Catamarans - Current Market Situation

[Dragon Lady]

Very nice cat, interesting rig.
How well does it perform?

[High Tacker]

Thanks for the advice. As to the price, I would really appreciate estimates from those who have looked at a lot of used boats recently, especially one-offs. Of course, it's hard to give an opinion without actually seeing a boat in the flesh, so to speak. But consider that she's in excellent, like new condition. And I'm open to offers, am only asking less than 20% of replacement cost, LOL.

To answer some of your questions: I've added engine hours, displacement, more detail on electronics/electrics, etc., up front on the website:

DAMSL — Catbird Suite

Thanks for pointing out those omissions.

She was launched in November, 1991, so, say, is a 1992 model. Well, that's at least as honest as GM. And she was very high quality to begin with, and still is, built by a team of New Zealand's finest boatbuilders, with close involvement by the designer, Malcolm Tennant, and full-time supervision by my boat partner who was himself an experienced boatbuilder and blue-water sailor.

My only problem with her is that there were supposed to be 4 of us taking care of her, but we all 4 got divorced, went 4 separate ways, and I got the boat, the missus got the house and half of what little money I had left after the boat wad, and I'm getting old.

The hulls are strip-planked New Zealand kauri, fiberglassed inside and out with epoxy. The decks, bulkheads, cabin structure are foam and glass, with carbon fiber and kevlar reinforcement of stress areas. She is one very strongly built cat. The bridgedeck cabin structure was built to take the stresses of a 50-ft. diameter wind turbine on a free-standing mast stepped through the cabin roof to the floor of the bridgedeck. See photos below of "Her Hawtiness" in her original incarnation.

I would welcome a surveyor to compare her to any production catamaran. Indeed, a surveyor did examine her when I was considering (very briefly) going into charter business. He pronounced her "the brick s**t house of catamarans". There is no sign of osmosis or delamination anywhere, nary a blemish below the waterline.

The wind turbine rig was not satisfactory, so that was removed in 1993. She had a 150hp diesel auxiliary driving two props through the same hydraulic drive that was powered by the turbine. I then used her as a motoryacht for a number of years.

Then the hydraulic drive was removed and two 80hp Isuzu diesels with direct drives were installed in 2002 and now have about 400 hours.

Plan B, the A-frame rig, was installed in late 2006, and she was re-launched with 4 furling sails in early 2007. She performs very well with conventional sails. After all, she was designed by Malcolm Tennant, and he gave his blessing to and did the calculations and construction drawings and specifications on the A-frame rig. She goes well to windward with just mainsail and staysail (and those are quite small sails, could do with bigger) and much better with one or both genoas. She is superior reaching and running. At DAMSL — Catbird Suite, look to your left and click on A-Frame Rig.

[Sand crab]

Here's your competition
Catamaran 1990 Shuttleworth Super Cruiser Catamaran For Sale
About the same age and length and at 565,000 it is $100,000s less. I think you really need to lower your expectations. I do like your boat, though.

[ausaviator]

I'm not sure how someone can sit behind a computer and comment that an asking price is $100,000 too high when they have never even set foot aboard the vessel !!

[Sand crab]

ausaviator..... His asking price is $425,000 higher. I was trying to make the point that this other boat was hundreds of thousands of dollars less. BOB

[Tropic Cat]

You can only armchair compare boats to a point. This particular boat is built as solid as a boat can be built and she's famous. I remember reading about her in her original configuration.

[Sand crab]

I did a Yachtworld search on cats from 60' to 65' built from 1990 to 1995.
1990 (Sail) Multi-Hull Boats For Sale
It turned up 6 boats including the Shuttleworth and range in price from $544,000 to $840,000. Like it or not these boats are Damsls competion. A major problem with this boat will be the the unique rig and that will be a hard sell. I am not debating the merits of that system but just stating reality. Unusual boats need unusual buyers. I am an unusual buyer so it interests me but I would be more intested in one of these other boats for a quarter million less. He asked our opinion and that's mine. I still like the boat and really want to play with that rig. I think it's cool but it still is a 20 year old boat. BOB

Going to my shrink 2 days in a row is making me crazy.

