I get it. But the 16 wasn't $1000 new, and the 18 wasn't $400 new. The original owners paid much more for them, so your used price isn't really a gauge of anything. In fact, if it means anything at all, it's that there should be - literally - hundreds of thousands of used boats just like yours, that can be had for a few hundred bucks. So that's a strong attractant to the sport, not a deterrent.
the hobie 16 i purchased for around a grand was 13 years old at the time
On this site there is a 13 year old C2 for sale for $13,000
On this site there is a 12 year old C2 for sale for $7,900
20 year old Taipan for $6,500
10 year old Nacra 17 for $14,000
10 year old Nacra 500 for $6,500
A modern set of sails can easily cost over $4000 (main, jib, spin)
Modern boats cost a LOT more to produce, ship, rig, and maintain and use MUCH higher performance components
there should be - literally - hundreds of thousands of used boats just like yours, that can be had for a few hundred bucks.
There are thousands of legacy boats for VERY Cheap, they are terribe condition, melting into the ground, getting softer by the day
I stand by my statement that the barriers of entry (in the US) are much stronger than they were in the 70's and 80's.
Costs, lack of launch spots, competition from sports that are easier to "rig" and transport
MN3
Costs, lack of launch spots, competition from sports that are easier to "rig" and transport
I don't believe that costs are a major factor but competition from other watersports and lack of launch sites is. "Personal Watercraft" are everywhere, on lifts behind waterfront homes and on trailers at the launch ramp. They're not cheap but are an easy "fix" for those who just want to get on the water with as little hassle as possible. Even sailboards and foilers that are much more affordable and transportable aren't near as popular as jet skis. Scarcity of good launch sites is definitely another factor, There's only one that's suitable in my area and it's not anywhere near as nice as Dunedin Causeway.
What makes sailing small catamarans so appealing is hard to explain to non- sailors especially when one considers the obstacles. What I tell people is that like a few other sports, the fun comes from being in control of something that can get out of control so quickly. When the whitecaps come up, it takes all your concentration. The times I have been able to get non-sailors out in those conditions, they get it.
MN3 wrote: the hobie 16 i purchased for around a grand was 13 years old at the time
On this site there is a 13 year old C2 for sale for $13,000
On this site there is a 12 year old C2 for sale for $7,900
20 year old Taipan for $6,500
10 year old Nacra 17 for $14,000
10 year old Nacra 500 for $6,500
And in 2001 I bought my 1987 H18 for $3500 (Canadian) and over the next
dozen years put another $5000 into it - at a time when one of the last 18s
sold new around here for close to $20K. There. I can throw numbers around
too, but it doesn't really get us any closer to understanding the the problem,
so let's not do that anymore.
A modern set of sails can easily cost over $4000 (main, jib, spin)
And my SC19 desperately needs a new suit, but I don't have that kind of cash
to spare, so I'm sailing the beaten up old original Dacrons with totally wrong
battens. My point is that shitty sails aren't necessarily a barrier to taking a boat
out and having fun, because we're talking about average recreational sailing
and not maximum-performance racing. So once again we're talking about
something that isn't really a barrier to entry, because the boat may not need
them.
Modern boats cost a LOT more to produce, ship, rig, and maintain and use
MUCH higher performance components
Seems to me that this was already discussed and agreed on, so I don't need
any convincing. It's what I described above as "the performance virus", to
which one adds the same factors as drive up prices on everthing else in our
lives.
There are thousands of legacy boats for VERY Cheap, they are terribe condition, melting into the ground, getting softer by the day]
Things decay over time - dog bites man. If your estimate is right, and "thousands"
are in unusable states of decay, that still represents what - 1%? 10%? of the boats
built through the peak? Where are the rest?
I stand by my statement that the barriers of entry (in the US) are much stronger than they were in the 70's and 80's.
Costs, lack of launch spots, competition from sports that are easier to "rig" and transport
It's very difficult to move research like this ahead if you bounce around between
factors - what I'm trying to do is isolate and focus on the various factors in turn.
So:
Yes, everyone's in total agreement that new fiberglass boats have priced
themselves out of the mass market. But I think there are still real questions
unresolved about the actual cost of putting a used boat in the water.
Everything is (more) expensive, and a recreational item like this is no
exception, but I believe that the low prices of the many used boats out
there, when compared to the price of them new back in the 70s and 80s
(and considering inflation, of course), make their affordability now better
as an adjusted percentage of our earnings than they were. But unless
there's an actual economist in our midst who can help untangle that, let's
not continue to beat it to death. I think this remains an unresolved mystery
that's key to understanding the problem.
