Sailboat Owner Survey

[Phil Herring]

Hey, remember that survey many of you completed last spring?

We asked you to rank your current and prior boats on a dozen criteria.

5,000 owners, 7,000,000 miles sailes, 65,000 inputs, all boiled down to 99 outstanding boats that best met their owner's expectations.

The results are now online:

http://survey.sailboatowners.com

It's a very interesting read!

To all who participated, thanks so much for your knowledge and experience.

 

[John]

Those results are interesting, and thanks, Phil, for having done this and having compiled the results. One thing that struck me: Although Beneteau was near the top in most categories, and usually ranked above Catalina or Hunter (among others) by their owners, it was at the bottom on the question of whether the owner would buy a Benny again. Maybe just a statistical fluke? Or maybe some other reason? Any guesses on this one?

 

[Phil Herring]

I'll check the data to make sure it's not an error and let you know. That does sound odd.

 

[kloudie1]

Thanks for the work, Phil and Bly. Good job piling that stuff up into a nice readable shape!!!

 

[Ross]

Phil, That is a great peice of work. Just wondering ,how many one of a kind boats were submitted?

 

[Tom S]

Something that could greatly change the results is the numbers of people that are responding for each boat manufacturer.

I notice that Precision was near the top in many of the results, and it is a nice boat.

But if you had only 12 people responding about their Precision sailboats (Minimum #) and you had 2000 Hunter owners responding it is a much better chance that you could get skewed results.

Was their a minimum number of respondee's per boat manufacturer? Is there a place to see the numbers of respondee's per boat manufacturer or per boat? I only saw this information for the runners up on an individual boat basis.

 

[Phil Herring]

Yes, we had a minimum number of responses to get into the top 99.

http://survey.sailboatowners.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=84

 

[Phil Herring]

One-offs

Phil, That is a great peice of work. Just wondering ,how many one of a kind boats were submitted?

If you mean custom-built, or very small production runs, I'd estimate at least a dozen or two. If they were too terribly obscure the may not appear in the results at all.

 

[Paul356]

Great reading and lots of fun to compare and contrast. Thanks for making the effort.

 

[Banooma]

Very interesting!

Self-selection bias aside, it was a big undertaking and a great project for our entertainment. Thanks a lot!

I'm wondering if you thought of taking a cut at the data to see how much of an effect current ownership has on the rating a boat received. For instance, if you're a current owner of an "X" boat 30, are you more likely to rave about it than someone who previousoly owned one, but sold it in favor of a "Z" boat 32? Or, did owners tend to rate previous boats with the same level of critique as their current one? A comparison of average ratings across all boats owned by an individual wouldn't be too difficult... easy for me to say from here, right?

Phil, I'm curious - can you tell how much happier are we with our current boat than previous ones (if at all)?

 

[Phil Herring]

can you tell how much happier are we with our current boat than previous ones (if at all)?

That is a great question, but one that will go answered this time around, anyway. Unfortunately, we don't have any way of knowing which boats are currently owned by a participant and which are previously owned.

Excellent idea for next time1 Just think of the cross tab possibilities!

 

[Don12364]

Very Interesting!

Now we also know which owners tell the biggest lies!

 

[John]

comments from responders?

Those results are interesting, and thanks, Phil, for having done this and having compiled the results. One thing that struck me: Although Beneteau was near the top in most categories, and usually ranked above Catalina or Hunter (among others) by their owners, it was at the bottom on the question of whether the owner would buy a Benny again. Maybe just a statistical fluke? Or maybe some other reason? Any guesses on this one?

Evidently, quite a few owners rated their boats qualities higher than they rated their willingness to buy the same make boat again. It might not be statistically significant, but if any readers of this list did this, it would be very interesting to know why. For instance, if you are a Beneteau owner, and you rated your boat quite highly in sailing qualities, etc., but said that you were unlikely to buy a Beneteau again. It would be interesting to know why this is.

 

[Ross]

Re: comments from responders?

I spent 9 years with my wife working out the details of what we wanted and what we felt we needed when we refitted our boat. It still has an Islander hull and deck but all of the windows are changed, the fore hatch is different as is practically everything else. We often ask each other if we made any mistakes and there are a few but they are minor. If we were going to cross oceans we would make our storage such that we could secure it against spilling in a roll over.
Phil admits that we fell outside the parameter's of his survey. Just one boat of obscure origins and very few sisters in existance.

 

[JerryA]

Precisions Owners Love Their Boats

Thanks for putting this together Phil & Bly. It confirms that we Precision owners do love our little boats.

JerryA