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A new class of dinghy?
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Sam.Spoons View Drop Down
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    Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 2:18pm
Cheapest Ford Focus new, £17930, used, one year old around £10k, that'll buy you 1.5 Lasers, nearly 1.2 Aeros or leave you £1000 short of a new Blaze. My point is that we make lifestyle choices and a new (or newer, at least) car comes higher up the list than a boat but if the will was there most people could manage to afford a decent boat. 
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Posts: 2538 		Post Options Post Options   Quote turnturtle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 2:35pm
you are risking categorising a dinghy alongside a car... one is an essential part of life for many - a means to get to work, to carry out domestic duties (not everyone uses Ocado), a method to visit friends and families and yes, occasionally, a means to tow a lump of recreational plastic down to the south coast to race against other lumps of recreational plastic.  

As a completely recreational spend, a boat should be compared as such to things as bikes, skis and other equipment heavy sport equipment - maybe kite boards and windsurfers to keep it vaguely within the framework of watersports.   Basically, any new purchase, or even nearly new one is going to be bank of mum and dad acquisition for a lot of young people.  Unless they really are a high earner, or particularly single-minded, in their early career.  Even then, it's not impossible to find people who earn good money but still can't justify the spend on a new boat.  

Boats and Cars are not in the same category of 'lifestyle choice'...  hence the financing model fails when you try to compare them.


Edited by turnturtle - 05 Sep 18 at 2:36pm
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Posts: 3401 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Sam.Spoons Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 3:16pm
My comparison is not boat or car but "new car" or "cheaper car plus boat" probably the same compromise we all make (well those of us with limited disposable income). 
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Posts: 6499 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iGRF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 3:20pm
The fact is Dinghys have recently become brutally overpriced compared with other pursuits.

Compare kitesurfing, for the Seven grand my few bits of plywood glued to a 3metre seventy bit of epoxy with an 8.8 sq mtr sail and a carbon mast and boom, it would buy at least three kites a couple of carbon boards and probably a foil kit, or two quite well sorted mountain bikes, or a couple of modern motorbikes from say Mutt M/Cycles and if any of them fall apart you get to take them back unlike the dinghy which value wise I'd put at four and half grand tops and that's a premium price imv.

Edited by iGRF - 05 Sep 18 at 3:24pm
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Posts: 2538 		Post Options Post Options   Quote turnturtle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 3:38pm
Originally posted by Sam.Spoons

My comparison is not boat or car but "new car" or "cheaper car plus boat" probably the same compromise we all make (well those of us with limited disposable income). 

This sounds like very antiquated thinking as to how many people 'buy' cars... they effectively rent them, even cheaper ones and second hand ones.  They do this to avoid large down payments or single transactions.  

As iGRF says, the value proposition of most dinghies has now blown itself out of the water.  £12k for an RS100 or a new Phantom.... honestly, it's beyond ridiculous given the amount of use anyone is realistically likely to get out of it.
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Posts: 3401 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Sam.Spoons Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 4:06pm
Originally posted by turnturtle

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons

My comparison is not boat or car but "new car" or "cheaper car plus boat" probably the same compromise we all make (well those of us with limited disposable income). 

This sounds like very antiquated thinking as to how many people 'buy' cars... they effectively rent them, even cheaper ones and second hand ones.  They do this to avoid large down payments or single transactions.

The majority of people I know buy cars, the number who lease is greater than is was but still a fairly small percentage. My point is that it's not affordability that is reducing new boat sales but other factors including the lifestyle choice of buying/leasing a new car every two years instead of buying a one or two year old car every three.....

As iGRF says, the value proposition of most dinghies has now blown itself out of the water.  £12k for an RS100 or a new Phantom.... honestly, it's beyond ridiculous given the amount of use anyone is realistically likely to get out of it.

No argument there but people do still buy them.....
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Posts: 6499 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iGRF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 4:35pm
Originally posted by Sam.Spoons


]No argument there but people do still buy them.....


But do they?

I don't know anyone else in my peer group that has purchased a brand new dinghy in the last couple of years, fact is most at my club buy 2nd hand, Lasers mainly and my cast offs sold philanthropically cheap.

I swore never to buy another new, but off I went again this year and now I'm eyeing up a Hartley Contender.. a fool and his money..
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Posts: 3401 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Sam.Spoons Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Sep 18 at 4:47pm
So there you go, and you bought a new 3.7 last year. Yes most do buy used boats (and cheap ones in my case, one cuts one's cloth...) but there are enough buying new to keep Laser Performance, Hartley and RS (and many other, smaller, builders) in business. A good thing too or there wouldn't be any decent used boats for us ordinary mortals to buy  Wink
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Posts: 265 		Post Options Post Options   Quote SUGmeister Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Sep 18 at 11:13am
Originally posted by davidyacht

My pitch would be to fill the gap that used to be occupied by Fireflys/N12s/Enterprises, with a white sail boat (with dangly pole) that takes advantage of modern materials; carbon mast, is Aeroesque in weight.  Has leg room and can be sat in comfortably.  Is technical but does not look scary to wives, girlfriends and children!

The 200 saw this market, but added the assy, which has in fact served it well.

Everything keeps pointing to the Icon ...


Being brought up sailing Enterprises in the 60s, 70s and 80s I am sort of sad that the class is no longer thriving like it once was.

It gave exceptional racing especially inland with big attendances, and once a record breaking 232 entries to the Nationals in 1972

Then it stopped being the hot fleet. Probably RS'd!

The Ent had a unique selling proposition, its light wind performance. For a 13ft3 boat back in the day the sail area of 113 sqft was considered pretty big, and the sailors that sailed it weren't necessarily the smallest.

As time moved on rigs became more efficient and the average size of the sailors became smaller.

In fact nowadays you might say that the Ent rig was a bit puny.

The Ent has tried to modernise, they tried with the spinnaker but that didn't take off, previously the anathema that is the the centre mainsheet would never have been considered as an option is at least now being used by many boats.

But it still hasn't recovered to anywhere near its glory days.

It would be sad to see the class whither and die.

Despite the Icon not taking off there must surely be a place for a 2 sail boat that is optimised for river and gravel pits.

My pitch would be that someone (Pinnel & Bax?) should come up with the E2 rig for the Ent, a rig that was substantially bigger than the current one, a rig that would turbocharge its light wind performance and make heavy weather sailing really challenging.

There must be thousands of Ents lost in dinghy parks available as donor hulls. £1500 for a new rig would be way cheaper than any new boat.

Hey ho....
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Sep 18 at 11:45am
I dunno, in the 21stC I would hope that a mass market two hander would be rather less wayward downwind than the Enterprise is. Something not very unlike an RS400, but maybe a bit slimmer and a bit less tubby round the bow might make a starting point.
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