A listee named Alan sent a private email responding to my online question about the fuel efficiency of power catamarans. He has given his permission for me to repost an edited version of my reply. Part II > The reason is I'm not greedy. COMMENT: Neither were the PDQ owners. Other makers who's models winked or studdered in and out of production in the last five or more years lost tons of money trying to sell innovative boats to a surprisingly tradition bound market. That's the chief reason they went down. > Have you ever noticed how much profit is reported by a company that > only produces say 5-10 boats in a year? It's ridiculous! COMMENT: Financial information about most boat builders is pretty hard to come by. Virtually all the small builders and most of the medium sized builders are privately held companies, and don't release their financial data. The really large builders are mostly publicly held corporations, and financial data on them is available, although mostly they are just now entering the power catamaran realm. There isn't much historic data to analyse. > They charge what the market will pay. COMMENT: Isn't that just a restatement of the nature of business. Private businesses that continue to loose lots of money and still survive are scarce as hen's teeth. Markets are price sensitive -- demand diminishes as prices rise. > What they don't realize is there is a whole other market who would buy > if the price would allow it. COMMENT: Yes, of course. I don't believe that the manufacturers are however putting on huge margins to get a big overall profit. Everyone understands that higher prices mean fewer sales. They realize that it is better, in this case, to take a very modest margin on each sale, and accumulate so many more sales that the overall profit is satisfactory. According to PDQ's VP of marketing, that worked well for them for the almost six years of their production. I'm sure he would be among the first to tell us that the dramatic rise in their pricing brought on by weakened US dollar and skyrocketing material costs were the key factors in the demise of the company. > I think most very small successful companies pay their employees > extremely well and they don't over inflate their prices to make up for > small quantities sold. COMMENT: I disagree. In my experience, throughout the economy only large companies have the resources to pay employees well, let alone include a benefits package. Employees at small companies earn less, get fewer raises and rarely have even the most basic benefits, like health insurance. It seems to me that even the owners of/investors in small boat building companies rarely make very much money. Most commonly they loose big time, and make it up in satisfaction about their boats. We all recognize the advantages of scale in production. A company that builds say five boats a year has to spread it's entire operating costs (including a modest profit to reward investors) over those five sales. A builder who sells a hundred boats a year, while he has a bigger operation is still able to assign a smaller cost to each of those hundred sales because the increased costs for accounting, factory space, total payroll, etc. etc., don't scale up in a directly proportional way to the number of boats produced. In PDQ's example, they produced 102 completed hulls in the 62 months since I bought hull number 12. That's about one completion every three weeks, and recall that Whitby harbor freezes over from November to April, bottling up production. > The market is there for a well built small (34-40 foot) cruising power > cat at a modest price. I know it can be done. COMMENT: I enthusiastically agree about the market, although I am unsure about the acceptability of a power catamaran that size, and priced near the $150K you mentioned below. I think that the PDQ is way too sophisticated and complex to fit that price range, but perhaps a simple and practical power cat in the slender hull catagory ought to be possible in the $150K range. It would probably have heavy hand fitted FRP coated plywood plank hull, bulkheads and panels instead of ultralight yet ultrastrong CNC cut high tech foam laminated in fancy weave glass, carbon or kevlar, vacuum impregnated with the finest resins, and the boat would be considerably heavier overall, it would feature lots of flat panel surfaces, a few simple curved and darn few compound curved surfaces, and it will have a distinctly homebuilt look. It might even have to be gas outboard powered, given that the diesel motors I saw at the boat show yesterday were going in the $40K to $55K and up range, each, crated, FOB their freight dock. If you have a lot of time on your hands, and the cash to front for the materials, you could build such a boat yourself -- keeping in mind that it takes a special sort of person with deep pockets and making a very concerted effort to create such a unique boat, which will be an ordeal to move out of the back yard and end up with rather poor resale value. > <><snip some more> If I could find a good power cat for around > $150,000 I would buy it in a minute! FINAL COMMENT: Yeah, me too. I'm not sure how long you will have to wait for such a thing to come around in the used boat market though, and as I said above, we will probably never see a new production boat in that price range. On the theory that you only get what you pay for, you might not end up wanting such a boat. I surmise from the general nature of your questions and comments that you are relatively new to boating. I have some advice: The very most important priority about boating is that you do it. Now. Not some day soon, or bye and bye, GO NOW! Get out on the water, best way you can and start enjoying and learning about boating and about your own preferences. Do not let perfect defeat practical. Get a starter boat and go. Move up later. The second most important thing about boating is who you do it with, and how you get that special somebody to enjoy the experience as much as you do. Issues of comfort, convenience, and such play a big role, but it is mostly about your attitude and behavior. The third most important thing is that all this is done safely, on a budget you can afford and on a realistic schedule. Competance, confidence and your preferences will evolve and grow from your experience, and not so much from intellectual exercises or groupchat experiences. The forth, or (maybe even a higher number) is precisely which boat (or which specific boat gadget) is involved. The customary approach is to sneak up on getting the perfect boat through several progressive upgrades. One of my very favorite local boat names is "My Last Boat III." It also helps to remember that this is the land of moving targets, your goals and preferences will doubtless change as your experience grows -- likely they will reverse themselves more than once. Another rule is always hire your own competant surveyer for any major used boat purchase. You need expert advice on what you are getting and what you are getting into. Specifically, the $150K you mentioned will buy a blinding array of different used monohull boats, some very well suited to whatever your current wants and needs might be. I would also like to direct your attention to the recent crop of used sailing catamarans coming out of charter service although the cost may be a little higher than that. Yeah, I know, one has to be particularly cautious buying chartered boats, and save out enough money and energy to deal with the heavy wear and tear involved; but there are some great deals out there. You could have a slender hulled catamaran with a very sophisticated and highly evolved, easy to propel hull as well as a useful interior design, with small diesel motors, and nice accomodations plus you've got all those sail thingamajigs that afford these boats a virtually unlimited range. Think about that. Is your ultimate dream larger than local or coastal cruising? If you are patient you can go anywhere by sail. My sailboat experience also testifies to the fact that sailboats use the petrol wind about 90% of the time anyway, so running around in power mode is nothing new or shameful. Many of us daydream about cruising to exotic distant places and hanging out there forever. My PDQ will only cross oceans on the cargo deck of a ship, while in a sailing catamaran you could take off whenever you like to anywhere that's wet enough to allow navigation. For practical reasons of scale, world cruising power catamarans nowadays are limited to the 50 foot or larger size, and if you are the sort of average bloke who must ask how much they cost to buy, maintain or refuel, you can't afford it. Gotta get to work, Best regards, Gary Bell, AKA that old know-it-all Mister Science