12 replies to this topic

[schoonerman]

Just sold two new K6's in the West and a couple of US built Vipers.

I was wondering something. How many sportboat sailors out there sail their boats just for shits and giggles? I suppose I should put this into a POLL?

I hear more and more from folks downsizing their racing programs...maybe keeping a larger boat for cruising sailing and racing a small boat. Makes sense...sort of. Two of my sales last week sold bigger boats and will sail for just fun, with occasional races.

What say yee?

[6924]

Well Done !

Downsizing will con

[dolphinmaster]

Just sold two new K6's in the West and a couple of US built Vipers.

I was wondering something. How many sportboat sailors out there sail their boats just for shits and giggles? I suppose I should put this into a POLL?

I hear more and more from folks downsizing their racing programs...maybe keeping a larger boat for cruising sailing and racing a small boat. Makes sense...sort of. Two of my sales last week sold bigger boats and will sail for just fun, with occasional races.

What say yee?

Are you saying some of your recent sales of K6's and Vipers were primarily going to daysailing activity with the occasional race thrown in?

[fullsail]

Well, I have built myself a boat that I can sail alone and this is what I do may times a week. I check wind and weather and then I go sailing if there is wind and no rain.
The boat is a 26 feet sportboat type with no cabin and no motor and I keep it drysail. Ideally I need a crew for trapeze and spi handling though, but I can mange the spi alone up to early ten digit.
My friend Nikoka has an Etchells and is the only competitive boat to mine in my club. So we drag race when we are on the water together. It is good for perfecting the trimming.
Yes I sail for fun and because I need to.

Superblanc photos

Superblanc on youtube

[schoonerman]

Just sold two new K6's in the West and a couple of US built Vipers.

I was wondering something. How many sportboat sailors out there sail their boats just for shits and giggles? I suppose I should put this into a POLL?

I hear more and more from folks downsizing their racing programs...maybe keeping a larger boat for cruising sailing and racing a small boat. Makes sense...sort of. Two of my sales last week sold bigger boats and will sail for just fun, with occasional races.

What say yee?

Are you saying some of your recent sales of K6's and Vipers were primarily going to daysailing activity with the occasional race thrown in?

Sort of... all the boats will race. There just seems to be a 'joy' sailing component to each of them. I have poor prospective on this. I'm on the water typically a couple of hundred days/year doing something, though rarely to just 'go' sailing. As we all know the Catalina/Hunter crowd buy their boats, by and large, solely for this purpose. I'm just trying to gage just how much 'joy' sailing there is amongst the sporties.

[kmccabe]

Sort of... all the boats will race. There just seems to be a 'joy' sailing component to each of them.

umm isn't that what its supposed to be about? Racing is one thing, but not everyone can win a race. If you don't enjoy the sheer thrill of being on the water with your boat WTF are you doing it for?

[SailAR]

We had originally seen a lot of big boat owners trying sportsboats as a cheaper, easier way to get out and race and use the big boat for distance and cruising. You could buy your annual allotment of Viper sails for less than one new sail on the big boat and only needed one or two crew instead of 5-8.

Ultimately, most of us sold the small boats as there wasn't enough time to use them both... a few kept them both. No one I know of has dumped their big boat for a sportsboat outright.

If it was just for joie de vivre or joie de sailing, you would have seen a lot more lower tech, less athletic daysailors being purchased that could be kept on a mooring and singlehanded.

YMMV

[Sin Nombre]

Just sold two new K6's in the West and a couple of US built Vipers.

I was wondering something. How many sportboat sailors out there sail their boats just for shits and giggles? I suppose I should put this into a POLL?

I hear more and more from folks downsizing their racing programs...maybe keeping a larger boat for cruising sailing and racing a small boat. Makes sense...sort of. Two of my sales last week sold bigger boats and will sail for just fun, with occasional races.

What say yee?

Are you saying some of your recent sales of K6's and Vipers were primarily going to daysailing activity with the occasional race thrown in?

Sort of... all the boats will race. There just seems to be a 'joy' sailing component to each of them. I have poor prospective on this. I'm on the water typically a couple of hundred days/year doing something, though rarely to just 'go' sailing. As we all know the Catalina/Hunter crowd buy their boats, by and large, solely for this purpose. I'm just trying to gage just how much 'joy' sailing there is amongst the sporties.

The latest two FT 7.5's sold (3 weeks ago) were purchased for day sailing with the racing as an added bonus. People still want to relax on the water, but why not go fast while doing it?

