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I was reading the boat of the Year Issue of Sailing World. Two "family size cruiser racers" the J/97 and J/95 get top billing and I thought they looked nice until I read the price. These babies are close to $200K on the water! That's around eight times the cost of a modest family car, and surely out of reach of the "average middle class family" with the a mortgage and 2.1 kids. Who is going to buy these boats? was sailing always this pricey? Back in the 80's it seems to me that sailboats were a lot less expensive in real terms. Or am I suffering a failure of memory?
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When I bought "Smoke" I inherited C&C's original paperwork for the building and outfitting of this, their new line of racer-cruisers. This includes everything that was part of the 'Base Price', and all the 'Optional Equipment' they decided was best for their showboat. It also includes the considerable selection of sails from Ulmer Sails (Canada) Ltd. Keep in mind these are 1984 prices and are all in Canadian dollars.
BASE PRICE $29,390
OPTIONAL EQUIPMENT $10,165 (Available to all for $$$'s)
SAILS $13,126
NON-STANDARD OPTIONS $ 9,560 ***
TOTAL $62,241
*** This includes Loran, VHF radio, B&G wind instruments, compass, #3
tracks on cabin top, other odds and ends. Also custom mast and boom.
There are some minor differences between what was ordered and what was actually included in the final boat, but that gives you an idea of what a 27 footer cost 25 years ago. Your J's are 32 footers. And will the huge majority of those J's still be racing and active 25 years from now? In the case of Mark I to IV's, add 10 years, and perhaps someone has the costs for an early Mark I to compare the original costs.
Then add the effect of inflation at, say, 2.5 % over those 25 years.
Alan of SMOKE 1984 Mk V 002
Alan of SMOKE 1984 Mk V 002
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Hi Alan,
it appears that my boat never had the shelf starboard side above the ice-box, but it does have the fiddle in place - wierd. Can I get onboard your boat sometime and make a cardboard template of the shelf so I can make/fit one?
Thanks
Dave M "Overtime"
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When my boat was shipped to Texas in early 1974 the price was $12,048 US plus shipping from Ontario. At that time median household income in the state was $13,924. Today the median is $57,511 so a new boat of similar build would work out to about $50K US. I've pretty much quit reading most of the sailing magazines because the articles no longer speak to the average sailor. Boat US, GOB and Practicle Sailor are the only three I still take.
Mike M
SV Wind Horse
#375
Galveston, Tx
Mike M
SV Wind Horse
#375
Galveston, Tx
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Sure Dave, you must be looking at the pics which were part of the Toronto Yacht Sales ad?? I suspect that you might find several minor differences between our Mk V's. As the first of a series, Smoke's fittings might have been the subject of some re-thinking by the production department at C&C. We'll arrange a look and a sip to compare things.
Alan of SMOKE 1984 Mk V 002
Alan of SMOKE 1984 Mk V 002
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A jumble of thoughts about economics. (I'm not going to try to develop a coherent argument here, a) because many of these factors are important or irrelevant depending on personal circs and inclination and b) as Deep Thought said in Hitchhiker's Guide, "It's going to take some time.")
Keep in mind as you look at the price of Smoke that this was C&C's attempt to be affordable (less complex interior, outboard rudder and other simplifications). There were cheaper boats, but not at that quality level. If I recall correctly, prices spiked dramatically in that period, as they had in the mid-seventies, from rapidly climbing prices for resin and various components (builders also had to contend with rigorous new safety regulations, which virtually doomed the gas engine and required the much more expensive diesel).
While reeling from boat sticker-shock, think of what's happened to the price of a cottage within 3 hours drive of any metropolitan area. Prices just go from one leap to the other. The only thing that's likely to change that is the glut on the market that will come when the present generation of owners pops its clogs and their children will have to sell to pay death duties. (I also think there are going to be issues around the cost of fuel that will render cottages less desirable, but that's another story.)
Who will sail the J's in 10 or 20 years time? Probably lots of people. But there are many factors to consider. J/105's are strong twenty years after introduction because there's a strong one-design fleet. They're also very well designed boats (as is the 109, the only other J I'm really familiar with). The asymmetric makes them fun to sail, too, without the hassle of a pole. They'll be in demand, too, because many of the boats we sail will simply be worn out (not all, but many).
The sixties to (arguably) the 90's should be understood as the halcyon days for the middle class family. Historically, everything got more affordable from 1945 until the oil shock of the seventies. Since then we've been on a roller coaster in which some things have become more attainable, some less. But the overall trend has not been good for the middle or lower class.
