The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[svHyLyte]

There have been many discussions of yachts that begin with a question something like "What do you think of (boat brand)". Unfortunately, such threads frequently soon devolve into tit-for-tat exchanges, often carried on by members other than actual owners/users of the yacht in question, which really doesn’t add to one's knowledge or are particularly helpful to the questioner.

It seems to me that the best judges of a given yacht are those that own and use them and I'm wondering if it might not be helpful to have an area in the forum devoted to yacht evaluations by actual or former owners.

I have fairly extensive experience with 4 yachts--a Ben Seaborn designed Thunderbird 26; a Phil Rhodes, Rhodes Reliant Yawl; a William Lapworth designed Cal 2-29; and, now, a German Frers designed 1986 Beneteau First 42. While I have sailed aboard many other yachts—too many to list—these four are ones I have had to maintain and repair and so really know and can comment on intelligibly.

With, now, 14,781 members in this forum, there are surely enough actual owners of a wide variety of yachts to be able to come up with a good cross section of opinions that could be quite helpful to prospective buyer/owners so long as actual or former owners can set aside personal biases and/or brand loyalties and give objective opinions of their own yachts.

When my wife and I are considering a purchase, or most major decisions, we try to list the pros- and cons of the alternatives to, hopefully, arrive at a well founded decision. While that does not always work, and we sometimes discover that there was additional information that we should have had, or could have used, the approach has generally been helpful if not entirely effective. By comparison, I have found that decisions made under the influence of unreasoned predispositions are the worst—such as the beautiful but, for my needs, nearly useless two-seat convertible that sits in our garage. (My wife says I should console myself on that with the fact that on the rare occasions we do use the thing, people always come up and compliment us on it—to which I always respond, “Make me an Offer”. None have yet).

Nay case, do we need a “Wikipedia” of yachts?

s/v HyLyte

[bix85]

Great idea!!

I cannot contribute as 8 have yet to own a yacht, but I plan on relying on this kind of info in the future.

Ron

[Hud3]

Scott,

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll take it to the forum management team for discussion, and get back to you.

[hellosailor]

Now, if you partnered with Practical Sailor, who already have hundreds (thousands?) of just such reviews from boat owners for their "old boat" reviews...Instant resource.

Otherwise...have to buy the books, Scott.<G>

[Hud3]

We've had a discussion off-line on Scott's suggestion. Andy is planning to upgrade the vBulletin software in the near future, and it will have some new features that might support something along the lines of what's being proposed here.

Please stand by until the new version is up and running, and the dust settles. We'll re-visit this later on.