sailorman
Well-Known Member
Typical of IPC, no differential in their publication`s now, unlike 40 yrs ago when each magazine had is place in the English boating scene. Now they are just there to make £s for IPC with the least expenditure by IPC
YM test of GT35
- Thread starter eddystone
- Start date
snooks
Well-Known Member
Indeed, don't! :0)
5 years from now the small Velcro patches will probably have lost their stick and the cushions can go tumbling around at every tack. Best case is the small round Velcro pads were screwed in place but will have gone all woolly. Worse case they were self-adhesive which lasted a season or two. Meanwhile 10 years from now all those clips - held by 3 screws a piece - are still working like the day they were made.
Seeing you also mention switches....Bedside switches are only found on a handful of boats, very few of those are 35ft boats. It's easier, quicker and cheaper to fit them in the deck head before it's glued on top of the hull.
So the manufacturer saves a couple of hours of labour and you're left with a lifetime of ownership with inconveniently placed light switches....Does that sound right to you?
If I could afford it, I'd rather by a buy a boat from a company that put their customers needs before their ease of manufacture.
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Seven Spades
Well-Known Member
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
I was wondering what £250,000 extra bought. "A couple of hours of labour", eh?
Don't you think that Bavaria put their customers needs first by building more affordable boats? You're not being terribly well served by a company which saves you the unbearable strain of reaching literally inches for a light switch by building a boat you can't afford to buy.
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snooks
Well-Known Member
Do I really need to point out that there is more than one light switch? And that it's not just light switches?
Wandering Star
Well-Known Member
I've been following this thread closely and wonder if the the builders have drastically limited their market by carving the name "Graham Snook" all over the joinery - what if my name wasn't Graham Snook? I'm not sure I could live with it, petty I know but it would really put me off buying this boat.Some details...
With the constraints on page space, my words and photographs etc there was only so much I could fit into the article. As there seems to be a lot of fuss about the quality/price/looks here are some of the other photographs I took on the day:
All images ©Graham Snook Photography
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
No, you have covered the little plastic clips (with three screws!) in some detail.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
While all those little extras are nice, they are very expensive to provide and few people are willing to pay for the labour to fit them. That is the difference between a mass production boat where the nice features are designed in rather than added afterwards.
It is instructive to do a bit of old fashioned clipboard type Time and Motion on traditional boat construction and work out the proportion of time skilled workers spend actually using their skill - as opposed to picking up the component, walking up the steps, moving stuff out of the way, finding they have forgotten something etc etc. The buyer is paying a lot of money for time that does not add value to his boat. A simple example is a deck where all the holes have to be drilled or cut out individually and fittings attached. A machine in the Bavaria factory does all that in hours, but for a one off it can take days.
The basic problem small scale builders face is that production boats have become so good that it is difficult to provide something significantly better at a slightly higher price, only at a massively higher price. So you get into a viscious circle of higher prices limiting the number of people prepared to pay the price, which puts the price up if a profit is to be made......and so on.
nicho
RIP
It's interesting that having sold our Bavaria 36 in 2006, and been a moboer from then until 2012 (but coming back to the dark side soon!), there is still so much bias against Bavarias. We loved our Bav, it got us on the water in a brand new sailing boat for relatively little money. For our "general pottering about" boating, it suited us perfectly, never anticipating trans-Atlantic or similar, which is what I believe, most sailing boat owners want. Hence Bavarias huge success over the years.
I find it slightly odd that Jeanneau don't come in for as much stick as Bavaria, because having been on a disastrous one in the Atlantic some years ago (the story of which earned me the princely sum of £200 from YM!!), and more recent tragic events when a keel was lost, it seems they are not strongly built either - of course, like the affected Bavs, there may well have been previous, unseen keel damage. However their are tens of thousands of owners out there that love their boats - again perfectly fit for their purpose. Would I ventuire back into the Atlantic again in a Ben/Jen/Bav? Not likely, but hundreds/thousands do, and they successfully reach the other side without drama.
Now to the GT 35 - true it's very bland, but well screwed together, and it's VERY expensive for a 35 footer, but even those that can afford such sums, got to that position by recognising good value for money, and I cannot see that in the 35. I believe if you have that sort of money, most will opt for an HR or similar.......but then as an ex moboer, what do I know?
PS I'll change the offensive picture as soon as the "new" boat is given the all clear for purchase!!
I find it slightly odd that Jeanneau don't come in for as much stick as Bavaria, because having been on a disastrous one in the Atlantic some years ago (the story of which earned me the princely sum of £200 from YM!!), and more recent tragic events when a keel was lost, it seems they are not strongly built either - of course, like the affected Bavs, there may well have been previous, unseen keel damage. However their are tens of thousands of owners out there that love their boats - again perfectly fit for their purpose. Would I ventuire back into the Atlantic again in a Ben/Jen/Bav? Not likely, but hundreds/thousands do, and they successfully reach the other side without drama.
Now to the GT 35 - true it's very bland, but well screwed together, and it's VERY expensive for a 35 footer, but even those that can afford such sums, got to that position by recognising good value for money, and I cannot see that in the 35. I believe if you have that sort of money, most will opt for an HR or similar.......but then as an ex moboer, what do I know?
