So a travel company gets into the boat-building business to plump its chartering profits.
Fair enough, but instead of competing over reputation for reliability and seaworthiness across decades, boat specs and builds are now driven by expected five-year returns on marine real-estate. So it now no longer matters how competent and dedicated the subcontracted production house is, its sponsorship is calling the tunes on materials, productivity, QA and wastage and sponsor priorities and horizons aren't those of dedicated boat-builders and sailors.
Meanwhile that commercial priority isn't visible to most cruising buyers, who are mainly motivated by brand-recognition, comfort and convenience, and who are used to a buying in an industry where major brands also compete on resale.
And then finally, sailing trade journalism doesn't redress this market ignorance, because the products and services championed this year are next year's advertising revenue.
Which means that the following may not be true:
> No one in the business of reviewing sailboats could claim they had not heard about the case.
On the contrary, a low-paid marketing graduate whose job is just to convert a promotional press release to copy for a puff piece would have no problems being ignorant of and indifferent to questions of build quality, robustness and resilience. They wouldn't know to ask, or how to find out.
The editor though, should have known and cared.
On the other hand, boat sales and sailing journalism are international, while consumer regulation tends to be national. From what I've seen, cruising sailing is treated in general media as a luxury hobby while for some reason, international air-tourism is treated as an economic right, to the extent of mass consumer advocacy when $1,500 flights are needlessly cancelled.
I have no idea what a viable long-term solution to this would look like.
It's nice to know that Sail is still willing to whore itself out to the companies spending the most dollars in advertising dollars when it comes to good reviews and rankings.
While most sailors figured this out years ago, it's still sad to have such shitty journalism (if you can even call it this).
If there is a silver lining to this, it is the owners of Sail loudly proclaiming to the world that their publications are shit and can't be trusted. They're the National Enquirer of the boating industry.
Does anyone honestly believe any boating magazine boat reviews? I mean, come on. Everyone knows they are full of shit. They throw one little miscellaneous negative item out there to appear credible but everything else is always positive. They depend on their advertisers to survive. Just give them a grain of salt. They lost all honesty and credibility years ago. No serious boat buyer really care what “list” they promote.
Question... does anyone have any real data? How many Leopards have had the same problem? What percentage are "bad"? How does this compare to other manufacturers? Without these numbers you are misleading buyers. EVERY manufacturer of most anything has a defect rate (because humans are involved and being human mistakes are made).
I have no idea if the defect rate of Leopards is high or low. Do you? If not, sure share when you have a problem with a product... but don't broad brush across everything a manufacturer does unless you have a bit more data. Have you found several Leopard 45s with a dry glass problem?
Quality control when glassing boats is a 60 year old problem... I suspect 10% of the venerable Cal 40 had a manufacturing induced blister problem.
Last...
Look to designers to solve some/much of these problems...
Design for manufacturability
And beware high tech manufacturing methods developed for one off racing boats being used for production boats... wealthy boat owners willing to take design and manufacturing risks to win a pickle dish that us mere mortals with limited budgets dont.
Peter, I think you make some great points and I can relate. I have a new Hanse 360 (first delivered in the US) that was just reviewed in Sail Magazine with a glowing report and it's up for boat of the year (they actually used my boat for their evaluation and test sail) however the quality issues on this boat are significant. The head has to be rebuilt, the electric system is a mess and needs to be redone. I can go on and on. It's a nightmare including the Hanse warranty claim process. Hanse loves to say 'no' to claims. I certainly cannot recommend this boat based on my experience.
I have to think, how can we get to objectively evaluating boats for quality and boatbuilders for customer service and how do boat builders get incented to focus on this. It would be interesting reporting to compare builders from that perspective as I think there are more 'Leopard' stories out there but I hope there are also good stories too. These are boats and there are always some issues, but I would certainly prioritize buying from a boatbuilder if I knew I'd get a quality focus and great factory support. There doesn't seem to be an avenue for objective reporting on these issues (and clearly Sail Magazine is a sales and marketing magazine only with no real substance. Again, I don't understand how Sail Magazine can test sail and review my boat and give it a glowing report but didn't even look at the boat systems from a quality standpoint when they did the review). Thanks for the article!
Content to commerce seems to sum it up. Firecrown has been buying magazines like crazy with plans to mostly work on the digital side to integrate content to move sales of products (Think of reviews of products with lots of buy now links embeded in them). They own the vast majority of boating magazines now. I have to imagine the company has to be pretty heavily leveraged based on the pace of acquisitions, don't think that bodes well for anything.
So a travel company gets into the boat-building business to plump its chartering profits.
