Chris Ostlind
Previous Member
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2004
- Messages
- 0
- Reaction score
- 59
- Location
- South Bay
Spew vs Reality
Spot, friggin on, Grant. Of course, the sky would have to be brown for me to say it. I carry a handy, PMS color chart for such occasions. ;-)
It's really simple. Doug is a techno-junkie of the highest order. He needs to have his regular fix of the stuff in order to feel like he's on the right track with his excursion through life.
OK, fine, he can chase the tail of the tiger for as long as he feels like he has the juice for it. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve basic problems, it only buries them under another layer of gloss so that the real issues don't have to be encountered. Small craft worldwide are shrinking in sales... not growing. The Foiling Moth thing has never had any real impact on the trend more than nabbing a few magazine Wowee shots and some stuff on YouTube.
The fleet has not grown by leaps and bounds and it remains, (and I'll say it once again) obscure in the grand scheme of things in the boating world. That's right... OBSCURE, as in: a curiosity, a notion, a tangent to what is really happening in the trade and not the trade itself .
It's at this point that our Blog Boy Doug will jump in with something like: "The Moth phenomenon has only been around for a few years. You can't expect it to grow that fast with so little development in such a short period of time."
While that sounds good on the surface, the truth of the matter is that this conversation has been going on for a few years and virtually nothing has changed in all that time save for the volume and the foamy spittle associated with Doug's hype fever.
In the time since the intro of the foiling Moth, the BIC people have introduced their thermoformed OpenBIC design
http://www.watersportswest.com/shopcart/agora.cgi?page=BIC.html and they've sold several thousands of them worldwide. They've gotten more young people into sailing than the Moth builders could ever imagine possible. The reasons? They're accessible, they're simple to drive, they are rugged, they are affordable and the big one... they don't require an aerospace level of composites talent to keep them going if there's a serious prang.
All that kind of counter thinking at the other end of the boat scale is what dooms the foiling Moth to obscurity. The market segment is: a skinny, fit guy or gal with no plans for the USD$15K other than to bash around at speed and then have little to no resale value once tired of the game. There aren't enough folks worldwide who fit that envelope to allow the class to emerge from OBSCURITY.
All that said, I still think that foiling Moths are decently cool objects as boats and I enjoy watching them for short periods of time. I wouldn't own one and my, now 17 yr. old, son (who fits the target buyer segment if he robs his college account) would also not own one. He does own a beach cat that he and I built from my design (costing about the same as the OpenBIC) and he has a blast on that with his friends. Yes, Doug, my son has friends. I know that's a fairly alien concept for you, but some folks really like to sail with their buddies. They can't do that easily if they all have to pony-up the $15K to get on the water.
So, that leads me to the inescapable and very obvious question...
Hey Doug, where's that magical two person foiling, canting, sliding, WaterWorld vision of yours since you crowed about it last year? Please tell me you have something to show for the time other than your hot air on the topic? Since you've been blowing hard on the foil thing, Doug, I've built two very nice trimarans in my spare hours away from my cameraman career and you, apparently have nothing at all.
Just show us some photos of the boat in the garage where it is being built. Since you know so much about hype, perhaps you could allow us all some visual hype regarding your wonder tool that is going to knock the boating world flat?
Come on, Douglas... no time like the present to put-up or shut-up.
Your unfailing buddy,
Chris
Spot, friggin on, Grant. Of course, the sky would have to be brown for me to say it. I carry a handy, PMS color chart for such occasions. ;-)
It's really simple. Doug is a techno-junkie of the highest order. He needs to have his regular fix of the stuff in order to feel like he's on the right track with his excursion through life.
OK, fine, he can chase the tail of the tiger for as long as he feels like he has the juice for it. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve basic problems, it only buries them under another layer of gloss so that the real issues don't have to be encountered. Small craft worldwide are shrinking in sales... not growing. The Foiling Moth thing has never had any real impact on the trend more than nabbing a few magazine Wowee shots and some stuff on YouTube.
The fleet has not grown by leaps and bounds and it remains, (and I'll say it once again) obscure in the grand scheme of things in the boating world. That's right... OBSCURE, as in: a curiosity, a notion, a tangent to what is really happening in the trade and not the trade itself .
It's at this point that our Blog Boy Doug will jump in with something like: "The Moth phenomenon has only been around for a few years. You can't expect it to grow that fast with so little development in such a short period of time."
While that sounds good on the surface, the truth of the matter is that this conversation has been going on for a few years and virtually nothing has changed in all that time save for the volume and the foamy spittle associated with Doug's hype fever.
In the time since the intro of the foiling Moth, the BIC people have introduced their thermoformed OpenBIC design
http://www.watersportswest.com/shopcart/agora.cgi?page=BIC.html and they've sold several thousands of them worldwide. They've gotten more young people into sailing than the Moth builders could ever imagine possible. The reasons? They're accessible, they're simple to drive, they are rugged, they are affordable and the big one... they don't require an aerospace level of composites talent to keep them going if there's a serious prang.
All that kind of counter thinking at the other end of the boat scale is what dooms the foiling Moth to obscurity. The market segment is: a skinny, fit guy or gal with no plans for the USD$15K other than to bash around at speed and then have little to no resale value once tired of the game. There aren't enough folks worldwide who fit that envelope to allow the class to emerge from OBSCURITY.
All that said, I still think that foiling Moths are decently cool objects as boats and I enjoy watching them for short periods of time. I wouldn't own one and my, now 17 yr. old, son (who fits the target buyer segment if he robs his college account) would also not own one. He does own a beach cat that he and I built from my design (costing about the same as the OpenBIC) and he has a blast on that with his friends. Yes, Doug, my son has friends. I know that's a fairly alien concept for you, but some folks really like to sail with their buddies. They can't do that easily if they all have to pony-up the $15K to get on the water.
So, that leads me to the inescapable and very obvious question...
Hey Doug, where's that magical two person foiling, canting, sliding, WaterWorld vision of yours since you crowed about it last year? Please tell me you have something to show for the time other than your hot air on the topic? Since you've been blowing hard on the foil thing, Doug, I've built two very nice trimarans in my spare hours away from my cameraman career and you, apparently have nothing at all.
Just show us some photos of the boat in the garage where it is being built. Since you know so much about hype, perhaps you could allow us all some visual hype regarding your wonder tool that is going to knock the boating world flat?
Come on, Douglas... no time like the present to put-up or shut-up.
Your unfailing buddy,
Chris
