doesnt even have a screen.eddystone
Well-Known Member
A friend who keeps his HR Monsun in the northern Baltic says colliding with hidden and sometimes uncharted rocks at speed is regarded as inevitable and Skandi sailors go for Skandi boats with steel shock absorbing structures for the keel. The few “production boats” tend to be owned by Germans.
Of course Swedes don’t have to spend so much on houses so they have money to spend on HRs and Volvos
Of course Swedes don’t have to spend so much on houses so they have money to spend on HRs and Volvos
Bobc
Well-Known Member
Agree with most of that, but I think you'll be surprised at how many liveaboard there are on production yachts. A couple we know well are liveaboard on their Bavaria 37 (currently in Sicily), I know another couple also in Sicily on a Bavaria 38, another couple currently in Northern Ireland on a Bavaria 36, an other couple in Crete on their Bavaria 46. There are lots of them out there.
geem
Well-Known Member
I am sure there are plenty of liveaboards on production boats in the Med but in the Caribbean they tend to be a minority. You get lots of American and Canadian yachts most Brits will never of heard of. Many are Taiwanese built but American designs. There are more modern designs like Passports, Outbound and Hylas that are sold as Bluewater boats. You could argue that they are production boats but aimed at a liveaboard clientele. You obviously see lots of IPs as well. They are well loved by their American owners.
The exception is the French islands that have a busy charter market and here you will find lots of familiar French production boats. You also see lots of French liveaboards on Amels. Boats are used very differently in the Caribbean compared to the Med.
Rappey
Well-Known Member
I was offered a 1980,s oyster 41.. Looked a beautiful boat and all i had to pay to buy it was the amount of berthing fees it owed which was around 15% of the boats value.
Came the day it could be sold and went to have a much better look over it.. due to the angle of the sun i noticed a very bad verticle rippling along the length of its hull ?
50% of its hull had come unstuck from its core which was creating the rippling, the chain plate areas were raised from the deck level that they should be at , the mast base was compressed into the coach roof, the rigging was blowing in the wind .and it had a sail drive..
Time to run away very fast ! Now i understood why the owner abandoned it !
From many of these videos on building yachts it seems not many are built better than others, but put much more expensive interiors in and maybe more equipment then ask a hugely higher price..
Came the day it could be sold and went to have a much better look over it.. due to the angle of the sun i noticed a very bad verticle rippling along the length of its hull ?
50% of its hull had come unstuck from its core which was creating the rippling, the chain plate areas were raised from the deck level that they should be at , the mast base was compressed into the coach roof, the rigging was blowing in the wind .and it had a sail drive..
Time to run away very fast ! Now i understood why the owner abandoned it !
From many of these videos on building yachts it seems not many are built better than others, but put much more expensive interiors in and maybe more equipment then ask a hugely higher price..
Laminar Flow
Well-Known Member
To bring things back to a technical level here is an example:
A 40' yacht of with a displacement of just over 8 t strikes an underwater object at 8kts with the forward tip of the keel , bringing it to a full stop in just a quarter of a second.
The keel root from the first bolt to the rear top edge of the keel is 1.6m long and the depth of that keel is 1.5m below the canoe body.
The force of the resulting impact is about 13.4t, the resulting upward pressure on the aft end of the keel is about 12.5 t.
To resist the upward forces at the rear of the keel, the floors must have a minimum height of 22cm, a min. laminate thickness of 20mm and a minimum flange width of at least 12.7cm on either side.
These are the technical facts and requirements. I'll let someone else show me where they may be seen on the boat featured in the video.
A 40' yacht of with a displacement of just over 8 t strikes an underwater object at 8kts with the forward tip of the keel , bringing it to a full stop in just a quarter of a second.
The keel root from the first bolt to the rear top edge of the keel is 1.6m long and the depth of that keel is 1.5m below the canoe body.
The force of the resulting impact is about 13.4t, the resulting upward pressure on the aft end of the keel is about 12.5 t.
To resist the upward forces at the rear of the keel, the floors must have a minimum height of 22cm, a min. laminate thickness of 20mm and a minimum flange width of at least 12.7cm on either side.
These are the technical facts and requirements. I'll let someone else show me where they may be seen on the boat featured in the video.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
Actually Morgan is no in a different league with the new designs, even though they bang on about the hand built bits such as the aluminium panelling an wood frames, although despite what they say the wings are actually made on a blow machine rather than Joe who made one wing and Fred who made another. We visited the factory in 2003 when ours was built in the old style. They were just starting with the Aero 8 and that was in a different league with the welded aluminium monocoque. The new Plus 4 & 6 use the same basic architecture so the hand fettling is now limited to just the panelling and interior. BTW my Morgan has been virtually trouble free with the only significant work being a new radiator, new steering rack and engine belt and tensioner change. Still on the original brakes, tyres (although I might change both this year) and Red Flash battery. Now worth more than I paid for it new.
