sb in gp
Active Member
So all you guys with personal feuds, it ruins these forums when petty personal fights break out, so for the good of the forum can you try to avoid personal attacks and stick to the question/issue at hand?
Back to the quality issues: My opinion is that boats were made sturdier and heavier 15+ years ago, and if you go back even further they get even more so. I think this is largely an effort to reduce weight and improve fuel economy and to make them easier/cheaper to build. Unfortunately the boat builders all seemed to get stuck in a feature race (like cars) so in the end they've not reduced much weight and prices have soared.
I also think that quality comes with repetition, so when you get a new design it is almost always going to have "bugs" that need to be worked out over time. Some of the old Sea Ray designs went through 20+ years of improvement, and got very refined.
What is better on some newer boats is the cabin layout and usability, and this is one of the primary reason pods are used. I'm not talking about styling - that is a whole different discussion, but the ability to entertain and sleep on my 46' boat is as good or better, IMHO, than boats that were 10' bigger 15-20 years ago.
Back to the quality issues: My opinion is that boats were made sturdier and heavier 15+ years ago, and if you go back even further they get even more so. I think this is largely an effort to reduce weight and improve fuel economy and to make them easier/cheaper to build. Unfortunately the boat builders all seemed to get stuck in a feature race (like cars) so in the end they've not reduced much weight and prices have soared.
I also think that quality comes with repetition, so when you get a new design it is almost always going to have "bugs" that need to be worked out over time. Some of the old Sea Ray designs went through 20+ years of improvement, and got very refined.
What is better on some newer boats is the cabin layout and usability, and this is one of the primary reason pods are used. I'm not talking about styling - that is a whole different discussion, but the ability to entertain and sleep on my 46' boat is as good or better, IMHO, than boats that were 10' bigger 15-20 years ago.