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Old 17-02-2015, 03:14   #61
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Originally Posted by arsenelupiga View Post
I duno. you can always find a case that supports your theory. But on average, boat building is better. Less material & boats with less damages.

finite analysis is new stuff and makes sense. there is no way to determine what kind of stress is experienced in 50 kn & 15 feet breaking waves storm. Unless boat goes thru it and pressures are measured and analysed by computer in real time.

Old builders, although sympathetic, cannot match results of that test.
I would have to agree with you in some cases that some boats are built better today. The entry level boats on average are probably a much better value than those of the past. As long as you understands that the entry level boats are still built with the least expensive materials available and engineered to use the least amount of materials in construction then we are on the same page. I think these boats do a great job for 99% of the owners.
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:18   #62
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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I'm not sure Swan, HR, Oyster, etc ever made boats in the mid-class price range. Maybe HR at the lower end of their size range back then. Keep in mind your $300,000 was less than $70,000 in 1975.

Your argument would have been just as true back in the 70's. Anybody buy a new "BWB" boat back in the 1970's? If so, what was a good price?

I don't think a lack of a windlass as a standard base-feature rules out a BWB. Some base-feature boats don't even come with sails! Nobody buys a base-feature boat of any type and expects it to be RTW sail-away.

Mark
I agree that these were always well above the average in price. But in the 70s even a middle of the road production Morgan would be a much better boat to take offshore than today's middle of the road production model.

As far as lack of basic offshore features I would disagree with you on that. If you start accepting lack of BW features in your criteria of a BW boat pretty soon you end up with a dock queen. And the fact that the buyers have been conditioned not to expect BW features in allegedly BW boats speaks volumes of the power of the PR and glossy mag ad departments. Would you buy any medicine not expecting it to actually do what it says on it's label? Why not buy brand new cars without tires or actually without engines as sails are the sailboat's primary engine? Or a new suit without buttons? Why not if you can always add them later?
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:18   #63
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

The great thing is that at this point in time most any sailor or wannabe can find an affordable boat that fits their needs. If a manufactured product goes out of production, it's likely that it's because no one wanted it at its price. The market works. Personally, I've come to conclude the blue water moniker is more about people and their attitude than about boats.
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:30   #64
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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I would have to agree with you in some cases that some boats are built better today. The entry level boats on average are probably a much better value than those of the past. As long as you understands that the entry level boats are still built with the least expensive materials available and engineered to use the least amount of materials in construction then we are on the same page. I think these boats do a great job for 99% of the owners.
to be honest, i do have doubts about the quality of boat. How these staff strikes affect quality? Sure not for better.

And this outsourcing of work to cheap locations. Again, step backwards in quality. Some elite fricks running their archaic agenda and selling jobs (like they own them) for some sort of handle in power in foreign countries.

no good answer for this twisted reality of today.
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:31   #65
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Its very seldom that simple. I remember the same BS logic when it was applied to aircraft design. After years in the field cracks were reported in the new thinner firewalls that had been redesigned to save weight and money. You will only know if this logic makes sense 20 years from now. My surveyor buddy is telling me that in some cases we don't even have to wait.
Yet aircraft are safer than ever before...

It's the same everywhere: Modern materials and engineering allow things that weren't though possible before. Like making air planes out of composites, or glueing aluminium. (There's a boat out there that's build of aluminium extrusions glued together...)
If done properly this leads to better products.
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:40   #66
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Yet aircraft are safer than ever before...

It's the same everywhere: Modern materials and engineering allow things that weren't though possible before. Like making air planes out of composites, or glueing aluminium. (There's a boat out there that's build of aluminium extrusions glued together...)
If done properly this leads to better products.

