Small boat prejudice: experience, causes & prevention.

[chris2998]

Captain Smollett

good write ups I have a guy I work with I mentioned i wanted a sailboat for liveaboard he said oh you want a 45 footer I was like what? are you smoking crack? i regret ever telling him seems like every few days he's like hey there's this 40 footer at the marina near my boat for sale I'm like no I told you I want around a 30 ft what the **** I admit I was DUMB at first thinking bigger is better no if I own something that freaking big I'll be working till i die just to pay to keep the thing at the dock. Sorry just venting here LOL but really good write up I always thought all people who were into sailing were snobby as all heck get out, I'm happy to be hearing that isn't the case. good thread

Chris

[mrb]

This attitude of bigger is better is in all aspects of American society today.

Concerning boats, there are many mega yachts in Pacific N.W. but last time We were in the San Juan's all the we were never charged for launch dockage and showers and laundrymats were for all to use.  I think it was Friday Harbor even had short term dockage free.  First come basis.  We stayed in Inner Harbor Victoria and they had very large motor vessel move so they could fit us in beside another sail boat then the mv moved back into his space.  They stack them 3 and 4 deep whatever it takes to get everyone in.  You may have to walk across a 40ftr to actually reach dock.  We just asked permission if owner was aboard and had some extra large dungeness crabs we gave them. 

When we left they had boats on outside move so we could get out.  Every one Happy.

I agree with its the pace of life which contributes to rudeness today, along with a lot of self important people who forget where they come from.
melvin

[Amgine]

One of the interesting things about dockage fees is that when the price is linear ($$$ per foot), the profit margin goes down the larger the slip is. This is because larger slips are also wider, so fewer slips for a given amount of surface area, and tend to be in deeper water which increases the initial construction and ongoing maintenance costs.

However, it's easy to think of the large single payment from a 72' boat, rather than the six payments from 25' boats (twice as much) that could be fit in the same space. The reality is that McDonalds is going to sell more burgers and make more money than the best steakhouse will make on their prime rib.

How to improve the image of small boats? Thank-you postcards go a long ways. You can get a hundred printed up pretty cheap with a picture of your small boat, and they're great to send a heartfelt thanks that's going to get tacked up on the wall for years to come. They also are handy to invite people for sundowners, to send a note to family back home (with a great stamp from far-away!), and to yacht clubs and sailing magazines to brag just a bit. In these days of e-mail and text messages, even a single sentence sent through the post has an inordinately large impact. When was the last time you got anything but junkmail and bills?

[Bubba the Pirate]

How to improve the image of small boats? Thank-you postcards go a long ways. You can get a hundred printed up pretty cheap with a picture of your small boat, and they're great to send a heartfelt thanks that's going to get tacked up on the wall for years to come. They also are handy to invite people for sundowners, to send a note to family back home (with a great stamp from far-away!), and to yacht clubs and sailing magazines to brag just a bit. In these days of.....

I REALLY like this idea.  Thanks and Grog to ya! 

Todd

[keelbolts]

For all but the last year or so of my twenty-some years on the water I owned & sailed the 32'. African mahogany sloop Favona.  If anybody thot they were going to impress me with their big boat, I just told them that their boat was ugly and probably had the windward ability of a garbage barge and offered to race them, upwind, for pink slips.  Nobody took me up on it.  Just as well, I couldn't afford the upkeep on all the boats I would own now.  I still have Favona, but I picked up a Westerly Pageant about a year ago so I could go to all the places I couldn't get into with Favona's 6' draft.  I've gone from a small yacht to a floating Winnebago and I'm loving it.  Several years ago I crewed on a boat to Bermuda.  She had every possible bell & whistle and was a constant worry to her owner.  I'll take small and/or simple everytime.