Fair enough, but instead of competing over reputation for reliability and seaworthiness across decades, boat specs and builds are now driven by expected five-year returns on marine real-estate. So it now no longer matters how competent and dedicated the subcontracted production house is, its sponsorship is calling the tunes on materials, productivity, QA and wastage and sponsor priorities and horizons aren't those of dedicated boat-builders and sailors.
Welcome to the world of vertical integration. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration)
Meanwhile that commercial priority isn't visible to most cruising buyers, who are mainly motivated by brand-recognition, comfort and convenience, and who are used to a buying in an industry where major brands also compete on resale.
And then finally, sailing trade journalism doesn't redress this market ignorance, because the products and services championed this year are next year's advertising revenue.
Which means that the following may not be true:
> No one in the business of reviewing sailboats could claim they had not heard about the case.
On the contrary, a low-paid marketing graduate whose job is just to convert a promotional press release to copy for a puff piece would have no problems being ignorant of and indifferent to questions of build quality, robustness and resilience. They wouldn't know to ask, or how to find out.
The editor though, should have known and cared.
On the other hand, boat sales and sailing journalism are international, while consumer regulation tends to be national. From what I've seen, cruising sailing is treated in general media as a luxury hobby while for some reason, international air-tourism is treated as an economic right, to the extent of mass consumer advocacy when $1,500 flights are needlessly cancelled.
I have no idea what a viable long-term solution to this would look like.
Mighty brave journalism at Loose Cannon!
It's nice to know that Sail is still willing to whore itself out to the companies spending the most dollars in advertising dollars when it comes to good reviews and rankings.
While most sailors figured this out years ago, it's still sad to have such shitty journalism (if you can even call it this).
If there is a silver lining to this, it is the owners of Sail loudly proclaiming to the world that their publications are shit and can't be trusted. They're the National Enquirer of the boating industry.
Does anyone honestly believe any boating magazine boat reviews? I mean, come on. Everyone knows they are full of shit. They throw one little miscellaneous negative item out there to appear credible but everything else is always positive. They depend on their advertisers to survive. Just give them a grain of salt. They lost all honesty and credibility years ago. No serious boat buyer really care what “list” they promote.
Question... does anyone have any real data? How many Leopards have had the same problem? What percentage are "bad"? How does this compare to other manufacturers? Without these numbers you are misleading buyers. EVERY manufacturer of most anything has a defect rate (because humans are involved and being human mistakes are made).
I have no idea if the defect rate of Leopards is high or low. Do you? If not, sure share when you have a problem with a product... but don't broad brush across everything a manufacturer does unless you have a bit more data. Have you found several Leopard 45s with a dry glass problem?
Quality control when glassing boats is a 60 year old problem... I suspect 10% of the venerable Cal 40 had a manufacturing induced blister problem.
Last...
Look to designers to solve some/much of these problems...
Design for manufacturability
And beware high tech manufacturing methods developed for one off racing boats being used for production boats... wealthy boat owners willing to take design and manufacturing risks to win a pickle dish that us mere mortals with limited budgets dont.
Peter, I think you make some great points and I can relate. I have a new Hanse 360 (first delivered in the US) that was just reviewed in Sail Magazine with a glowing report and it's up for boat of the year (they actually used my boat for their evaluation and test sail) however the quality issues on this boat are significant. The head has to be rebuilt, the electric system is a mess and needs to be redone. I can go on and on. It's a nightmare including the Hanse warranty claim process. Hanse loves to say 'no' to claims. I certainly cannot recommend this boat based on my experience.
I have to think, how can we get to objectively evaluating boats for quality and boatbuilders for customer service and how do boat builders get incented to focus on this. It would be interesting reporting to compare builders from that perspective as I think there are more 'Leopard' stories out there but I hope there are also good stories too. These are boats and there are always some issues, but I would certainly prioritize buying from a boatbuilder if I knew I'd get a quality focus and great factory support. There doesn't seem to be an avenue for objective reporting on these issues (and clearly Sail Magazine is a sales and marketing magazine only with no real substance. Again, I don't understand how Sail Magazine can test sail and review my boat and give it a glowing report but didn't even look at the boat systems from a quality standpoint when they did the review). Thanks for the article!
Content to commerce seems to sum it up. Firecrown has been buying magazines like crazy with plans to mostly work on the digital side to integrate content to move sales of products (Think of reviews of products with lots of buy now links embeded in them). They own the vast majority of boating magazines now. I have to imagine the company has to be pretty heavily leveraged based on the pace of acquisitions, don't think that bodes well for anything.