[High Tacker]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

.....I still like the boat and really want to play with that rig. I think it's cool... BOB

Going to my shrink 2 days in a row is making me crazy.

Hey BOB a k a Sand crab,

Ya wanna play with my rig, it's gonna cost ya! More than the shrink but guaranteed better results. But serially, thanks for the advice and for looking up those other boats; even if it was for your own pleasure and enlightenment, it gives me some perspective. And yes, she is 20 years old...uh, it just occurred to me that I should try to find out just how many 20-year-old production cats there are out there, still afloat...of course, we can't see behind the pictures, can we?

Hey, I like to think of age as a positive thing...

Cheers, Tom

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by ausaviator

I'm not sure how someone can sit behind a computer and comment that an asking price is $100,000 too high when they have never even set foot aboard the vessel !!

It's exactly what potential buyers will be doing.

I personally love the boat (including the looks - and I don't say that often about Catamarans ). For me the hull construction would be a big plus. And 20 years old would not scare me off either (advantages to being tried and tested over time, especially on a low volume design / build).

But what puts me off is........the rig (former) and current It may perform well (and better than conventional rig?) but to my eyes it doesn't look right.......and for that sort of price the world really would be my oyster on choice, including looks (yeah, I'm shallow ). Got to remember that a fine line between custom build with innovative design ideas - and weird one off (that never caught on).........and for that sort of cash (and even half) would not want to be stuck with the latter.

But the good news is that I don't have that sort of cash , so no hard decisions for me to make


BTW that website needs some major work as a for sale advert - if I hadn't followed the link from CF I would never have realised she was for sale (I didn't check the whole site - doesn't navigate well, so gave up ).

I would get another site and start clean (doesn't need a clever URL) - include everything you would want to know if buying (especially the dull stuff), and the answers to any questions folk ask (even where they seem obvious / dumb ). Will also save you a lot of time / aggro with E-mails by using the site as a reference point.

You might also want to start a "for sale" thread on CF.

[High Tacker]

Hey All, thanks for the advice.

Re the A-frame rig with all furling sails: there are considerable and substantial advantages in performance, safety, and ease of handling. At DAMSL — Catbird Suite on welcome page look to your left and click on A-frame Rig and you'll get my longwinded explanation, including some unusual and advantageous sail configurations. A strong mast is required to support so many sails on furlers, because, of course, they are on wires and thus a lot of tension and so compression on the mast.

I'm sure you cruisers will agree that roller furling/reliable roller reefing consitutes perhaps the greatest fundamental development in sailing in the past couple of centuries, and it has happened in just the past few decades. Safety and convenience, add or reduce sail without having to round up into the wind, and from the safety of the cockpit, and at the touch of a button if you like.

Other than sails themselves, and a mast or two to support them, a keel or other hydrofoil to stop the boat going sideways, a rudder, maybe a motor, an anchor, maybe a radio and now a GPS, the one other thing that practically all sailboats have in common is at least one furling sail. Most substantial cruising boats have at least two. And now a number of sailors are clued up enough to have even more.

And A-frames to support more furling sails are becoming less unusual. See pics below of Greenpeace's new Rainbow Warrior III, 840 tons with two 50-meter A-frame masts and 5 furling sails. That is quite an endorsement of the concept. The designers, Dykstra & Partners (also designers of the Maltese Falcon with unusual rig) did extensive wind tunnel testing and the A-frame rig as is on RWIII was chosen for strength, efficiency, practicality and safety. You can see some scenes of her sailing in first sea trials, about 1 min. into the first video link following, and motoring with all sails furled in the second video:

Rainbow Warrior III - YouTube

RAINBOW WARRIOR.mpg - YouTube

Another good example is the SMG cat NumberOne with A-frame and 3 furling sails that I know of, genoa, staysail and a furling, boomless main, and she recently won a race of 100 substantial cruising boats in the Adriatic, beating other big cats and proving upwind ability by tacking better than big fast monohulls. See pics below and video at:

SMG Videos

Re the looks of the rig, some love it, some don't. DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM, as they say, taste is not disputable. Again, you sort of have to be there, see her in the flesh, step aboard and immediately in the cockpit and the saloon you'll say something like, "Wow! There's no bloody mast stuffing up the view! And no boom!"