Just never for a fleeting moment compare aircraft construction with boat construction. Entry level boats are built with the least expensive materials and engineered to be built with the least amount of materials. There is nothing high tech about entry level boats. That said they do the job for most of the worlds sailors
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Old 17-02-2015, 03:58   #67
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Just never for a fleeting moment compare aircraft construction with boat construction. Entry level boats are built with the least expensive materials and engineered to be built with the least amount of materials. There is nothing high tech about entry level boats. That said they do the job for most of the worlds sailors
The comparison does hold. For one thing, airplanes are also build with the least amount of materials (and for a reason). The point I'm making here is that reducing the amount of material does not mean that the end result is less strong.
As to "the cheapest materials", I wouldn't be surprised if the base materials used nowadays are more expensive (at constant prices) then the ones used 3 decades ago. Boat construction has become rather high tech. Lookign at how the big ones produce I seem to have the impression that the cost savings mostly come from having more efficient processes, not corner cutting...
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Old 17-02-2015, 04:22   #68
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Originally Posted by Island Time O25 View Post
The only one I can think of that's even remotely can be calle BW is the IP but even they have their issues which make them less than suitable as BW boat, such as not having a windlass as a standard feature. I can understand not having a TV or some such, but to lack a windlass on a half a mil supposedly BW boat? Seriously?

ALL boats, well most all anyway have issues. I assume the no windlass thing is liked to the no electronics thing also, you pick the ones you like, although oddly my IP was 27 yrs old when I bought her and no-one had installed a windlass, nor any other "cruising gear". Seemingly proof to me that at least some number of IP's are Marina Queens too and were most likely bought as a status symbol. Who could cruise a 38' boat with no windlass? A body builder maybe?

More I dig into it, an IP is sort of an anachronism, it has a lot of modern features, but sort of wrapped into an old fashioned hull design, at least at first look anyway.
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Old 17-02-2015, 04:29   #69
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Yet aircraft are safer than ever before...

It's the same everywhere: Modern materials and engineering allow things that weren't though possible before. Like making air planes out of composites, or glueing aluminium. (There's a boat out there that's build of aluminium extrusions glued together...)
If done properly this leads to better products.

Aircraft, at least small ones are not safer than ever before. We want that to be the case, but statistics do not bear that out.
As a matter of fact the more modern, newer aircraft with composite construction etc., come with a life limit, a number of hours that upon reaching that number, the aircraft is scrapped. How is that for progress?

My little personal aircraft turns 69 this year, and will almost certainly barring a major accident, outlive me.
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Old 17-02-2015, 04:50   #70
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Originally Posted by Island Time O25 View Post
As far as lack of basic offshore features I would disagree with you on that. If you start accepting lack of BW features in your criteria of a BW boat pretty soon you end up with a dock queen. And the fact that the buyers have been conditioned not to expect BW features in allegedly BW boats speaks volumes of the power of the PR and glossy mag ad departments. Would you buy any medicine not expecting it to actually do what it says on it's label? Why not buy brand new cars without tires or actually without engines as sails are the sailboat's primary engine? Or a new suit without buttons? Why not if you can always add them later?
I think you missed my point on this. Most boats nowadays (and probably even in the past) do not come "standard" with a lot of things. Like sails, even.

This isn't because they are not "BWBs" - it is because the buyers want to specify the exact equipment that goes on them. It is also because of marketing - low "price", but once options are added it is a high price. And because the factory needs to support a dealer network - which makes money off of installing these options.

And it isn't even like one needs to go purchase all that equipment and install it themselves. All of it is available from the factory or dealer by simply placing a checkmark next to the options you want.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, expects to buy any base boat, step on it and go world cruising. So lack of certain equipment on a new base boat isn't damning at all.

There is/was a corollary with automobiles here. I don't know how these things are sold nowadays, but in the past, you went to a dealer and was quoted a bare car with no AC, power windows, cruise control etc. These were all options added by the dealer after the factory. The dealer made most of its profits from this, while the customer got the exact features they wanted.

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Old 17-02-2015, 05:07   #71
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Mark, on this thread you seem to have done a good job at damning the heavy displacement vessels you so seem to loathe.

I agree that blue water cruising itself has evolved and the vessels have changed to suit it but I still see some advantages to older vesselss

My Cabo Rico isn't any worse for cruising than any of the "modern designs". I cruise at 7 knots, I believe you manta is just about the same. I have 150 gallons of water and 53 gallons of fuel...which is sometimes double modern vessels. So I only have to fill water about 12 times a year.

I have a decent size head with separate shower, a berth big about the same size as modern cruisers, but we have really good sea berths... something most production cruisers you are talking about lack.

