Re: One informed opinion on boat quality
Originally posted by Ed DiNapoli:<br /> I purchased Pascoe's book "Buyers gide to outboard boat" It is a eye opening read on small boats. His take on the industry is despite the reputation of the manufacturer or the model, beware of the indivigual boat. Each boat can and will be different in some way from all others in the same model and maunfacturer. Worth reading.<br />Ed
That confirms my suspicion.<br /><br />Making boats, certainly timber and fibreglass ones, depends heavily on the care, skill and experience of the people setting up and applying various materials, unlike car production where it is just about fully robotised and every one will be pretty much the same as the other one.<br /><br />As well as individually badly build boats, I expect that every large boatbuilder has some jewels and some dogs and maybe some deadset lemons of designs in its range and history.<br /><br />In terms of maintaining consistent production standards, the fibreglass boat industry is probably not even where the car industry was 40 or 50 years ago because there is so much work done by humans of variable skill levels instead of robotic machines. <br /><br />I was in what might be our biggest fibreglass boat factory (Caribbean) a few weeks back and it was more like a pre-WWII car factory so far as having individual boats being worked on rather than a modern auto or anything else production line.<br /><br />Aluminium boats might be different.<br /><br />I think Pascoe's stuff shows that boat builders, like any other manufacturer, are always looking for cheaper methods of production. The core and other debates can go on forever, but the real test is: does it do the job it was designed to? <br /><br />Compare the hollow / cardboard core doors that have been used in houses for the past 40 or so years with the older solid timber ones. They both perform the same function equally well, which is blocking a hole in a wall. The fact that you can kick or even punch a hole through a hollow core door when you can't with a solid core door doesn't matter, because that's not its function.<br /><br />The same with boats. If a boat can't take the usual knocks it'll get without damaging or holing the hull then it's useless and potentially dangerous, but if some boats get damaged more than others by being banged up against rocks for hours in a severe storm it's a pity for the owners or insurers of the boats with worse damage but saying they're no good is like saying a holllow core door is no good because you can kick a hole in it.<br /><br />Similar issue with surface deflection of panels and other potentially meaningless "tests" of quality. People complain about modern cars being made out of tinfoil, and have been for the past 40 or so years in my own experience. Maybe they were making the same complaint in 1920 as the "they don't build 'em like they used to" brigade must have been with us throughout history. Sure, car panels have been getting steadily thinner for decades and they'll deflect more with less pressure, but out of a 1955, 1980 and a 2005 car which one goes better in every respect, is more economical, uses fewer natural resources in its construction, handles better, stops faster, is more comfortable to ride in, and gives you a better chance of surving a crash? There's no contest, even between the worst car made now and the best one made 50 years ago, and most of those made 25 years ago won't stack up against a current one either. <br /><br />Boats are made to different standards, like cars, tools, and everything else. As long as the one you've got does the job you want it to do, what's it matter whether other ones are better or worse, any more than if you've got solid doors and the bloke next door has hollow core doors, or vice versa?
<br /><br />That's allot of glass and resin.