As for marina's not appreciating small boats, I believe you'll see that change, in a big way, too soon.  The economy is in free fall and it won't be long before the marinas that survive will be rolling out the red carpet to an arriving Sunfish.  Two years from now, you are going to see people all but giving away 45' and 50' boats to get out from under the slip fees.  I'm worried about how many marinas and boatyards will end up going belly up.  One of the reasons why I chose my Westerly is so that I can run it into 3' of water & do her bottom while the tide's out. Let's face it, if you're not living aboard, your boat is a luxury.  We are entering a period where luxuries of 50' will be possible for very few people.   We could do a whole thread on whether or not you're going to want to be seen pulling into town on a 50' yacht.  Can you say target?

On a more proactive note,  it seems to me that there should be a section of this site devoted to listing small boat friendly marinas.  Maybe the forumites could work together to create a short, but informative questionaire to be sent to marinas.

[AdriftAtSea]

Welcome to Sailfar Keelbolts. 

Unfortunately, the media hasn't helped the situation much... the media, for the most part, seems to think that it is both unsafe and difficult to sail long distances in anything less than 40' LOA.  What they seem to forget is that people have been sailing small boats for a long time, and that it is only in the past 20 years that the size of boats has slowly crept upwards.

One thing I've noticed is that as the size of the boats has gone up, the average seamanship has gone down.  This may be partially due to a lot of the larger boats being basically floating condos that were bought as status symbols by people with more income than sailing experience and were bought for the lifestyle, rather than to be actually sailed.

If you look at a lot of the newer boats, especially the higher production volume boats, you'll see an emphasis on open interior layouts with huge double berths, high head room, and a fair bit of automation that is IMHO fairly unnecessary, were the boat designed properly.   These boats, while very pretty, don't have the stowage, the handholds or decent sea berths to make a serious passage in comfort and safety. 

I remember one story Norm and Elizabeth (cubemonkey) were relating a couple years ago about a passage on a fairly big production sailboat that ended with some injuries due to the open layouts and lack of handholds.

[maxiSwede]

Welcome to Sailfar Keelbolts. 

Unfortunately, the media hasn't helped the situation much... the media, for the most part, seems to think that it is both unsafe and difficult to sail long distances in anything less than 40' LOA.  What they seem to forget is that people have been sailing small boats for a long time, and that it is only in the past 20 years that the size of boats has slowly crept upwards.

One thing I've noticed is that as the size of the boats has gone up, the average seamanship has gone down.  This may be partially due to a lot of the larger boats being basically floating condos that were bought as status symbols by people with more income than sailing experience and were bought for the lifestyle, rather than to be actually sailed.

If you look at a lot of the newer boats, especially the higher production volume boats, you'll see an emphasis on open interior layouts with huge double berths, high head room, and a fair bit of automation that is IMHO fairly unnecessary.   These boats, while very pretty, don't have the stowage, the handholds or decent sea berths to make a serious passage in comfort and safety. 

I remember one story Norm and Elizabeth (cubemonkey) were relating a couple years ago about a passage on a fairly big production sailboat that ended with some injuries due to the open layouts and lack of handholds.

Adrift - well spoken and a grog to you!   ;D

[AdriftAtSea]

Thank you... :)  The people who want a status symbol and the status owning a YACHT brings, love having a big open salon and a huge open cockpit, since they're excellent for entertaining... but not so useful when sailing in crappy conditions. :) But, it isn't a problem for most of them, since all they're really looking for is a floating condo... :)

[keelbolts]

Thank you for the welcome AdriftAtSea.  I guess I've been lurking around here so long that I didn't realize that that was my first contribution. Thanks again.

[Captain Smollett]

How to improve the image of small boats? Thank-you postcards go a long ways. You can get a hundred printed up pretty cheap with a picture of your small boat, and they're great to send a heartfelt thanks that's going to get tacked up on the wall for years to come.

This is an EXCELLENT idea, and I regret I have never implemented it.  I think I will this week, and send some to some of the places we visited in Florida last week.

Speaking of the Florida trip and "small boat bias," we had an interesting comment from a fellow as we pulled into the parking lot of a store.

