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rickbase1 · 17-02-2014, 06:32

There's a harsh dose of reality! So much for my fantasy land. ve3qft, it is certainly difficult logic to argue with. Stop this bloody planet, I want off !

My only rebuttal to your comment about the disposable consumer is that the world of google, yelp, etc, has allowed we insignificant consumers to have a voice, albeit small.

(Will Horton hear the Who?)

Cruisers form has a pretty good SEO so I can't see this thread getting by anyone seriously interested in buying an Alpha.

Interestingly enough, my feedback from the Strictly Sail show in Miami is that the demise of the Alpha was a hot topic of conversation and they were supposedly already having issues with people wanting their deposits back. It can't help future re-sale values for anyone with a boat mid-build.

Surprisingly no response yet from Alpha......

**HappyMdRSailor** · 17-02-2014, 06:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Rick, you live in a fantasy land.

No responsible delivery skipper would leave his Starfleet Transporter at home...

(I'm not a Trekkie, so I hope I didn't err to the offensive...)

sigmasailor · 17-02-2014, 06:38

AIS and satellites? I always thought AIS signals went via the VHF antenna?

And about making money: I doubt it if the manufacturer made any money on the first of a series of production boats.

I do agree with the fact that too much is wasted in our current society.

robert sailor · 17-02-2014, 06:40

I read your post with interest, it seems that you have issues with entitlement. You can't keep blaming other people for the decisions you make. If you don't like certain houses or ink jet printers then don't buy them and that includes boats. If you want to purchase something of high quality your going to have to pay for it. Most purchasers are just like you...they want to buy something cheap and then expect it to be high quality with excellent service. Unfortunately in the real world you still get what you pay for plus you had better learn to do some good old fashion due diligence when your making purchasing decisions.

DoubleWhisky · 17-02-2014, 06:51

Both in USA and in Europe boat producers benefit from the legal conctruction of strict product liability, effectively limiting the responsibility of producer to the causes of actual death or injury on the side of consumer.
Were this liability include putting the consumer into present and imminent danger of death or injury the things would change quite soon, I suppose...

DoubleWhisky · 17-02-2014, 06:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Most purchasers are just like you...they want to buy something cheap and then expect it to be high quality with excellent service. Unfortunately in the real world you still get what you pay for plus you had better learn to do some good old fashion due diligence when your making purchasing decisions.

You are right of course - in general.
May be I'm wrong with one thing, I do not know American boat market, but after reading some posts here I was under impression that Alpha is not a cheap boat. Repeat - I may be wrong.
Regarding the due dilligence - again I do not know the American legal reality in this regard, but here the website of Alpha Yachts would be probably the adequate proof of the intentional misguiding the buyer...

ve3qft · 17-02-2014, 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by robert sailor

I read your post with interest, it seems that you have issues with entitlement. You can't keep blaming other people for the decisions you make. If you don't like certain houses or ink jet printers then don't buy them and that includes boats. If you want to purchase something of high quality your going to have to pay for it. Most purchasers are just like you...they want to buy something cheap and then expect it to be high quality with excellent service. Unfortunately in the real world you still get what you pay for plus you had better learn to do some good old fashion due diligence when your making purchasing decisions.

Robert,

You are entirely correct, I do have an issue with entitlement: I feel that I am entitled to breathe the air and drink the water and live without the detritus of a self-obsessed society destroying my planet. I also feel that the birds, the fish and all the other sustainable populations on this planet have an entitlement to clean air and water and their own existence.

You mistake me; I made no reference to my own decisions. I would not buy an inkjet printer if my life depended upon it; nor any other new disposable item. I am a purist: even my new Macbook was rescued from the trash and repaired (at the board level) by my own two hands. Not knowing me, you could not be aware of that.

Your point about being an educated consumer is a good one, but it suffers from reality issues. The mass media and the science of marketing are better and stronger than our individual ability to research and make purchase decisions. One cannot reasonably educate oneself about boats (or anything else) by research alone; only years of experience sailing and living aboard will do. Eventually, a new owner must compromise. That is why I hold those with a financial motive disproportionately responsible for the destruction of the planet. Most boaters have no intention of destroying the very things they love the most, even if they are hoodwinked into doing so by the marketing.

robert sailor · 17-02-2014, 08:16

A reasonable retort and some good points made. I too want clean air, water etc. Yes I agree that marketing is a very powerful tool. And it sounds like your a resourceful guy as I certainly could not work on a computer, so I'll give you credit for some of your ideas.
That aside we all have to take personal responsibility for the decisions we make. If you don't have a job or the job you have won't cover a mortgage but someone offers you one and you take it I really don't care if you loose everything when the housing market crashes because you created your own problems no matter how selfish and wicked the banks were, it still comes back to you.
OK you want to buy a Cat and rather than buy something with a history you decide to risk buying the very first one made. We call people like that pioneers but we also say that pioneers often end up with arrows in their back.
I don't disagree that the world is all about greed and crapping in your own nest but there are still plenty of people that choose to live a very minimalist life style and I suspect there are several on this site.
It still gets down to taking personal responsibility for every decision you make and living with the outcome. Its still a great world and sailing around in it is something else.

