News flash: cool fast boats sell.
- Thread starter Jackdaw
- Start date
And you know what? No one here cares. I don't care if they go out of business, or make so much they buy Amazon and Google in one day. Who cares, really? What does this have to do with "sail boat owners dot com?"
Well some people here actually do. If you don’t, go away, and use the extra time to find someone to help unbunch your underwear. ;-)
Nope, no intention either.Time to update your profile. Or is there a San Francisco, Canada?
Or you could just read my signature! One less click. Thanks for the reminder.
I didn't start skiing until after college, say 1970. I 'member those straight skis. Used them until I returned to the States in 1978. I think you might be off by an entire decade here, though, Scott. Curved skis came into the industry in the 1980s.
A good friend once said, "Innovation is a series of small steps."
And to those who wonder why sailboats are so "stodgy" I'm perfectly happy sailing along with proven gear on boats which, while manufactured with more modern material, are built in the shape and form developed over centuries to move small boats reasonably well. Have they made faster boats? Sure. Like all things boating, they remain compromises. And some are purpose-built.
It's still: Your boat, your choice.
The font is too small for these aging eyeballs.Nope, no intention either.
JV, I'm curious, what would be an indicator that nobody cared about a topic? With 108, now 109 posts in thread, I'd say at least among the participants that people do care and find the topic interesting enough to read and respond.
And, more importantly, although there are posters of different political stripes, the discussion has remained civil. Quite an accomplishment for an internet forum. Well done guys.
If you don't care about a topic, I'd offer a suggestion, don't read it and don't respond to a thread that doesn't interest you. There are plenty of threads I read and don't respond to and many that I don't even bother to read. It works.
Damn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This forum is great, we go from decline of new sailboat sales, because of lack of performance sailboats, to surfing, to kayaking, to skiing, and politics. I love this forum.
This forum is great, we go from decline of new sailboat sales, because of lack of performance sailboats, to surfing, to kayaking, to skiing, and politics. I love this forum.
I read this subject like I read 'Sail' and 'Sailing' magazine, and Top Gear. Great to see new models and improvements in the fields but too rich for my blood.
Dave and JackDaw, I didn't make my point well. What I meant to communicate is that, to those of us buying and sailing mostly used boats, and not even those of Hinckley or Morris level of status, the fact that there are companies apparently being successful selling new, fast, sporty boats in the $300k+ price range is, in my view, completely immaterial. I don't really care what sells and what doesn't at this price range to the customers who buy them, any more than I care what kind of caviar is in vogue.
I do care what kind of boats Tartan, Hunter, Catalina, Beneteau, and the like make and sell, as these are what trickle down the likes of me. Well, maybe not anymore, as I think I have my last sail boat. But I do care that Tartan stays in business, 'though even that is of relatively little import.
I do care what kind of boats Tartan, Hunter, Catalina, Beneteau, and the like make and sell, as these are what trickle down the likes of me. Well, maybe not anymore, as I think I have my last sail boat. But I do care that Tartan stays in business, 'though even that is of relatively little import.
So then here is a question, if you had the fantasy money to spend some serious $$ on a brand new boat, would you go to Hunter, Catalina, IP, etc? I mean really, if you had the money and were going to buy new, where would you go? I am not talking the super yachts or anything like that, in the 30-50 foot range. What manufacturer would you buy from? No custom stuff, just what is "stock".
That's interesting, 'cause even with 'fantasy money,' I'm not sure I'd buy a brand new one. I have a friend who has means, and he bought a one-owner Little Harbor 52, and after ten years sold it and had a Morris custom built, I think a 38; but it was so much work, and project management, and time, and even then, there were numerous issues to resolve.
I confess I like the 36 to 39 foot range, and I'm pretty happy with the one I just got. If I was loaded I'd have a crew of people working in this one to make it absolutely perfect, Bristol condition above and below decks, and resolve and kinks and quirks and inconveniences; new sails, running rigging, etc., etc.
I might then get a Hinckley picnic boat for the occasional harbor cruise, or lunch outing.
I confess I like the 36 to 39 foot range, and I'm pretty happy with the one I just got. If I was loaded I'd have a crew of people working in this one to make it absolutely perfect, Bristol condition above and below decks, and resolve and kinks and quirks and inconveniences; new sails, running rigging, etc., etc.