Now, the lack of launch spots and competition from other water sports
(because we're not going to learn anything by comparing sailing to pickleball)
we can consider in turn.
Edited by jonathan162 on Feb 10, 2023 - 11:45 AM.
A Hobie 16/18 and a Prindle 16/18 or even a Nacra 5.0 probably sold new for around 5K in the early eighties. I'm just guessing, but my point is when you translate that into today's dollars, you're probably into five figures and there was no shortage of those boats. Like I mentioned in my previous post, where I live there are hundreds of homes on the water but no beach cats. These homes cost millions so the cost of boats should be inconsequential. It's just purely lack of interest, driven by a combination of the other factors. Besides, how many people participate in a sport where you get wet, cold and bruised and say they had a good day on the water? One more thing, the high prices aren't just affecting beach cats. Check out the prices of used 18ft power boats with low hours. No shortage of them out there.
Alright - some actual data points! They may not be hard numbers, but
you've got what you think is a reasonable population sample to look at.
I think you're on the mark when you adjust for inflation and reduce the
cost barrier importance, and I find the "cost... should be
inconsequential [to these people]" argument compelling. But... we have
to consider a couple of factors: First, because of the price creep
attached to the performance virus, that $5K boat doesn't exist new
anymore, so while that potential entry-level buyer in the megabuck
house may not have been deterred by a now-$10K H16, he may be if the
only option for a new boat is some carbon fiber and mylar scorcher at
$25K - I think that even the well-heeled have a limit to what they'll
spend on spec on a brand-new toy they may not like. Get out your
clipboard and start the door-to-door survey!
Also, it's worth considering whether any of those cat-deficient houses
have sailboats at all.
And I'm going to toss in one other idea, which is me presuming to do a
psychological analysis of a bunch of people I've never met: As we've
discussed, it's still possible to get into a used cat on the cheap
(fixing it up and maintaining it, of course, is another conversation,
but it's not expected to be a multiple of the acquisition cost - at
least in the short term), and I expect that present company is unanimous
in that none of us would hesitate to snag a good used deal. But does
that same thinking apply to people with a lot of discretionary cash, or
would they habitually exhibit a greater tendency to simply buy new
rather than a fixer-upper, and thus convince themselves there's nothing
available "in their price range"?
Edited by jonathan162 on Feb 10, 2023 - 10:22 PM.
There's been a collapse of young people that fix stuff up, much less have the skill sets to do it right. Not that they don't have the aptitude, they don't have the patience or want to commit the time. I've got a buddy that would just rather pay to get something fixed and he's a reasonable engineer with grew up in his dads auto shop. Don't know if it's about time or what, but they don't want to fix up stuff.
The notion of "the disposable society" has certainly been the long-term trend,
but I'm not sure it's a one-way trip - I think the pendulum may be swinging back.
The shine seems to be starting to come off of simply buying cheaper everythings
from China, not only because the pandemic revealed the fragility of JIT supply
chains, but it's beginning to dawn on people that outsourcing manufacturing to
the lowest international bidder doesn't do your own country much good. The
environmental pressures keep piling up and making consumers more conscious
of the greater costs of just replacing stuff when it breaks rather than fixing it;
that in turn is pushing right-to-repair legislation. And "maker spaces" (though I
hate the term) and repair cafes represent a grassroots movement (however
small) to try to extend the useful lives of the stuff we buy. Then again, I'm at
the opposite end of the spectrum from the too-rich-to-buy-anything-used that I
speculated about in my previous posting. I take pride in not buying anything
new if I can possibly do otherwise, and can't even understand the mentality of
people who do. Honestly, why on earth would anyone not go to the thrift shop
first for something that works perfectly well yet was tossed for any number
of very poor reasons?
I'm right there with you, bud. I, in fact grew up buying cheaper and fixing up so that I could have those things I otherwise couldn't afford, and still do. Watching The boat market, you can buy a very nice, used reading keel boat for the same price as a new cat. And, the same goes for the cat market in general, but storage always seems the issue. Oh Well, time to go work on my boat.
Alright, then I'm going to toss another idea up for discussion - I had some
time to think over the past week while pulling up about 500 ft^2 of 1.5" oak
flooring, which is an ugly and tedious job if you're planning to reuse it and
don't want it to suffer any damage.
The term that occurred to me was "generational novelty". Basically, a new
thing that has a relatively short (that is, one or two generations) lifetime
ahead of it, but isn't way down at the "months" level of pure pointless fads
like hula hoops and fidget spinners. The proximate analog to cats would
be windsurfers - huge hit for a few years, then faded completely from view,
though there are still relatively small numbers of hardcore adherents. It's
an obvious comparison because they're both sail/water sports, but where
cats seemed to get a couple of generations, windsurfing got less than one.
