16 replies to this topic

[familysailor]

I've spent 45 minutes trying to find an older thread about Bob's small cruiser; the SA search function has defeated me. It reminds me of trying to find answers at your local county offices.....

Here's the boat:







Does anyone remember the name of the thread?

[Ishmael]

http://forums.sailin...showtopic=83291


The search function is useless unless you know sorta what it's called.

[Bob Perry]

Ish:
If someone had tooled that boat up when we designed it they would have sold 50 boats by now.
Nobody builds for the serious cruiser who wants a small boat. There are all sorts of goofball small boats but very few real, good performing small cruisers. And don't give me that Dana, Flicka, BCC bull shit. I mean real , modern performance for the cruiser who likes to sail places and,,,who knows the difference.

[familysailor]

http://forums.sailin...showtopic=83291


The search function is useless unless you know sorta what it's called.

Thanks!
I couldn't remember.
Forgetting is becoming one of most reliable skill sets.

[Jose Carumba]

I think you're right Bob. Maybe someone like Jim Lee would want to build it.

[SemiSalt]

Nobody builds for the serious cruiser who wants a small boat.

Back sometime in the mid-70s, I went to a boat show in Newport, RI. I remember thinking the big news was that all the major manufacturers had a new model in the 24-26 foot range. Pearson, Cal, Dufour, There were five or six of them.

Not any more.

[steele]

I think the Dart is already pretty close. It is a little longer, but has the performance, clean lines and simple nature of the original design criteria. Reducing the number of berths on the Dart and re-working the interior plan would get it into more of cruiser mode. I have only been on it once, but I recall it has sitting head room, a comfortable cockpit and reasonable sail plan.

[Joli]

The problem is a new small boat will cost $80k. A Ranger 26 new in the 70's was under $10k. Wages have simply not kept up with inflation. It's tough for a young family to buy anything new. The day of the tool and die maker, the salesman, the teacher buying new boats is gone.

[ronin]

The day of the tool and die maker, the salesman, the teacher buying new boats is gone.

true. and to make it worse, some marinas seem bent on furthering this trend. take the Everett (Washington) marina, for example. for anyone wanting to do any work in the boat business, or even start a business there used to be plenty of space around the marina that could be rented reaonably, or even sublet. now all of those older (read: affordable) buildings have been razed to the ground and replaced by a few buildings with spaces that only lawyers and doctors can afford, and tons of useless "green space". the ambiance of being around boats and people who love them is pretty much gone. to add insult to injury, the street in front of the new, and mostly empty, building is named Craftsman Way. how nostalgic

[Soñadora]

This would be a great candidate for Kickstarter. I'm sure we have enough knowledge here that we could work up some solid costs to manufacture this. And I bet with SA alone, there would be enough interest to make it happen. I for one would be willing to throw down real money on something like that.

Thoughts?

[Soñadora]

ok, just took a cursory look through Kickstarter's site. This project may or may not meet their criteria. There are other crowdsourcing sites though...or maybe we just make up our own!

[Bent Sailor]

KickStarter really works for much smaller projects than this, because they start the donations at a much lower level than required and you need to "reward" donations at levels that make no sense for something as expensive as boat building. It works well for the level it's targeted at (I'm involved in a project being launched on it soon), but you really need to fit their model and I don't see a production boat run fitting it.

There are other crowd-funding sites (Pozible in Aus, GoFundMe & iPledg in the US, etc) that might work though. If there is serious interest, I'm happy to help out on the tech / website management side of things (where my expertise happens to be). Though there are probably those in the WYDLO with that skillset also in the US to draw on

[Soñadora]

What this probably needs is more along the lines of VC or Angel investors. But those are so 'exclusive'. We need something that's got the same agenda as a VC with the infrastructure of 'crowdfunding'.

[Tom Ray]

What this probably needs is more along the lines of VC or Angel investors. ...

Capitalists and investors want to make money.

The marine industry exists so that boaters can boat at wholesale cost.

Different goals.

[familysailor]

I've been talking to myself over on the original thread about a bizarre scheme to get one built.
Will you all please visit and help with a reality check, ideas, alternate schemes etc?

http://forums.sailin...00#entry3948834

[hyerstay]

Various spam bs.

Fuck off. I hope you get some horrible disease and die young and in horrific pain.

Don't quote them and their links!

[Ishmael]

Various spam bs.

Fuck off. I hope you get some horrible disease and die young and in horrific pain.

Don't quote them and their links!

So solly. Usually when I send in a spam report the post is gone within minutes. Now, it seems like nobody "running" SA gives a shit.