Making predictions is a mug's game, but I think I've got history on my side here (regrettably). Barring some unforeseen change (which I think more likely to be to our disadvantage than to our advantage) there may not be a time again when a member of the middle class can afford a new boat around 30 feet without sacrifices elsewhere.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Last edited by (2010-01-19 05:53:37)
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
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So to sum it up, it looks like new boats in the "family cruiser/racer" 30 foot range have gotten about twice as expensive in real terms. Ouch!
However there is a silver lining: back then there was nowhere near the huge population of good used boats out there for the family guy to buy. When you see 1980s-vintage C&C 29s in great shape going for well under $40K that makes things a bit happier.
But I still wonder how many of those Js will sell, and who to. Seems to me there is an opportunity for somebody innovative to figure out how to build and sell for less and make a killing. It would be nice to think so. If Tata can make a usable 4-seater car and sell for well under $5K even with North American add-ons, maybe it can be done.
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I was discussing this very topic a year or so ago and one thing that has really brought the middle class into sailing in the first place was the rise of reasonably priced used sailboats. Frankly, you can get a good crew on a new racing boat to beat a MKI - MKIV, but a fair sailor who is seriously trying, can give much bigger boats a run for their money on a C&C 27.
In keeping with the financial/Douglas Adams references (but moving on to Dirk Gently) in 1985 a Jag XJ6 was $32,000 US and today an XJ runs $67,000. Not nearly the gain that Sailboats have seen. Used, with no rust, the '85 cost about $5500 today. But to David's point, I don't think that Jaguar has as much resin as a sailboat. As for Jaguar's new owner Tata, they will be on our shores with a car in 2011 or so. Since my old Saturn is going to bite the dust soon, I can't wait to visit a showroom full of Tatas.
Mike M
SV Wind Horse
#375
Galveston, Tx
Mike M
SV Wind Horse
#375
Galveston, Tx
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You've put your finger on one part of the problem for any new-boat builders - they have to compete with 15-thousand-dollar 27's and forty-K 29's. But think of how little manoeuvring room they have in doing so - $8-9K for the engine and its gear, $6-7K for the spar and standing rigging, $2-3 thousand for deck gear, $3-4K for the keel with lead at around $1/lb plus cost of moulding. That's $19,000 just using the first number I conjured up (and I think those are _very_ conservative). Then add the value of a quarter-million for tooling a simple boat, someplace to do the work, people to do the work...
And we're spoiled - the market doesn't want something part-finished like the rough little boats that made George Hinterhoeller a star - we want fully lined, nicely cabinetted boats that our friends will admire. If someone built a Shark today, everyone would sneer. Hunters and many Beneteaus are sheep in wolf's clothing, but the fit and finish makes many people's wallets itch (never mind that they've been around long enough to turn themselves into expert marketing organizations that happen to build boats). Achieving that fit and finish, plus delivering exciting performance... have you priced a new C&C lately?
As to the Tata analogy - Tata may be able to build a cheap car, but will you buy one? I drove around for a week in a Yugo and while it met the safety spec, the on-the-road results confirmed my impression: death-trap. My dollar's on Tata as a re-run (but without luxuries like gas gauges). Returning to what I said about being spoiled, I don't think many of us would want a boat from Tata Marine.
There may be a way to make less expensive boats that we'd be willing to buy, but given the constraints that you're working with plus the expectations of the market, it's going to be a stretch.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Last edited by (2010-01-20 00:09:20)
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
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Google Flying Tiger Sailboat. Not a family machine perhaps but relevant to this discussion. It can be done!
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Just a little comparaison; in 1984 I bought a house in a suburb just north of Montreal for $ 125 000, that same house just sold for over $ 280 000, and I couldn't build and sell that house new today for less than $ 325 000, ...........
Maybe the J's are not that expensive......
JP
Twenty-odd years ago I was sailing with the VP of a Canadian manufacturing firm and we got to discussing offshore manufacture, relatively new then. "We don't want to do it," he said, "because we'll be paying the Chinese to learn everything they need to take over our business." Today, _nothing_ is made in Canada and production is in China; that company exists only as a marketing organization and its name is less and less prominent every year. When people started this process of off-shoring, the model that was posited was that North America would happily off-load the grimy business of manufacturing to places like China, retaining the high-value work of design, marketing, etc. for itself. Except the Chinese don't see it that way and they're absorbing more and more of the high-value work. No one can compete with Taiwan in laptop manufacture because they've devoted themselves to mastering that art. Apple in California puts a nice shine on Macbooks, but they are simply exploiting manufacturing technology only understood in Taipei. Now the mainland, not content with making $37 DVD players and iPods, is in the game from design to manufacture with Lenovo. The rumoured purchase of Volvo by a Chinese car manufacturer not only means that they have access to Volvo technology, but to everything that Volvo learned from Ford.