I can hold 300 feet of chain and two 80 pounds anchors on my bow without issue... lets see you do that in a modern vessel my same size.

I have a mast, sails, an engine, water pumps, standing rigging, etc... all the same as modern vessels.

But... when I hit a 3 foot piece of timber floating in the water I'm not going to poke a hole in my hull.
You haven't been reading well. I'm not damning those types of boats - I am making fun of the people who think these designs are the only way to be safe offshore and lamenting that nobody builds them anymore.

Do you really think that Hawk, or the Dashew's various boats, are unsafe offshore? They are/were leading edge at building light, strong, safe boats that have NONE of the features like slack bilges, full keels, barn-door rudders, etc.

I have no issue with the boats that do fit yours and the OP's descriptions of "BWB" - certainly I don't wish them off the waters like many here do with "entry level production boats". Nor go at them with the same venom.

But the fact remains that they are extinct now, or close enough to call them so. The reason for this is not jet-setters hopping from TV to TV - it is because those designs don't make any sense, and never really did for long (they were just copied over from wooden boat designs into other materials).

We hit 3' pieces of timber and even whole trees pretty much regularly with our unsafe boat and don't suffer any damage. Kind of a hazard around the parts we are sailing right now. Even a lot of "production boats" come standard with an aramid layer for puncture resistance - 4" of mat and woven roving aren't the only way to solve that problem.

I'm sorry you feel defensive about your boat - but must point out that I have never discussed "most production cruisers" here (unless you are counting Oysters, HR, Swan and the like in this). In fact, I have been trying to point out that this discussion is being usurped back into an "entry level production boat" bash-fest.

It does seem like nobody here can get those off their brain long enough to discuss any others, and that there seems to be only "BWB" and "ELPC" categories in existence.

FWIW, I owned a full-keel, barn-door, slack-bilged, heavy-displacement boat for 11 years and loved it. I have a half-hull model of it mounted in our current boat, and still get the luxury of sailing on it once and a while.

So I know what I'm talking about…

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Old 17-02-2015, 05:34   #72
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Back in Nov 2013 I attended an auction of an early 80s Swan 47 which ended up selling for $186K. Having just returned from a circumnavigation it probably needed another $50-75K +/- in refits and upgrades, may be $100K or thereabout.
This is why I will never be on board with todays cruisers. No boat short of a cruise liner needs 75k in refit and upgrades. If you need all that expensive crap to sail then you have no business being on the water. That boat just came back from circumnavigation without those refits and upgrades so why would it need them now? It only needs them for a landlubber who should keep his feet on the hard. The most it would need is a new set of sails (8k, not 30k) and a bottom job with a few thru-hulls replaced. Sure you CAN refit and upgrade to the tune of 75k but to say it would need it is laughable.
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Old 17-02-2015, 05:53   #73
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Car design has improved based on newer materials, computer aided design and more robust crash testing. Some of this may apply to boats, some not.
A large portion applies to boats. 40-50yrs ago, the average builder had not clue about the structural properties so they overbuilt to be on the safe side. Modern boats are designed much better. Yes, there is the occasional mistake but those brands usually don't suvive long.

Also, many of the old blue water designs were basicaly knock offs of older wood designs. It's really hard to build a sturdy wood boat with a fin keel, so the standard was a long keel with slack bilges. Fiberglass changed the rules but it took some time to learn how to take advantage of it.
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Old 17-02-2015, 06:00   #74
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

Aside from the add ons that make for a safe offshore cruise,something to consider is how to build a bluewater boat that is good in light OR heavy air,that is the challenge.Most bluewater sailing is done in less than 20knots.
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Old 17-02-2015, 06:17   #75
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Re: True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

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Will the tiny production numbers of Oyster, Hallberg-Rassy and the like be enough to keep the blue water boat tradition alive?

Will boats of this caliber be seen as charming reminders of days gone by, like the era of the schooner?
This definition of BW has become a niche. And yes, there will always be enough demand to keep a small number of manufacturers building boats to this definition alive. Look at the horse drawn carriage, there is still a very small demand for them that keeps a number of builders in business. I do not use that analogy to disparage this definition of BW. Cape George builds boats even more traditional than the above listed builders and I would buy one of their boats in order to accomplish some of my sailing goals.
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