Malcolm Tennant once told me that the bane of his existence as a designer, one of the real pioneers specializing in multihulls, was, "They all, or almost all, want a boat that looks like other boats."

[Palarran]

Originally Posted by ausaviator

I'm not sure how someone can sit behind a computer and comment that an asking price is $100,000 too high when they have never even set foot aboard the vessel !!

It's pretty easy actually. All you do is type in your opinions in a box and hit a submit button.

But, back to the boat. Famous? or Infamous? I've spent years looking at catamarans and have actually purchased one. I really don't see how this boat is going to fetch more then a couple hundred grand. Somebody who actually has the money isn't going to pay twice as much as a simular sized production boat sells for. Dream all you want but as some point - reality will hit.

[deckofficer]

High Tracker,

It is forward thinking customers like you and forward thinking designers that have the state of performance cat cruising where it is today. IMHO, where it is today is on the cusp of some great advances that would not be possible in the day of "that doesn't look right or isn't traditional". Boomless mainsail, hybrid aux to keep major weight low and in the center, are just a couple of items that 10 years from now will be as common as the single furling headsail. I for one think the SMG is in fact the future, and I would be honored to embrace that right now.

[High Tacker]

Hello deckofficer,

Thanks for that. I couldn't agree more. Malcolm was way ahead of his time, and his overall designs, on sailing cats as well as powercats, especially the hull designs, have been much copied. I also like to think that my contributions have not been negligible.

and Palarran,

It's natural for you to tout, or defend, production boats, because you have one and you'd like for it to retain some value, and I hope that it will. But if you want to talk about reality, buying a production boat is like playing Russian roulette.

For years, I've been based in Whangarei, New Zealand, where a lot of overseas cruisers do their refits and general repairs, maintenance, especially cats because Norsand boatyard is equipped to get them in and out on a railway, and at reasonable cost. And by the time they get to NZ, a LOT of them need major repair work: osmosis, delamination, furniture coming loose from bulkheads and hulls, hatches and other fittings just screwed on instead of bolted through, and things screwed into a balsa wood core that then soaks up water when a screw gets loosened a bit, so all that rotten crap has to ripped out and replaced.

Problems galore, you name it, and a lot of it, I think, is because those companies hire unskilled workers who know no better when they don't mix chemicals right, or anything else for that matter. And we're talking the big name production boats: Catana, Lagoon, FP. I saw one Catana that had to have all the glass below the waterline ripped off and replaced. In contrast, there is not a single blemish below the waterline on my 20-year-old.

If I ever sell this too-big-for-me-now-that-I'm-alone boat, I'll be looking for a smaller cat, and I'll be looking at one-offs and will have any boat thoroughly surveyed before buying.

[Palarran]

No one is going to preceive additional value in my boat due to posting on this forum. I can say that I purchased a semi-production boat half your boats age at half your asking price. It also has, I would guess, 4 times more features. And, while it isn't a fast boat, it does actually sail.

I really don't want to bash your boat, but the point is, get real. Listing a boat and selling one are two different things. If you want to sell it, you will have to ask a price that is realistic.

[Sand crab]

One thing you do have in your favor is your price is in NZ dollars so already it's dropped about a $100,000 in USD. I would recommend streamlining your website. I started going through your pics and damn, I'm not sure I ever made it to the end. How many do you have? As the other guys said go ahead and place it for sale in the classifieds here. Make sure you put in the price. There was a thread about that not too long ago and it will ignite a bitchfest. You can place free ads on Boatdesign.net and Multihulls4us as well and maybe Sailing Anarchy. I'd also put it in the So. Fla Craigslist and others. I didn't mean to sound like I was dispareging the boat in my earlier posts. I like it and I would be interested in it if I had the bucks. As for my little quote
Going to my shrink 2 days in a row is making me crazy.
I was taking my friend to the shrink (she is nuts) and she said that. She didn't even realize it was funny but I was laughing so hard I would have had milk coming out of my nose if I was drinking milk. HA Good Luck BOB