Thanks for the response Rod.
I am assuming that you are addressing both the BCC Costs thread I started as well as this thread in one post.
I’ve been sailing about ten years, starting with lasers and such, and over the last five years, with friends on larger boats. A year and a half ago, we purchased a 1979 Hunter 30 and spent about five months restoring her in dry dock.
I am young at nineteen. Of course, I am not married (with no plans to be for a while!). My parents and I are wanting to purchase a boat together and spend a year or two cruising together after I have finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Miami in 2008. After our trip, my parents want to give me whatever boat we wind up with (though it’ll undoubtedly stay at the same dock) and pursue another business together now that our others are doing well (they’re thinking about reverting back to antique restoration or something else that pleases them). They currently own and run two car washes in southwest Florida - one self-serve, one full-serve. They pursued the car washes after running a parasailing and jet ski rental business for twelve years in North Carolina during the summers and Boca Grande, FL in the winters (well, the self-serve was purchased about six year into the watersports business as supplemental income for winters). As I grew up, I became more and more active in the watersports business until I was working seven days a week as mate on our parasail boat during the summers, spending “off-hours” with my Dad fixing that days broken jet skis (of which there were plenty, pesky things!) (I had a horrible youth…can’t you tell?
Now that we have been out of the business for a year and a half though, we’re finding the lack of daily contact with the water to be terribly disheartening - after spending so much time with the water as an integral part of our lives, it’s difficult to “walk away”. Rather than pursuing previous plans of spending some time in the mountains together, building a house for my parents to retire in, we’re choosing to try and pursue cruising.
As for “Are we really interested in purchasing a used or new BCC?” In a word, yes! We’ve spent hundreds of hours researching different boats both on the net and in real life and have had a chance to see a few BCCs inside and out along with many other boats. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what caught our eyes with the boats - you own one and know. We’ve pretty much narrowed the boats we’re interested in down to BCCs and Westsnails. There are a few others that would suit us as well, but the two listed are what we like most in sailboats, with the BCC being quite a bit higher on the totem pole.
Anyway, I did not mean to imply that Sam L. Morse company has stayed in business so long by making a large profit. We purchased two Premium Custom Boats parasail boats new for $80k over the course of our “watersports reign”, but looking their final price sheet over, less than $5k was taken as a profit from the boat. (they went out of business a couple of years ago.) I can’t imagine that a boat company like SLM which has to spend exponentially more time on their boats, could do much better intake wise. That is what fascinates me - they’ve been making great boats for years for what seems like market costs, yet they’re still doing it without bowing to the trend of boat makers to either skimp or quit.
I really appreciate those of who chime in on this stuff - for those of us interested in BCCs but not yet owners, it’s great to hear your opinions.
Happy Days!
Aaron Norlund