Or is the time comparison wonky because I'm not acknowledging how
short the cat mass market actually was?
Of course, if this is a valid idea, then why is another completely different
question. Is there a hint in the word "generational"? Is it a simple truth that
"these kinds of sports" (whatever that means...) just aren't picked up by a
second generation because that was their parents' thing and they want to
find somethng new? Because now we're getting out of the realm of marketing
and economics and well into psychology.
Edited by jonathan162 on Feb 12, 2023 - 05:47 PM.
We see this in a lot of things. mrvideo stated that golf continues to be popular, but in my area, it's a dying sport. And the cost is spiraling up, even on public courses.
I think student debt, wage stagnation, housing costs, lack of storage and access is contributing to the sport fading. It's not a terribly accessible sport. Cost of boat, even used plus fixup costs. Need a place to store it, I pay $199 a month for a storage unit for a couple of boats. Time, I have a 90 minute drive each way plus an hour setup and an hour takedown, that's 5 hours not counting sailing.
I'm comfortably retired, but this would be hard for my kids to do even though they all grew up sailing with me. In 1990, I bought a new Hobie 17 for $3000, and it was an extravagance, but we sailed the hell out of it, and I was able to store it in my garage.
The wealthy are pricing the dwindling middle class out of a lot of things too. I grew up with my parents summer lakefront cabin in southern Wisconsin. My father paid $12K for the cottage in 1965. Unfortunately he sold it when I was a teen, because it'd cost $700K easy today. Sure there's been inflation, but a lot of things that used to be accessible to Joe Average, no longer are.
ymcaclimb wrote: Sure there's been inflation, but a lot of things that used to be accessible to Joe Average, no longer are.
Yep - this.
charlescarlis wrote: BTW, we still have a few out training on opti's and sunfish or lasers, but I'd estimate less than a 100 or so in the Houston/Galveston area (maybe a few more?). For such a metropolitan area, that's not enough to support a full industry, I think.
This is wild. I think we sail at the same club perhaps or same area anyway (I'm at SSC), but to think that in a metro area of over 7 Million people we only have 100 to 200 sailboats out on a weekend is wild. We can't support an RS or Hobie Dealer or something like and East Coast or West Coast Sailboats or Vela Sailing Supply. KO was sort of the last thing that I'm aware of.
Also in terms of time value and money, I feel like there was more disposable income and time in the 70s, 80s, and maybe into the 90s. Now it feels as if time is money moreso and it feels as if there's precious little of it (time), so both the dollars and the minutes have to go further and sailing has too many entry obstacles in both categories.
jonathan162 wrote:
...but I believe that the low prices of the many used boats out
there, when compared to the price of them new back in the 70s and 80s
(and considering inflation, of course), make their affordability now better
as an adjusted percentage of our earnings than they were.
I think the missing component to the lack of uptake to the affordable used boat market is the psychological hurdle for the current generation to dive in on something they don't know and understand. Yeah, you can get a used 1990 Nacra 5.7 for $4000, but you've got to replace the sails for $3k or more in a year or two, and maybe it needs some fiberglass work that you've never done before, and what does it cost to join a club? and it might need some trailer repair and maintenance too. And geez I'm going to need someone to show me how to do the repairs the first time and learn to sail for that matter. And none of my friends are doing this so who am I going to ask and learn from? and my friends and their kids are starting soccer and swim team and select little league or volleyball and we've got so much on our plate right now, so I'm not sure I'll take the leap just yet. Maybe next year or in a few years when finances or free time becomes more available.... I mean it's enough obstacles to deter all but the most intrigued that have a need to explore and control it with their own hands and brave enough to just jump in and figure it out.
To make sailing cool and attractive it has to start with the little people if we want to grow the sport. I mean both the young and those with normal financial means. Inexpensive Clubs with club boats and something other than optis to get the kids interested and excited. Learn to sail camps with lots of cool viral marketing. In Houston the only way to find out about learn to sail camps is if you go looking for them yourself on the yacht club web pages. Ridiculous. Start a Moana themed program to attract kids that saw the movie and thought it looked cool. Just give them rides for a start and ease them into it. Something simple to sail or ride alongs. Hobie Bravos, Topaz Taz, Waves, Open Bics, give them a ride with an experienced helm flying a hull on something that doesn't look too intimidating. When you get enough kids out and they can see other kids doing it, it will catch on (maybe).
But the phones... as someone said. Devices and screens are life now for a huge percentage of people. I can only hope the next generation - the generation where they weren't a new novelty when they were growing up will be able to have a real life outside the device also.