PS I'll change the offensive picture as soon as the "new" boat is given the all clear for purchase!!
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JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
I agree. It was interesting to follow the building of the Cornish Crabber 26 in PBO, and to see how remarkably intensive in both skilled and unskilled labour the whole business is. And, as you say, the skilled workers are doing the unskilled bits as well.
The William Morris approach to boat building is interesting, and can produce some very nice results, but as with furniture, cars and everything else, mass production is always going to win.
I own a British built boat from the 80s which is the same length as a Centaur, the same weight as a Centaur and, cost when new about twice what a Centaur did (thanks to much more detailed joinery work) ... and sold in roughly one twentieth the numbers.
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mrming
Well-Known Member
95% of production boats now come with a photographer's name carved on all major areas of woodwork.
If you don't like this then perhaps you are not the target market and should instead renovate an older boat.
rogerball0
N/A
I spent a couple of hours looking at Bavaria' and Jeanneau' s website on Sunday whilst waiting for some resin to kick and to be honest i think the boats look great. I cant see where all the emnity for these brands comes from, i know the arguement is one of seaworthyness but how many of us are circumnavigators.....really?, for the demographic they appeal to they're more than enough.
FWIW theres a starlight 39 on ebay at the moment up for 69,500; even if you went to town and spent as much again upgrading and modifying (which would buy you a shed load of light switches and cushion whatsits) thats still half the price of the GT and they look no different.
I had a look at HR's site after a few commented that its in that price range and i can see what the fuss is about, talk about beautifully crafted, so i went to yachtworld.com and typed in HR and the plethora of 35 - 40 foot ones around 5 years old that can be had for significantly less than (cough) you know what still makes me think wheres the market for this GT?
A serious question: Was any market research carried out to see if a gap in the market existed for this boat?
FWIW theres a starlight 39 on ebay at the moment up for 69,500; even if you went to town and spent as much again upgrading and modifying (which would buy you a shed load of light switches and cushion whatsits) thats still half the price of the GT and they look no different.
I had a look at HR's site after a few commented that its in that price range and i can see what the fuss is about, talk about beautifully crafted, so i went to yachtworld.com and typed in HR and the plethora of 35 - 40 foot ones around 5 years old that can be had for significantly less than (cough) you know what still makes me think wheres the market for this GT?
A serious question: Was any market research carried out to see if a gap in the market existed for this boat?
Twister_Ken
Well-Known Member
I doubt it.
AndrewfromFal
Well-Known Member
I must admit I wondered about this when the company first launched. The initial blurb announced their aim was to meet an unfulfilled demand for a sleek high quality product without modern fads such as 'T' keels and plumb bows; and that struck me as answering a question that no-one was asking.
flaming
Well-Known Member
Well, if they read this forum it would be pretty easy to conclude that there's a big market for boats that look and sail just like the boats of yesteryear...
What confuses me is that they say the 35 is a no nonsense quality cruising boat with no claims to raceboat type performance (and the reviews seem to back that up), then announce a 33 footer that just looks like a copy of the XP33 and is aimed squarely at cruiser racers. Normally builders get good at one type of boat before branching out into another sector.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
There is! Just not a new build market ...
AndrewfromFal
Well-Known Member
Provided they don't cost more than an AWB....
If there's one way to confuse people about your product range, it's by being inconsistent.
I suppose this is mitigated by the fact they are primarily a sales/marketing operation, and the building is subbed out.
On a more general note.....many of us are wondering what brought the company into being in the first place; there is a precedent for a critical mass of individuals to come up with deposits and put a new boat into production, maybe this is the route they went down?
Tranona
Well-Known Member
The views on this forum represent the "market" in terms of what people value in the abstract. Therefore you would think there was unsatisfied demand. However to actually SELL boats you have to find buyers who are Ready, Willing and Able - the mantra of successful salespeople. folks here might qualify for one of those, but not all three, and particularly the last.
I discovered long ago that the market for Seagulls was limited by the high price (makes one laugh now) but there was a huge demand for used ones at a lower price. Same with my Morgan. Few people willing to cough up the £30K for a new basic model but a long queue for my 13 year old one at £20k.
Same with boats. Good market for 8 - 10 year old HRs and the like at the same price as a new AWB, but 65% of the price of a new one.
So if you could make secondhand HRs you could sell them easily!
snooks
Well-Known Member
It's your predilection for bringing the subject up over and over again at any opportunity - reviving it like final lunges of near dead killer in a teen horror movie - that led me to expand on the frankly dull subject of cushion fastenings.
You appear reluctant to understand that screws, lots of them, cost more to secure something than a bit of double sided sticky tape. And that lead costs more than iron or thick oak cost more than wafer thin teak etc etc.
So believe what you want, I have little desire to waste my time pointing out what is blindly obvious any more. Cheerie bye
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
There is a sort of consistency. If you are trying to set up a company to make and sell very, very expensive handmade boats (or planes, or cars, or bicycles) then there are probably only two likely markets: the rich luxury seekers and the competitive racers are the two groups less troubled by cost than any others. So perhaps it makes sense to try one of each and see who wants 'em. It does give a rather mixed message, though - like Island Packet building a racer or Bentley bringing out a panel van.