I might then get a Hinckley picnic boat for the occasional harbor cruise, or lunch outing.
Stu, I did a little research to see if my memory was incorrect. It turns out I was pretty accurate. Read this article and particularly read the segment titled "Bode Miller & Mainstream Acceptance".I didn't start skiing until after college, say 1970. I 'member those straight skis. Used them until I returned to the States in 1978. I think you might be off by an entire decade here, though, Scott. Curved skis came into the industry in the 1980s.
A good friend once said, "Innovation is a series of small steps."
https://www.skiinghistory.org/history/evolution-ski-shape
The whole article pretty much refreshes my memory. From the 70's to the early 90's we ALL ski raced on slalom skis that were skinny and narrow at 203 cm length (some at 200 and few at up to 205). Virtually nobody would be caught dead on a race ski less than 200 cm. GS race skis were 208's. It is true that we started to use fatter GS race skis that we called "fatty's" in the later part of the 80's and early 90's but the lengths were always 205 or longer for GS. Yes, some recreational skiers started to experiment with "shape" to make learning easier, but it wasn't ever mainstream. Salomon came out with their capped skis which felt like the biggest new wave in the late 80's early 90's and they stopped referring to size in length, but the skis were essentially similar in sidecut and length. But snowboarders were showing us in those days that they could make deep, carving turns on boards with a radical sidecut and short length.
Then Bode came along, with the help of K2, in 1996 Junior Nationals and the results broke the door down. Actually, my niece started talking about Bode well before this event. She went to Carrabassett Valley (Ski Racing) Academy and spent 3 seasons with Bode during her high school years ski racing all over the northeast and riding around in vans from event to event. He was basically the most unconventional skier in the group and a complete wild card with amazing talent. My niece talked about him all the time - it's a small group of teenage kids traveling in a small pack from ski resort to ski resort on a full-time basis, doing homework and study groups on the road and ski racing by day. I remember her coming home in April and saying we wouldn't believe what had happened at Sugarloaf at the Nationals and how ski racing was going to change. I'm sure the World Cup racers were already on top of this change, but the impact seemed almost instantaneous.
During the season in 1996, I bought a new pair Fischer slalom skis at the usual length, 203. I used them a few times that season and then never used them again. In 1997 early in the season (December), I went up to Killington for a recreational race and used my regular 208 GS skis. I was a little amused to see just about all of the usual competitors with new skis that were shaped and only 185 cm, typically. Guys that normally would beat me by less than 2 seconds for a race were up to 10 seconds faster per run! Several of the women beat me, which never happened among our regular group. That happened on Saturday, so that night I went to the ski shop and bought a new pair for myself. Sunday, I was able to restore my confidence, by pretty much getting back to normal. Granted, I didn't focus very much on ski tuning before the Saturday race so my old skis were in bad shape to begin with, but to take about 8 seconds off per run on essentially the same track from one day to the next, on skis that I had never even skied on except for a few warm up runs early in the morning, is a revolutionary change for sure.
Following those events in 1996, ski shops put their entire lines of conventional skis on the fire sale racks and sold nothing but shaped skis from the top to the bottom of the lines. It really was a retail revolution at the end of the 90's that changed the sport drastically. What followed were completely re-vamped lines of specialty skis for all-mountain terrain, skis for terrain parks with twin tips, racing ski specialties, powder ski specialties. Boutique ski manufacturers started to pop up all over. If you skied in the 70's, 80's and 90's, what you see in the ski shops now is virtually unrecognizable unless you've kept up with the innovations. It truly was important to the sport. I can see how this relates to sail boats.