**HappyMdRSailor** · 17-02-2014, 08:41

Just a helpful opinion from an outside perspective... You guys should start a new thread... This one is drifting heavily again...

Not trying to be offensive at all... This is a healthy interesting discussion, and merits continuation... But has not much left relating to the Alpha...

ve3qft · 17-02-2014, 09:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by HappyMdRSailor

Just a helpful opinion from an outside perspective... You guys should start a new thread... This one is drifting heavily again...

Not trying to be offensive at all... This is a healthy interesting discussion, and merits continuation... But has not much left relating to the Alpha...

An excellent point, Happy, but I was being purposefully indirect because I live in desperate fear of the lawyers.

The loss of Be Good Too was a direct result of marketing: somehow, the owners got the idea that they could take hull #1 across the North Atlantic in January. I do not think that is because they were clinically delusional; I think it is because they were sold a bill of goods that convinced them that doing so was safe, sane and reasonable when it was most certainly none of those things.

Whose marketing? I have no idea. It could have been the builder, the agents, something they absorbed at a boat show, or some other source that filtered into their minds through the mass media. Possibly all of the above--I have no idea. But the problem underlying the loss of Be Good Too is *exactly* the same problem underlying the destruction of our planet. We love ourselves too much, we think we are better than we are, we count our personal wants above everything else, and we invariably devolve responsibility to someone else with money in the game. The end results are always depressingly self-similar: waste and destruction on a global scale.

The poignant bit is that all of the cost of building the Alpha, the cost of the rescue, and the cost of the insurance payout will all count towards, and thereby increase, the economy. Some economist and many media personalities will report that as good news.

All wasted; all destructive; all gone. It's an obscenity.

downunder · 17-02-2014, 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by ve3qft

Yes, he does, but I want to live there, too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have a minor modification to Rick's suggestion: involuntarily airlift the builder out to the hull with all the equipment they can carry and let them salvage it or go down with it, their choice. If I had my druthers, I'd send the makers of disposable inkjet printers and plastic containers and crapbox houses and every other product that places personal gain above responsible consumption aboard, too. They are the one who made the money and raped the planet--let them deal with the consequences. Maybe they could walk to shore on the garbage they have put into the ocean.

Had I been so rash as to take hull #1 out in the middle of the North Atlantic in January without proper incremental testing and progressive sea trials, I would have stayed aboard to bring her in no matter the cost, because the alternative would be unthinkable: contributing another $800,000 piece of floating plastic garbage to the ocean. Bad weather be damned; I would have died of shame for my monstrous over-consumption had I abandoned her.

Whilst we can criticise the builder on the failures it was not the builder who decided to head out into the North Atlantic in January.

That you would have died of shame for my monstrous over-consumption also has nothing to do with the builder.

ve3qft · 18-02-2014, 05:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by downunder

Whilst we can criticise the builder on the failures it was not the builder who decided to head out into the North Atlantic in January.

That you would have died of shame for my monstrous over-consumption also has nothing to do with the builder.

Sorry about your head. I'll clarify.

This is GoPro marketing: the people with a money stake either passively or actively encourage the owners to go out and do something risky. If the owners are successful, it pays off for the stakeholders. If it fails, the stakeholders deny any responsibility because it was the owner's decision.

In this case, the stakeholders were blogging about the voyage. If the trip had been successful, it would have been great marketing material for them. There was nothing in the blog to suggest that the stakeholders were not happy about sending hull #1 across the North Atlantic in January.

The point of my hyperbole is just that the builder, and anyone else with a money stake, must be held responsible for the waste because they are primarily in a position to create it by (a) creating a demand for the product through powerful marketing and (b) because they have direct control over the quality and longevity of the product. In effect, they are the stewards of our resources.

If the stakeholders were not going to conduct extensive sea trials, perhaps because they are expensive, then maybe they should have taken a more active role in monitoring and advising the owners of hull #1, and in supporting them and/or bailing them out when they got into trouble. That was Rick's original point, I think.

rickbase1 · 18-02-2014, 05:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by ve3qft

Sorry about your head. I'll clarify.

This is GoPro marketing: the people with a money stake either passively or actively encourage the owners to go out and do something risky. If the owners are successful, it pays off for the stakeholders. If it fails, the stakeholders deny any responsibility because it was the owner's decision.

In this case, the stakeholders were blogging about the voyage. If the trip had been successful, it would have been great marketing material for them. There was nothing in the blog to suggest that the stakeholders were not happy about sending hull #1 across the North Atlantic in January.

The point of my hyperbole is just that the builder, and anyone else with a money stake, must be held responsible for the waste because they are primarily in a position to create it by (a) creating a demand for the product through powerful marketing and (b) because they have direct control over the quality and longevity of the product. In effect, they are the stewards of our resources.

If the stakeholders were not going to conduct extensive sea trials, perhaps because they are expensive, then maybe they should have taken a more active role in monitoring and advising the owners of hull #1, and in supporting them and/or bailing them out when they got into trouble. That was Rick's original point, I think.

Well said ve3Qft ! And to expand on that, even with the problems they encountered, had the builder taken a pro-active stance and made every effort to assist the owners they had the opportunity for a marketing coup (We stand behind our products, and have overcome!) but instead we as a planet have one more piece of junk floating around our fragile oceans, and likely soon one less American boat builder.....