As to the ARC although the actual rally route is not usually tough, all the boats and most of the crews still have to sail there. Some of them also sail back or continue cruising. You are right, a proportion of the bluewater liveaboard community have older boats because they are affordable primarily. However as a proportion of the whole they will only decline as more people come in and the supply of this type of boat is at best fixed but actually declining rapidly as they come to the end of their economic life and end up mouldering in the back of boatyards all over the world. New entrants mostly cannot afford new boats so they will increasingly have to dip into the pool of newer boats and adapt them for their requirements. Just as many have done from the days of the Pyes with a fishing boat. Inevitably that will include Bavarias as the examples I quoted earlier, simply because there are 1000s in use and have proven to be capable of this type of use.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
As you seem to have time on your hands to seek out examples that fit your view, maybe to get some balance you spend some time down the back numbers of PBO and discover a whole range of horror stories related to so called quality boats. One recent example was a38' from a top yard and popular for bluewater. Needed the inevitable teak deck replacement but I doubt its owners expected to find so many horrors when they removed it. Not only had water got into the deck, but around one cleat (all the hardware was fastened through the teak - something production builders do not now do) the fastenings did not even go through the reinforcing pad moulded into the deck. A whole section of deck and the adjacent chain plate had to be replaced. another good read is the series of articles that Mike, the yard manager at Harbour Marine Services wrote about repairs in the yard. One that sticks out is the Southerly 115 which needed major repairs to the main bulkhead and interior woodwork because of water ingress. Not an old boat and the damage was only found when a water tank had to be moved.
You might also look at this high quality boat to see how well (or otherwise ) it has stood up to its intended use. Bowman 40 - Red Ensign
Nobody suggests that boats are perfect, nor that failures don't occur. However you have to put things in perspective and recognise such failures are only a tiny proportion of the number of boats produced - the classic don't generalise from the particular.
geem
Well-Known Member
I dont have a problem with old boats needing work. The point of the video was that we all know old boats have problems but the suggestion is that modern boats are better. They are made in modern factories and some suggest on this forum that they are superior to older designs. I am not sure this is the case. The first video shows what happens when a modern boat with a grid hits the bottom hard. This kind of failure is unique to modern boats. Grids held on by glue and not laminated is a cost cutting solution. The second video shows another application of glue where laminating would have been superior. These faults could not exist in older designs simply because they didnt have grids or saildrives. Modern construction techniques may build you a boat in three days but it doesnt make it better than older designs that cost more to construct. You could spend weeks arguing the definition of better. We all have different requirements out of sailing so it is no surprise that we sail different boats. It would be interesting to see how modern boats fare over the years. I guess if they dont hit the bottom too often they will be just fine?
rotrax
Well-Known Member
Not strictly true.
I have recently screwed a GRP racing numberboard which I purchased from Arthur Wheeler Motorcycles in Epsom when I worked for him in 1969, to my new shed. It is in really good condition for its 50 years, despite having several trips along the tarmac in crashes.Really thin, for lightness, its strength comes from a raised rim around the edge. It was made by a bloke in Chesington in a shed, along with fairings, seats and tanks. Several of these fairings and tanks still exist and are used on classic racing motorbikes. The number board, with Valentino Rossi's number 46 in yellow on it is for First Mate who is a big fan.
The surrounding where they were made - I was familiar with them as I collected stock for the bike shop from there - were so bad I would never accept a coffee while there.
It was a filthy, smelly and dirty shed made from rusty corregated iron sheets. NOTHING climate controlled or clean in there, just like the sheds where many of the even older GRP boats were hand laid up.
For perfect results, using the correct amounts of mat, resin and hardners, conditions as you describe are best used.
But time has proved this is not a prime requirement.
ip485
Well-Known Member
A most interesting and enjoyable discussion.
I have probably learnt mostly that some yachts are just made thoughtfully well and others not, and the cost is probably not the only factor. It is a mutliplicity of factors that go into the design and production of a good yacht, and, even then, the one you have fallen in love with, is the best one for as long as the love affair lasts. If it does all you ask of it, then you cant ask for more.
I have probably learnt mostly that some yachts are just made thoughtfully well and others not, and the cost is probably not the only factor. It is a mutliplicity of factors that go into the design and production of a good yacht, and, even then, the one you have fallen in love with, is the best one for as long as the love affair lasts. If it does all you ask of it, then you cant ask for more.
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davidej
Well-Known Member
What a good way to end this discussion.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
It is indeed.
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