So, we end up buying our laptops, our iPods and our cars from an economy that participates in a very one-way trade -- we ship them wood and ore, they ship us everything from knick-knacks to sophisticated consumer electronics, then cars. Is this trade sustainable? We of the yacht-owning class (even if it's the second-hand-yacht-owning-class) live well up the sunny side of an economic pyramid, but I suspect that those sunny slopes are going to become much less so as the lower reaches of the pyramid collapse as people who once had manufacturing jobs now take up service jobs.
The Flying Tiger was originally designed as a boat cheap enough to sell _within_ China, but the cat got out of the bag because it's built in China with labour that made the tooling and now makes the boats for pennies per hour and it also fits in a shipping container (surprise!). The only content from the West is 1) the design; 2) the deck hardware and 3) the mast. Items 2 and 3 will be knocked off in short order unless there are compelling marketing reasons for not doing so. Meanwhile, the knowledge of how to make boats will spread until they're not only banging out cheap-and-cheerful sportboats, but stuff that keeps the boys at Swan awake nights.
Perry and the sales org (and their ilk) will do well in the short term, because we'll have lots of absolutely cheaper boats to buy. But in the longer term, those boats will become relatively more expensive as the North American economic pyramid shrinks downward and the Chinese pyramid expands. The only remedy I can see for this dismal picture is the prescription that Jeffrey Simpson harps on in the Globe: greater productivity in North America through deployment of better tools and above all, dramatically better education at every level of society.
This is getting too far from talking about boats for this Forum (don't want to attract a rebuke from the Admin), so I'll end by saying that we're going to see cheaper boats in the near term, but we're not going to like the package they come in if we don't change our ways.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Last edited by (2010-01-19 05:55:26)
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
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I purchased my C&C27 Mark III in 1975 for $27,000. It was one of my best investments ever. I enjoy the boat from the moment I take off the winter cover in the Spring to the moment I recover the boat for Winter. Every sail provides challenges and thrills. The panoramic views of the water, sky and shorelines provide wonderful scenes as they pass by. At the end of the sail a glass of wine watching the sunset, conversations with friends make my day.
You only live once and if you do it right once will be enough.
Price is relative to the economic state at the time. A good boat is always a bargain, no matter the price.
Owning a beautiful yacht, sailing with the wind blowing in your face, competing in races with the best of skippers, provides memories to last a lifetime.
Blue Eyes
BYC
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So far this thread has only discussed the purchase price of a boat. My take on the situation is that purchase price is only a small part of the issue. This past summer, one of our club members picked up a 27 MK III, I believe it is a 1978, out of Minnesota. If I recall correctly, it cost him $6,000.00 US, which included a road-capable trailer that should have been worth that much on its own. This was a great deal for the guy who bought the boat, but it is now going to cost him about $3,000.00 per year to maintain the boat and keep it in our harbour. Add in another $1,000.00 per year minimum for yacht-club membership. So, the question becomes this: if you have sufficient discretionary income to throw $4,000.00 a year at sailing, do you really feel the need to buy a cheaper old boat which will then require the investment of a considerable amount of time, money and effort to restore it and keep it going? Or are you going to invest more money in a stylish floating cottage which will do a better job of pleasing your wife and impressing your business associates? Or possibly a hotter racing machine to fuel your adrenaline and self-image? After 26 years of boat ownership, the amount which I have spent on purchasing boats pales into insignificance compared to the associated membership, maintenance, slip and storage costs. At this point in time, I estimate that I have spent $3 to $4 on those items for every dollar which I have spent on the actual purchase cost of my boats. Of course, I only bought used boats, built by C&C.
