I have recently encountered a few cruising yacht aficionados who’ve contacted me for help upgrading some of my older designs dating from 1975 to 1980. Which I am happy to do- it does my heart good. I thought it might be useful to engage in some reality therapy for the benefit of others who might be thinking of following this same route.
We’re talking about money here. Sordid subject, but let me continue. As “things” get older, they depreciate. Automobiles, for instance, depreciate at about 10% per year, reaching scrap value after about ten years. (There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare). At a certain point- when it becomes impossible to find replacements for their parts when they wear out- only a fool would buy such a jalopy at any price. And of course a ten year old car is scratched, dented, rusting in spots you can’t see, and borderline dangerous in some cases.
At the same time, our feckless central bankers have promoted and achieved continuous and worsening inflation. Of late government has been “printing money” scandalously, with the inevitable result that life is surely getting more expensive. Any item that was built in 1975 now costs more between 5 and 10 times as much as it did then, even if the inherent quality of its design or materials hasn’t improved a bit in the interim. Remember this fact, it will become significant later.
A decade before I began designing yachts, fiberglass did not exist. Yachts were hugely expensive, individually hand-built- usually in America- primarily of wood, requiring highly skilled workers and thousands of man-hours of work. For this reason only tycoons and blue-bloods could afford the pastime of sailing… it was almost impossible to work enough hours in a lifetime to afford one of these things without an inherited windfall.
Fiberglass changed all that. The price of yachts tumbled owing to this new technology. The hull- the largest part of any yacht- went from being built in a matter of months to a few days, and it no longer required skilled labor… some of the laminators in the “glass department” were work-release prisoners who would happily work for next to nothing just for a reprieve from the big house. The classy builders whom I worked with didn’t chase this “low price above all” course, but still their higher quality hulls, decks and other fiberglass parts cost a tiny fraction of what people were used to in the 1950s.
Unlike many products, which are designed assuming “planned obsolescence”, it was necessary to build yachts to a higher standard than automobiles or kitchen appliances. Because a few times in the useful life of a yacht it will have to withstand life-threatening occurrences. Boats had to be built to last. So if the design life of an automobile might be ten or fifteen years in most cases, reputable yacht builders built to this “most extreme conditions” standard, and really had no inkling how long a fiberglass yacht that they built might last. I am sure most of them if asked might have answered- “twenty years is the “anticipated lifespan” of one of my yachts”.
Here we are forty and more years after many yachts of my design were built by companies like Morris Yachts in America and Victoria and Bowman Yachts in the UK. Two of the wonderful men who created these yachts are no longer with us- Tom Morris and Peter Gregory of Victoria Yachts. But most of the yachts they built are still around, though in many cases exhibiting the warts and wrinkles of age.
True, the design aspect of these objects has lasting value. As a designer I studied the classical norms, and am a trained mechanical engineer. So the design integrity of these old yachts is in some cases nearly as desirable as the day they were born. I like to compare a couple of my oldest designs- the 26’ Frances and the 24’ Carol- to other classic designs in the automobile and aircraft fields… the MGTD and the J3 Cub. Classic designs, and the design is as good now as it ever was. But the product itself, well, there’s the rub. Without modification, an MGTD is barely roadworthy, and a J3 Cub barely airworthy.
And therein lies the problem that I hope to address here. In many cases trying to turn a fully depreciated yacht which can be bought today at scrap value into something usable might amount to throwing good money after bad.
When Tom Morris built a finished Frances it cost something like $65,000 in 1975 dollars. Bought recently at scrap value, I suspect these boats can be bought on Craigslist for between $20,000 and $40,000. One of the reasons that this appears like a bargain is the indisputable fact that to build a Frances 26 today would have inflated to much more than five times as much. (Actually it would cost far more- my estimate $550,000- as the molds have been scrapped and the hull and deck and ballast would have to be built one-off, not out of molds).
So it’s hard to criticize people who bought something which would cost today $550,000 for $20,000 to $40,000, you might think.
But herein lies the rub.
These old boats need complete cosmetic restoration- extensive sanding and fairing and painting. Which involves many hundreds of man-hours of work. If you pay for it you are paying 2023 wages and new benefits that didn’t exist then for workers, which costs are many times what they were when the yachts were built. Let’s say 400 man-hours at $75 per hour, or $30,000. (If you can find a boatyard that charges only $75 per hour). But let’s say you plan to do the work yourself, so it is “free”. (Of course it might cost you a divorce, which can be expensive, but that’s another matter).
These boats often need a new mast, new standing and running rigging, new chainplates and new sails, a jib roller-furler and solid vang and self-tailing winches and new genoa tracks and their cars and electronics and plumbing and berth cushions, and replacement of many other worn-out items. And in many cases, a new engine. The modern voyager would be nuts not to have a chartplotter and modern stove and high tech ground tackle, and if he wants to keep his partner, probably a set of pretty new cushion covers. Which at today’s inflated prices comes to somewhere north of $30,000 to $50,000.
So you buy something for $20,000 and have to pay another $30,000 to $50,000 to make it sound and attractive again. You can look at this in two ways. If you thought you got a bargain, but were unaware of what it would cost today to make it merely usable, not to mention valuable if ever resold, maybe the wisest thing to do is to take your lumps and not throw good money after bad and repost it on Craigslist in search of the next bargain hunter. (Don’t forget it will always be a boat with a birth date of 1975- and that some of my early designs were amateur built from the plans, and these will have little resale value no matter how much you put into them).
If it were me, I would look at it from another angle. I would happily put $40,000 to $100,000 into a timeless, classic design that will give me pleasure for the rest of my life. And focus on the fact that if I built a new one today, it would cost ten times as much.
I hope this little essay helps separate the wishful thinkers from the wise investors who see the value of sailing the world in a beautifully restored, classic design.