[Varan]

Love sailing sportboats, but unless you sail a Melges 24, we race J24s in the PNW. Washington, Idaho, Montana all have fleets of J24s, but not much in the way of sporties except for the Seattle M24 fleet. Signed up to take the U20 to the NOODS this year, but bailed when we were the only boat in the sportboat fleet. What's up with that? Some vipers showed up at WIRW, which is encouraging, but until the smaller sporties gain traction in our area, we will sick to those slow fat boxes of pain, or bigger PHRF boats. Will that stop me from buying another small sportboat, absolutely not. Already eyeballing the vx1d (but I still want a ride on a K6). For my own boat, I cannot imaging anything but a small sportboat (or performance dinghy), even if I do not race it. I love sailing too much for anything else.

[Mambo Kings]

Its all about fun.

I like to race and I like to cruise/daysail.
A long while ago, I had one boat that did both. It was a PITA. Moving race sails on and cruisings sails off. Compromising on day sailing ameneties so that we were competitive on race day. It was one boat that was really, in hindsight, mediocre at both. It was also expensive.

Now I have an uncompromising fun race boat - The Viper 640. And an uncompromising fun day sailor/weekender - Carl Arlberg designed Seasprite.

The Seasprite stays on the mooring, we clean the bottom maybe twice a season. Its a beautiful traditional boat. I dont care if my friends stand on the sails. There are cocktail shakers, every conceivable type of bottle opener, coolers, and even a sun awning - who cares about weight? The sails are heavy and last for ever and we have a roller furling jib and the thingy that catches the mainsail when we dowse.We have had a lot of fun days swimming off the swim ladder and evenings sippin cocktails on the bow. My mooring costs $45 a year and I havent bought a new sail in 5 years.

The Viper is dry sailed. Its light, fun and fast. It costs me very little to keep it as competitive as the fastest guys in the country. I buy one new suit of sails each year for less than the cost of a racing jib on some of my friend's racer/cruisers. We are a team of three when we travel to major regattas, which is an ideal number to go on the road. We can go for 12 hours, 4 hours on and 8 hours resting...arrive fresh, and still be small enough team that staying in a reasonable hotel doesn't bust the bank. We have results that range from great to awful, but the boat is so fun and fast to sail , that we always come off the water with grins.

So I own 47' racer/cruiser. 21' of it is pure thrill race boat. 26' is pure traditional day boat. It costs a fraction of my previous boat to run and I love them both. Its all about the fun!

[Rubber Duck]

I have an Open 5.70 and got it primarily for racing, but also spend a lot of time on it whether it is training with my crew, or just taking friends out for an afternoon.

Its great for a fun afternoon of swimming and cracking open a couple of beers, or taking a girl out for an afternoon cruise around the harbor. Also I try to get out singlehanded or whatever whenever the breeze is up. I can handle it alone with the kite up to about 12 knts, after that an extra pair of hands is nice.

Often times ill just grab one of my non-sailing friends and go have a blast planning around. They often times have more fun then my sailing friends, and I find that I rarely have to buy myself a drink afterwards haha

[hoofhearted]

We had a Nacra 20 and were sailing a good friend's Elliott 770 among other boats in the area. Wife and I came to conclussion to get our own keel boat to do local PHRF and do some OD stuff. Bought a Viper 640 almost two years ago after doing quite a bit of research and comparisons between different boats. The Viper fit a bill that is easy to move around, easy to rig (wife and I do it), can double hand for funsies, and not need a whole damn bunch of sandwich eaters to help us sail a boat. Sold the Nacra 20 this summer due to knee injuries. However we just bought a Hobie 33 a few months ago to fit another bill. Take friends out beer canning, take family with kids out sailing when they come in town, and help reduce wear and tear on the Viper. Mambo Kings is right about Viper sails compared to bigger boat sails. That is a nice adnavatge to using your smaller boat as a race boat. The newest sail on our Hobie 33 is a 1994 sail. But we still have a good time bouncing around the cans with friends and family. Just recently took a high school kid just getting into the sport we met at club beach for his second "big boat ride" as compared to Club 420's for a race this weekend. We buy drinks and pizza afterwards, but still no goddamn sandwiches for the crew. Gotta keep them focused.

[fastyacht]

I built racing dinghies back in the 90s. I haven't tracked the statistics recently, but back then, for racing classes, essentially all the new boats were built for racing sailors--and an informal survey found this to be the case among other builders as well. Typically, the top of the fleet sailors. We had one totally random newbuild for a guy who just wanted to learn to sail (in a racing dinghy! Who knew!).

There is such a glut of sailboats, in general, on the market, that for non-racing, I suspect the dinghy / very small (less than 30 foot) market is dismal. I could be wrong.

It would be interesting to see how many of your clearly race-oriented boats end up being built for non-racing customers.