He saw the boat on the trailer and commented, to both his wife and mine (!!), "That's about the perfect size boat.  That's exactly what we need."

I have to confess that this was very gratifying to hear.

Trailer boats in general have a lot to recommend them (even as "cruisers"), but even in that realm, there's a 'bigger is better' mindset that too-often is prevalent. 

It was very nice to hear a guy just see her for what she is, and where she could take him (and his family).  I wish I could have had a few minutes to talk to him in more detail, but by the time I found a parking spot, he was not around.

[Kettlewell]

I think the big-boatitis that infects the market is more a function of a lack of people starting when they are young in smaller boats like sailing dinghies and then working their way up. When your first experience sailing is in an 8-foot pram everything after that seems like a "big boat." Picture a couple of retirees looking to buy their first cruising boat with not much experience. First, the only boats they will see, for the most part, at the boat show are big expensive ones, and second their entire life they have lived ashore in houses or large apartments. The interior of a 45-footer looks tiny to them, and they want to be "comfortable" in retirement. You see the same exact thing in retirement homes and RV sales. I can't imagine driving those ginormous RVs that seem to fill the highways now. My father was invited to a friend's retirement home custom built for a couple with 12 bedrooms and more bathrooms than that--they wanted plenty of room for guests. It isn't just boats.

[Jim_ME]

I would also add that it is those who have not had any experience cruising that are especially vulnerable to this "bigger-is-better" marketing, as you say, because the closest thing in their experience is a house, so it is easy to push the idea that the boat that is closest to the house, and with as many house-like features, will be the best one. When appealing to a knowledge and experience vacuum, marketers can get away with this.

When I talk to people who grew up in a sailing/cruising family, they seem almost universally inoculated against such campaigns. I think about John's children, for example...nobody is ever going to be able to tell them that they need a 45-foot sailboat to enjoy cruising.

I think that this also applies to simplicity. My friend with a cruising family tradition, owned a spartan Vertue 25. He liked to bring much of his water in jugs. Not many moving parts, or much to go wrong with them. Gravity being fairly reliable. Can clean them easily and see how you're doing. Crush them when they're empty to save room.

They were a family of modest means, so there was a strict cost-benefit test applied to everything that came on board. when you maintain-it-yourself, there was an equal PITA-benefit test. After a couple generations of experience doing this, you have a fairly well-developed culture and sense for what brings success and happiness (and safety...which is probably and important part of the former).  :)

Anyway, their whole tradition centered on time-tested KISS principles, and they grew up with those expectations, and saw the benefits first hand.

[Edit: Since my earlier post/article reference on house size may have been somewhat off this topic, yet a good separate topic to continue to pursue, I took the liberty to split that part of my reply (and the replies to it) off and merged it with an existing thread on that topic. http://sailfar.net/forum/index.php?topic=3736.msg47864#msg47864 ]

[DarrenC]

There is no problem with prejudice at my home marina, which is essentially a private cruising club run by an older gentleman on his own property mostly because he loves the boating life and wants to be around it. We have a half dozen or so of us "small" boats, about the same in 30-35 footers, a few 36+ and several powerboats. For the most part we are a friendly and social group regardless of vessel type or size.

Where i experience a personal prejudice against larger boats and inconsiderate sailors in general is when it comes to transients. Our little cove is an extremely popular destination and the marina charges a modest $1.50/ft for a slip or $1.00/ft for a mooring. While the sub-30 footers dont hesitate to take advantage (often joining in the social gatherings as well) larger boats inevitably opt for the hook. Completely their prerogative,  however what irritates me to no end is how many of them have the sheer audacity to bring their dinghys ashore on private property to stretch their legs, let their dog do its business, dump their garbage or even try to use the showers without so much as checking in at the office. If it wasnt so pathetic it might actually be amusing how when confronted they try to play dumb or even act indignant.  Having grown up on power cruisers , i have many times heard sailors referred to as freeloaders.  When we feel we are being looked upon or treated in that manner, we have these a-holes to thank for it.