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I was racing on sponsored ELAN skis in the 80's and I pretty sure they beat K2 to the punch by several years. While already out of the game, I tested a pair (91?) that blew my mind. Probably the minders at FIS as well!Stu, I did a little research to see if my memory was incorrect. It turns out I was pretty accurate. Read this article and particularly read the segment titled "Bode Miller & Mainstream Acceptance".
https://www.skiinghistory.org/history/evolution-ski-shape
The whole article pretty much refreshes my memory. From the 70's to the early 90's we ALL ski raced on slalom skis that were skinny and narrow at 203 cm length (some at 200 and few at up to 205). Virtually nobody would be caught dead on a race ski less than 200 cm. GS race skis were 208's. It is true that we started to use fatter GS race skis that we called "fatty's" in the later part of the 80's and early 90's but the lengths were always 205 or longer for GS. Yes, some recreational skiers started to experiment with "shape" to make learning easier, but it wasn't ever mainstream. Salomon came out with their capped skis which felt like the biggest new wave in the late 80's early 90's and they stopped referring to size in length, but the skis were essentially similar in sidecut and length. But snowboarders were showing us in those days that they could make deep, carving turns on boards with a radical sidecut and short length.
Then Bode came along, with the help of K2, in 1996 Junior Nationals and the results broke the door down. Actually, my niece started talking about Bode well before this event. She went to Carrabassett Valley (Ski Racing) Academy and spent 3 seasons with Bode during her high school years ski racing all over the northeast and riding around in vans from event to event. He was basically the most unconventional skier in the group and a complete wild card with amazing talent. My niece talked about him all the time - it's a small group of teenage kids traveling in a small pack from ski resort to ski resort on a full-time basis, doing homework and study groups on the road and ski racing by day. I remember her coming home in April and saying we wouldn't believe what had happened at Sugarloaf at the Nationals and how ski racing was going to change. I'm sure the World Cup racers were already on top of this change, but the impact seemed almost instantaneous.
During the season in 1996, I bought a new pair Fischer slalom skis at the usual length, 203. I used them a few times that season and then never used them again. In 1997 early in the season (December), I went up to Killington for a recreational race and used my regular 208 GS skis. I was a little amused to see just about all of the usual competitors with new skis that were shaped and only 185 cm, typically. Guys that normally would beat me by less than 2 seconds for a race were up to 10 seconds faster per run! Several of the women beat me, which never happened among our regular group. That happened on Saturday, so that night I went to the ski shop and bought a new pair for myself. Sunday, I was able to restore my confidence, by pretty much getting back to normal. Granted, I didn't focus very much on ski tuning before the Saturday race so my old skis were in bad shape to begin with, but to take about 8 seconds off per run on essentially the same track from one day to the next, on skis that I had never even skied on except for a few warm up runs early in the morning, is a revolutionary change for sure.
Following those events in 1996, ski shops put their entire lines of conventional skis on the fire sale racks and sold nothing but shaped skis from the top to the bottom of the lines. It really was a retail revolution at the end of the 90's that changed the sport drastically. What followed were completely re-vamped lines of specialty skis for all-mountain terrain, skis for terrain parks with twin tips, racing ski specialties, powder ski specialties. Boutique ski manufacturers started to pop up all over. If you skied in the 70's, 80's and 90's, what you see in the ski shops now is virtually unrecognizable unless you've kept up with the innovations. It truly was important to the sport. I can see how this relates to sail boats.
Most likely Leopard as that is what I have been looking at used. However Irma, really screwed up that market.
You're right, and the article talks about that quite a bit. In fact, the graphic at the heading shows the Elan SCX, "side cut extreme" I remember Elans were cutting edge in the 80's and I remember racers on them, plus eastern Europeans were breaking out on them. What length were yours? The article mentions that the wider shovels were hindered by the length we typically skied. It wasn't until later when the lengths came down that the shaped sidecut could really shine.
I was racing mostly on Atomics at the time, although I did have a pair of K2 710 race stocks that I really liked until I broke the ski. I wonder if we ever crossed paths in the midwest, although I was strictly recreational, not ever FIS. Many of us were sponsored even for recreational racing leagues. Rossignol was always active with that.
Most of the attention was later drawn by Salomon with the capped skis. The price of skis really jumped when they sold those at over $700 retail.
The article mentioned that K2 wasn't on board with the concept early in the game. The article didn't really make it clear why K2 changed. I know that they sponsored Bode at CVA when he was a young junior. He was such a radical talent at an early age, that I suppose it is conceivable that they did it solely on account of him. As you probably know, he didn't stick with K2 and they soon left the racing game altogether.