This brings me to a second issue, which is that the condition of many older boats like ours is starting to decline sharply. Every summer, our harbour-master cuts up a couple more abandoned boats which are impossible to sell, because they have declined too much to be worth the cost of restoration. Even my own 27 is a case in point. I have spent the past 6 years doing repairs, replacements and upgrades which now total somewhere around 1/3 of the purchase price (and I spent way, way more that the young man mentioned above). After the first year, I started asking myself if I had made a mistake, because my C&C 25 had not needed anywhere near that much work and investment after I bought it. Then I reflected on the fact that my 25 was barely over a decade old at the time of purchase, whereas Carriden was 25 years old at time of purchase. Those extra years of UV, wear and tear made a huge difference, even though Carriden had been in relatively good shape. Fiberglass may not wear out or break down, but most of the other components do. So, I would argue that many of those "affordable" old boats are not necessarily so affordable if you factor in the cost and effort of making them truly shipshape and maintaining them in that fashion. Refer to the thread in this forum on the cost of replacing a troublesome Atomic 4, which approaches, or exceeds, the purchase price of the 27 which I mentioned at the beginning of this rant. Also, smaller old boats are often in worse shape because their owners typically have less money to throw into maintenance, and large investments in maintenance are harder to justify. An acquaintance of mine moved up from his 25-footer to a 30-footer a few years ago. He did it because the new boat was an awesome deal from south of the border, fully rigged for racing with a good sail inventory, at an incredibly affordable price. Now he faces the situation of being a hard-core racer who cannot afford to replace worn-out sails because the sails for the larger boat are so much more expensive.
A final point to make. Going back to the issue of total cost being much more than the purchase price, the cost of mooring, winter storage and even club membership continues to increase at a rate way beyond the rate of inflation. My winter storage costs increased by nearly 30% over the last 2 years. If you are in the privileged sector with spiraling executive compensation, this is not as much of an issue. However, if you are a simple working stiff, or a pensioner on a fixed income, it is getting harder and harder each year to justify the expenditure and come up with the scratch for a purely luxury item. My own belief is that this rate of increase is partially fueled by rapidly increasing associated costs, such as the cost of dredging. But I think that a lot of it comes from the scarcity issue: "Hey, you don't like our prices? Where else are you gonna find a slip in this area?" When this attitude is coupled with a local government's antipathy for boaters, everything simply becomes less accessible and less affordable for the working stiff. Talking with my own harbour-master's office reveals that they expect the mix of boats in our harbour to change dramatically over the next decade. They anticipate that many of the smaller old boats, like our 27's, will disappear and be replaced by larger new boats. If this occurs, it will cause a reorganization of the harbour and a reduction in the total number of slips. Elsewhere around the continent, marinas are being replaced by waterfront condo developments and government-run harbours are silting up and falling into disrepair. Cruising associations are deeply concerned about the growing practice of charging mooring fees in areas which used to be free.
So, those are my core concerns around the economics of sailing. It is an issue that has been much on mind over the last few years, especially because my own club faces the possibility of being priced out of existence, thanks to the renewal cost of a land lease with our local government. Do these issues resonate with anyone else out there?
(P.S. Sorry if this seems to be a run-on paragraph. The editor is eliminating all of my paragraph breaks. Admin, do you have any suggestions?)
Marcus from Carriden
Mk III, Hull #847
Oakville, Ontario
[The Admin doesn't know. It bugs him, too, but he's been too busy to do anything about anything other than the attempt to spam the Forum. - Admin]
Last edited by (2010-01-20 00:11:33)
Marcus Opitz,
Formerly from Carriden, Mk III, Hull #847,
now skippering "Everdina," a 1975 Ontario 32
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Ok, it appears to be fixed now.
See?
Thanks for your patience.
Admin
Last edited by (2010-01-19 05:33:16)
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I dropped in on the boat show in Toronto, which I haven't done in a couple years. I was quite struck by the number of Toronto-area clubs with displays, looking for members. I know this has gone on for years, and I don't know if that represents genuine need for fresh blood or not. The Georgian Bay marinas up where I sail also had booths, but many frankly had no available slips: everything was already booked solid.
Demand for slips in southeastern Georgian Bay has remained so fierce that local marinas took one look at the global economic meltdown last year and with the exception of Doral Marine, which held the line on rates, punched through another round of increases for 2009, generally 3 to 6 percent. I haven't surveyed them all this year, and there may have been more holding the line. I belong to Midland Bay S.C., which is a self-help club where total membership costs are probably less than half of a commercial marina. (Granted we don't have a diningroom, swimming pool or any other doo-dads, but the place is well run.) We now have a healthy membership waiting list, where only a couple seasons ago we would have been able to figure out how to squeeze in a small keelboat.
I've thought a lot about when boating will get to the tipping point where I live and boat: the point at which powerboaters especially look at increasing storage and dock costs and fuel bills and decide it's just too much. But so long as people are asking $1,000-$2,000 a week to rent their cottage, a boat, even if it hardly ever leaves the dock, continues to look like a vacation bargain. One thing stopping a mass exodus is that the resale market for powerboats is so horrible that people can't part with their investments. I don't see it rebounding any time soon. We set an attendance record in our club sailing school last summer, and demand for our adult LTS program has also never been higher.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
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